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OT: The Official Toronto Raptors Thread

D9ymdcFU8AAeuhl
 
It's expected to be made official today, that Nick Nurse becomes the coach of the Canadian men's team and will be running the show for the World Championships this summer. Early rumours on the expected starting lineup is

PG - Cory Joseph
SG - Maple Curry
SF - Maple Mamba
PF - Dwight Powell
C - Olyniuk

With a possible/likely bench of:

-Andrew Wiggins (nice of him to finally commit)
-Thompson
-SGA
-Brandon Clarke
-Chris Boucher
-Nik Stauskas
-Trey Lyles


We're in a group with Lithuania, Senegal, and Australia. Which is a pretty competitive group and a good test for how good this Canadian group is right now. Lithuania is 6th ranked in the world (with JV and Sabonis as the only two NBA'ers on the team), and the Aussies are 11th with basically a full NBA rotation (Simmons, Mills, Baynes, Bolden, Ingles, Dellavadova, Exum, Maker, Bogut). Senegal has Dieng as their only NBA player and should get pumped by the other 3 teams.

This is basically a group of death (though Canada is 23rd in FIBA rankings, we're pretty clearly top 5 in talent) so the games should be competitive as hell. It will at least give us a really good idea of where this group (which is ridiculously young) is right now. There's enough talent, length, and athleticism to beat anyone in the world who isn't the US, so a medal is a legitimate expectation. Nick Nurse is also probably the best coach in the tournament, so it's not like we're draggin Jay Triano or Leo Rautins around anymore expecting to get a result. As we just saw in the playoffs, Nurse is about as good as anyone in the league at making adjustments on the fly, being creative with the personnel he has.
 
we qualified DeColo (and McCaw). love it. Nando was like the original Delon, and might be the perfect replacement for him.
 
I wonder what his defense is like. He's an elite 3pt guy and from what i remember had significantly better handles than Danny.
 
So those billboards went up in Downey.

For those following at home, it’s a dump of a city probably 30 minutes away.

Those didn’t go up anywhere near LA proper.
 
I wonder what his defense is like. He's an elite 3pt guy and from what i remember had significantly better handles than Danny.

Was average to slightly above in his previous cup of coffee, but he's 32 now so who knows. Interesting bench body and who the **** knew that we still had his rights? He and McCaw are now restricted FA's but we have the ability to match.
 
Here's your quick F5 season update:

- It's Rick Bucher, so grain of salt time, but apparently Kyrie and KD have spoken "a few times" about teaming up together "somewhere" (Aka, Brooklyn) and further, that KD is extremely upset with the Warriors over his achilles injury. Jay Williams (who is very close with KD) and Perk (who is just a ****ing stud all around) have been saying similar.

- Kyrie is apparently also trying to get De'Andre to sign as a recruiting tool for getting KD. De'Andre is one of KD's best friends.

- Because the real estate portfolios of these guys becomes a news item at this time of the year, Kyrie bought a house in South Orange, Jersey. About an hour for Barclay Centre (but 40 minutes from MSG....)

- The Knicks have asked the league to fine Andre Iguodala for comments made on a NYC morning show. "Nobody is going to the Knicks, sorry" is the offending quote apparently. Barrett is going to love NYC but had the NYK organization, book it. Biggest gong show of any organization in the league and until Dolan sells, it will remain that way.

- Completely coincidentally, a report has come out of NYK that if they fail to sign Kyrie, KD, or Kawhi, they will just roll over until next season and not spend the money. This is at least an improvement over how the Knicks previously did business. I'm half surprised they didn't decide to blow their brains out on Middleton or Tobias Harris as a plan B.

- Drake apparently put money on the Raptors to beat the Warriors and won 300K

- Portland has traded Evan Turner to Atlanta for Bazemore

- Jimmer Fredette has left the Suns and will join the Warriors summer league team. They apparently only want shooting, everywhere on their roster.

- A story has come out from the Suns org during the Kawhi draft when they passed on Kawhi (and took a Morris...I don't know which, just one of them. The one that was supposed to be good and wasn't, isn't of the one that wasn't supposed to be good and ended up good I think) because they found him to be awkward in interviews and that he was sweating way too much. He apparently sweat right through the suit he was wearing. But this up there with the Colangelo era "confidence testing".

- Speaking of our lord and saviour, here's his interview from his draft workout with the Raptors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkZxfrYMhuE&t=48s

and finally...Japan is ****ing weird. Kemba Walker on some Japanese TV show
https://streamable.com/2mcci
 
No details, that's just the rumour bouncing around the basketball universe, and it's coming out of the mouth of one guy who absolutely has access to KD (Jay Williams) and another guy who doesn't give a shit about bullshitting for clicks (Kendrick Perkins).

I think we'll see if it has legs shortly (no pun intended KD...) when KD either signs the 5 yr deal with the Warriors, and it's announced that they'll be trading him 6 months later to the Nets) or if he just bypasses that entirely and signs with the Nets for 4 yrs at the Max.
 
I think some of these mid tier guys like Deandre are goung to be in for a rude awakening and have to choose dollars with junk teams or less as a tjird wheel with nets\lakers. Seems like teams like Knicks arent gonna bedumb either
 
Don t think they can sign all of deandre Kyrie and KD.

There's a few avenues. Do the Super Max through the Warriors route to KD, which is easy enough to manage behind the scenes (Overpay on a 1 yr to keep a couple of bodies to match salaries with the Warriors in January). Or MLE Jordan for the year, with the side agreement that when they have his bird rights next summer they multi year him at a real number.
 
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