Posted by bishop:
dj, bro the so often raved about ex-GM of the year does not have a clue what hes doing. Solomon gave them 4 point guards with the recently acquired Banks so i guess this makes sense. Jawai hasnt worked out so far, Voshkul absolutely sucks on the Brezec level. What is your team doing man? The atmosphere aint nice up here toward the raptors.
i think colangelo is one of the top gm's in the biz...
he's a risk taker but he never puts himself in a position to be handcuffed from making changes.
he took a risk with marion to be the PF. he took a risk with amare to be a C. he took a risk with d'antoni to be a coach. and he dumped a ton of contracts to get kobe. that didn't work so he went after nash and got him. all those risks paid off bigtime and he earned his rep as a top exec.
he gets to toronto and trades ROY runner up charlie v for tj - took a risk on that. he drafted bargs #1 overall - took a risk on that (who imho, is the 2nd best player in that draft behind roy). he brought in euro players so he can bring fans in the community back to the arena. his risk taking worked. then smitch won COY...but he was there before colangelo. so does colangelo fire smitch after winning COY? garbo gets hurt before the playoffs and they lose to the nets in the 1st round in 6 - a series they win if garbo was playing.
2nd season, bargs takes a huge step back when asked to play the center spot (after never playing that position before). both bosh + tj go down to injury and they eek into the playoffs but get destroyed by orlando.
raps needed a center since they didn't know what bargs was going to be, so they traded for o'neal. and they had to keep calderon b/c tj was perpetually hurt. they also lose delfino to russia. o'neal + bosh didn't work out, smitch was fired (when he should've never been brought back in the first place) and parker + moon + kapono all took major steps back - making them the WORST 2/3 rotation in the league. combine that with calderon's hamstring injury and you're looking at a recipe for disaster. positives this year was the growth of bargs + joey graham.
so his risks on the euro squad were fine b/c they were only 2-3 year contracts. his risk on o'neal failed so he turned that into expiring marion. d'antoni was the perfect coach for them but alas was not meant to be.
so the raps are crap right now...but they are 1-2 more moves away from bouncing back strongly.
end all be all is wins/losses. but i appreciate what he tried to do in toronto, a city no US born player wants to be. now, let's see what he does this offseason and next year.
it is not easy correcting mistakes in the nba today...he's a risk taker but what seperates him from the pack is that his mistakes didn't handcuff the franchise.
[Edited by - djsunyc on 02-19-2009 9:40 PM]
2/19/2009 5:05 PM