Toronto Craptors

It will definitely get a lot worse before it gets any better. 

You know that feeling you have when you are just about to go out with some old friends who you used to have everything in common with ten years ago but for some reason or another you just do not connect with them anymore to the point where you actually are dreading the next four hours?  Well that sickening feeling is the one that every Toronto Raptors fan has right now. 

Just as you do not want to meet up with your old friends because you know that you will not enjoy it but you do anyway out of obligation, Raptors fans are not looking forward to the off-season.  With the seemingly inevitable departure of Chris Bosh this off-season, the Raptors are about to hit another new low.

For the majority of their fifteen year existence, the Raptors have stunk.  Add Bosh's likely departure to the list of basketball stars that have turned their backs on the tortured Raptors fan base.  Do not even suggest that a Bosh sign and trade will substantially help.  Rarely does any team get anything significant in return for doing sign and trades (only Ben Wallace in the Grant Hill sign and trade comes to mind) and Raptors fans should know this first hand (see Wince Carter and Tracy McGrady). 

This year's team was supposed to be different.  GM Bryan Colangelo revamped most of the roster in the off-season hoping that his new acquisitions would help convince Bosh to stay (see old college friend Jarrett Jack's signing) and also be the pieces needed to build around their present stars (Bosh, Andrea Bargnani and Jose Calderon).  The result of this massive overhaul was nothing short of a disappointment. 

By the end of the regular season, the roster is now handcuffed by an overpriced and untradeable Hedo Turkoglu contract (5 years/$53 million) and a deteriorating Calderon who somehow went from 28-years-old to 45-years-old over the past summer.  Other than Bargnani, who is a decent second option, but a guy nobody trusts as being the go-to-guy (unless Calderon goes Benjamin Button in the off-season by regaining some mobility so he is able to move without the assistance of a cane and not reek of Rub A535) the Raptors do not have another dynamic player on their roster if Bosh does leave.  The Raptors do have a decent group of role players but their limitations sadly, do not extend much beyond bench players.   

What if the Raptors were able to sign Bosh to a new contract for "max" money?  Would the team really be that much better off?  With Bosh on this year's team we are probably looking at a club that peaked as a 5th seeded team who most people would not give much of a chance were they to face Atlanta, Cleveland and Orlando in a playoff series.  There clearly is a gap between the four elite teams in the East and everybody else with the present Raptor collection being at best, the top dog of this bad bunch with little to no hope of beating one (or more likely two) of the top East teams to even make it to the Finals where they would be even more outmatched. 

Unless you think this team gets markedly better next season, resigning Bosh is only the start of another needed roster overhaul.  The problem with re-tooling rosters in a salary cap world is that a couple of albatross contracts like Turkoglu and Calderon significantly hinder your ability to make moves.  At this point, Colangelo's smaller investments appear to be fine (see role players like Jack and Sonny Weems) but some of his bigger investments, the ones that this team is supposedly built around, have been complete busts.  And do Raptors fans really want to go through another season with a team that sulks as much as any teenage girl?  

We are not talking about the fall of the present San Antonio Spurs or Detroit Pistons from a few years back.  This core collection of Toronto Raptors players were not really that good to begin with and do not appear to be getting any better.  What makes this off-season especially difficult for Raptors fans is that we are just starting to realize that now. What makes it even worse is that if the Raptors do not resign Bosh, in the short term, they will probably be much worse off but if they do resign him then they are still nowhere near the level of the top teams in the East. 

Regardless, Colangelo is hard pressed to turn this team into a winner in the foreseeable future.