And... we’re back. After a tumble up the relevancy ladder and a flourish of accolades, Mr. Colangelo armed himself with a mandate to splurge. The core, set with Bosh, Bargnani, Nesterovic, Ford and Calderon, needed a complement of role players if they were to parlay regular season success into playoff wins.
May 22 2007
Signed head coach Sam Mitchell to a contract extension.
Naturally, co-credit for super season goes to COY, Sam Mitchell. A timeless, flawless coaching performance that enshrines Mitchell a place in the NBA coaching pantheon for ever and ever and ever and ever and...
June 15 2007
Traded two future second-round picks to the Detroit Pistons for forward Carlos Delfino.
The draft picks turned out to be Jonas Jerebko and Kyle Singler. I have no analysis -- I just felt like sharing. My memory of Delfino is fairly fuzzy which usually signals benign uselessness. His shot choices were awful but he was able to shoulder defensive assignments and play a little point guard in a pinch. I’ve watched him more recently driving to the basket, perhaps picking up a thing or two from Jeremy Lin. A great big shoulder shrug. Here, watch this.
July 11 2007
Signed forward Jason Kapono and signed forward Maceo Baston to an offer sheet.
July 10 2007
Signed forward Jamario Moon.
I’ll get to Moon at his exit interview...
Before the saga of Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Kapono was the free agent whipping boy that began to turn attentive minds against the consensus sanctity of Colangelo’s genius. Kapono, you may remember, was the sharpshooting specialist coming off a big season with the Heat, where he had averaged 11-a-game on better than 50% three-point shooting. Everyone needs one of those, right? Colangelo agreed, buying high with a four year, $24 million contract.
Pundits will remind you, with little prompting, not to overpay for role players if you want to do fun things like raise banners in an NBA arena. Beyond the truism, the real question was, could a season of receiving passes out of double teams and knocking down a historical clip of threes be considered a rising trend? With no apparent market to bid against (the first tragic flaw of Colangelo’s teamcraft philosophy) the Raptors made their first big splash in the free agent market since Hakeem Olajuwon and announced to the world... that they had signed a shooter.
Upon closer inspection, Kapono’s shooting ability was real but his deftness at any and every other aspect of the NBA game quickly raised all of the red flags. Literally, every single flag. For a team already struggling to play NBA defence (“J’accuse!” Mnsrs. Calderon, Ford, Bargnani, Bosh) Kapono’s still smooth shot was drowned out by the deficits in the rest of his game. Kapono seemed to develop a case of the yips as he was much more reluctant to even take the shots he was being paid to take. He course corrected, somewhat, the following season with more attempts, but when his clip fell back down to earth and it became clear he was just too unreliable to keep on the floor, BC was left with two years and $14 million owed to what was increasingly looking like a very good NBDL player. Oops.
July 30 2007
Named Masai Ujiri director of global scouting.
I miss that guy.
February 21 2008
Traded guard Juan Dixon to the Detroit Pistons for center Primoz Brezec.
I really miss that guy (Brezec, not Dixon)
This was a boring season, transactionally. Injuries to Ford and Bosh exacerbated a regression towards the mean (a fringe playoff team) and the onslaught of the new-look Celtics to the emerging Magic, still alive Pistons and the elevation of LeBron James from good to “holy shit” marked a turning point: the Raptors were about to slide down a great big hill of poop with Bryan Colangelo holding the poop-sled reins.
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