Of roster moves and the coming schedule

Hey, everyone have a good weekend?

Finally got some good weather for a holiday, which was entirely unusual but quite welcome around these parts at least.

Still painfully slow around the Raptors but there are some things to think about.

Like …

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Okay, in the last couple of days I’ve heard or been asked about Ime Udoka, Gerald Green, Pops You Know Who, Good Joey and about five or six other guys as “possibilities” for that final roster spot that now seems certain not to go to Carlos Delfino.

Let me just throw this out:

Does it really matter who?

Consider this: Turkoglu’s been pretty durable – he’s only missed 18 games in total over the last four seasons and he carries a workload of about 36-38 minutes a night. The Raptors coaching staff, as we’ve been mentioning for a couple of weeks, thinks Antoine Wright is quite capable of playing the three for a little bit and there are even those connected with the team who project DeRozan as a small forward possibility, at least in some rare occasions in his first couple of seasons.

So what are we talking about with that other guy? Someone who’s going to play – maybe – 6-7 minutes a night unless something drastically bad happens? And for this people are getting worked up?

It’s almost to the point where it doesn’t matter who that guy is and you can pick any one of the handful of names I’ve been presented with and it’ll be fine. The determining factor may end up being personality and willingness to accept a really minor role and none of us really knows how any of these possible additions would handle that.

The more you think about it, isn’t this really a case of getting worked up over nothing?

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Schedule’s out this afternoon, 1 p.m. I believe, and here’s one thing it won’t have:

Local television information.

As has been routine in the past, divvying up games between the dozen or so local broadcasters (okay, it’s only five but you get my drift) takes some time and it’ll likely be September before we learn what games are on TSN, The Score, CBC, TSN2 and RaptorsTV.

After all, there’s a whole season of NHL games to worry about first and we all know the pecking order around here.

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Yes, that was an ugly brawl between Canada and Italy the other day and if you haven’t yet seen it, here’s a quick glimpse.

But the reality is, fights in international basketball happen with far more regularity than they do in, say, North America. I don’t remember a qualifying tournament or exhibition series without some sort of contretemps and while this one lasted a bit longer than usual, it seemed to be a lot more milling around and gesturing with hands than anything.

Bad? Sure.

A disgrace? Not exactly.

Any repercussions? I doubt it.

And you know what? Ask a bunch of Canadian players from the past and I bet all of ‘em tell you these kinds of dust-ups help in the team-building more than anything.

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Back to the NBA schedule for a minute.

One thing we should learn today is the American national broadcast schedule, that’s games on TNT, ESPN and ESPN2 and ABC.

If I had to guess, I’d bet they get shut out on TNT again, maybe get one or two ESPN games and aren’t included on the ABC schedule, although we know things can be re-arranged for those late-season Sunday games, like they were a couple of seasons ago when they added a game at Detroit to the ABC lineup.

What’s it mean?

Well, before anyone goes off half-cocked about disrespect and blah, blah, blah, know that it has more to do with a 33-win season a year ago than anything TNT bigwig sitting in some office in Atlanta laughing about Toronto.

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Let’s go back to the roster one more time, if for no other reason that to stretch this post out to a legitimate length (I keed).

I know I’ve said I don’t expect this to happen because it doesn’t make any sense with regards to the salary cap or the tax level but one guy in the organization I talked to recently did hold out some chance that the Raptors may just buy out Marcus Banks and cut the cord.

Now, if I’m Marcus Banks or his agent, there’s no way I take anything less than the full amount owed over the next two seasons (which amounts to somewhere near $9.3 million) but if Bryan’s got his powers of persuasion working and can reduce the actual amount of money that goes out the door (even if it carries no savings in tax or cap issues), why the heck not.

There is no question the Raptors don’t have a lot of time for Banks; I can’t see him being anything other than an inactive list habitant all season and they remain miffed that he didn’t take part in the summer league.

But no one – no one – is going to trade for him and here’s why, again. No team wants to take on money for the 2010-11 season so there’s no deal for someone with a contract as long or longer than Banks’s. So any trade scenarios you’re cooking up in your mind can be immediately forgotten.

Maybe a buyout is the right way to go; the people I’ve been talking to aren’t sure it’s going to happen but the fact it was even mentioned in passing makes me think it’s now a remote possibility in a move that’s of the less-is-more category.

A little bit of news and a whole whack of mail

Well, things didn’t quite work out as well as many had hoped over in Thailand, where the Canadian under-19 women finished fourth and just out of the medals.

Here’s the story as it unfolded over night.

Still, fourth is nothing to sneeze at – best finish ever at this event – and the fact the top players on the team are a couple of 16-year-olds, I think the future’s brighter than it has been.

It was a pretty impressive run by this team, I’m sort of excited to see what they can do in the coming years.

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Now, onto the mail, which is going to have to get everyone through until Tuesday; with a deck full of people expected this afternoon and the coolers filled, I have a feeling tomorrow may be a tad slow.

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Q: Hi, Doug, just read your comment about Bruce Bowen and how the BB of 5 years ago would have been a great fit. Yes, he would have been. Who would you put on the all-time "they would have made great Raptors if they'd arrived 5 years earlier" team? I'm thinking Olajuwon at the top of the list. Marion is probably in there, too.

Dave F, Kingston

A: Ah, list time. I like.

Okay, I’ll give you Olajuwon as the poster boy for “got him a bit too late” but the rest of the team shakes out like this:

Mark Jackson.

He’d lost a step when he got here but in his heyday, he could run a team.

Charles Oakley

He was pretty good for the Raptors, he was really good in his prime years with the Knicks.

Rod Strickland

He only had a cup of coffee in Toronto but he had some game.

Dell Curry

He was 36 when he got here; if he’d come to Toronto in his late-20s, he’d own every three-point shooting record the franchise could think of.

Marion might be the Sixth Man but, really, he was pretty much the same guy as five years ago, just with different talent around him.

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Q: Oh my God Doug, you're not going to believe this. Todd MacCulloch is one of the select few representing Canada at the World Pinball Championships! That's just great!

Mohammed J, Mississauga

A: Oh, I’m not surprised at all. Todd’s been an internationally ranked pinball player for some time and is an aficionado of the “sport.”

And it’s real pinball, not video games. Truly old-school, which is another reason I’m a big fan of his.

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Q: You're a Sox fan, does news that Ortiz and Manny were on that list make you any less of one now? No offence to you, but I couldn't be happier that this is being shoved in the faces of all those arrogant bandwagon jumpers.

Shawn L, Bowmanville

A: No, it does nothing to or for me. I presume all of the top players of that era were juicing – when it wasn’t illegal – and if all 104 names came out, I think we’d see a who’s who of the game.

Of junior girls and waived NBAers

Pretty quiet morning so we’ll be short and sweet. There’s squat going on around the league, less than squat going on with the Raptors and I’ve got a whack of yardwork that needs tending to.

So here’s this, there’ll be mail in the morning and that’ll be it for the weekend.

Happy Civic Holiday, kids.

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Hmm, tough day for the junior women over in Thailand at the world championships.

Talking with a friend yesterday about the team and it’s hugely significant win over Australia in the quarter-finals and my astute lunch companion worried about some kind of mental letdown for the Canadians.

Well, as you can see from this boxscore, the semi against the States was over pretty early. And they're being kind of tardy with their game reports from over there so the boxscore's all I can point you to right now

Still, the loss can’t diminish what they’ve already accomplished and there’s still a shot a medal in the bronze medal game tomorrow (or tonight, depending on your time zone).

Looks as I type this that they’ll get Argentina in that bronze medal game (big upset by the Argentines over Russia in the quarters but they’re getting drilled by Spain in the semis) and I’d have to think Canada’s got a pretty good shot.

Of course, if Argentina trots out the teenage girl version of Manu or Carlos or – gasp! – Walter, it could mean trouble.

Anyway, we’ll get back here in the morning to see how Canada made out, make sure you check because, frankly, these girls are good and there should be some interest.

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Know what I love?

Every time anyone gets waived or bought out or cut, we get comments wondering how he’d fit in Toronto.

Sun Yue caused a bit of a stir around these parts yesterday, as did Bruce Bowen and I can say without hestitation that neither are on anyone’s radar at the moment and I doubt they ever will be.

First off, Sun can’t play. Couldn’t last year, can’t this year, was a nice little experiment in Los Angeles that failed.

Second off, do you think the fact the Spurs hardly played Bowen a year ago and then traded him and then the Bucks waived him should be some sort of signal about his declining skills? He’s 38 years old, only played 19 minutes a night last season and was entirely unproductive most games. Five years ago, he’d have been a great fit; right now, he’s someone some people have heard of and remember fondly but that doesn’t mean he should be a Raptor.

I think they’d probably be better off leaving that 15th roster spot empty in case there’s some kind of one-for-two or two-for-three trade they have interest in during the season than to sign Bruce Bowen.

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Speaking of that international basketball stuff, how many medals of any colour at any FIBA event do you think Canada’s won in the history of time?

How’s four sound?

Yep, for all the years and all the tournaments and all the players who’ve come through, there have been just four trips to the medal podium.

They were:

Silver at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Bronze at the 1979 women’s world championships.

Bronze at the 1986 women’s world championships.

Bronze at the 2005 men’s under-21 world championships.

That’s it, that’s all.

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Oh yeah, let’s get back to The Guys They Should Have Signed for a moment.

Hakim Warrick.

Yes, he indeed would have looked good in Toronto, can play a little three, a little four, athletic, yada, yada, yada.

And was never a possibility.

He was never going to sign a one-year deal at the minimum contract value so there was no way possible for Toronto to obtain him other than in some sign-and-trade involving Carlos Delfino and the last thing the money-conscious Grizzlies were going to do was spend $5 million on that roster spot.

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Out here in Hazelville, we don’t get a lot of Caribana traffic but if you’re downtown Toronto this weekend, it’s like an NBA Players’ Association meeting. Anyone who wonders whether Toronto holds any allure to guys in the league should maybe wander the streets where I’m told you might run into LeBron James and any one of a gaggle of players who make an annual trip here for the cultural festival.

Me? Well, I don’t think Caribana’s targeting 50-something chunky dudes who have no rhythm so I’m hanging on the golf course with Super Son today and the deck with some friends tomorrow.

I’ll jump up to throw another burger on the grill or dip my arm into the cooler, that’ll be about it.

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