Ah the good old days

Bryan Colangelo is my man. I was more excited about him coming to the Raptors then any player, whether they were acquired via trade, draft or free agency. I like his logic, his way of looking at the game of basketball. I enjoy his focus on offense, on winning while being entertaining. I respect his personal style, his business like attitude and his professionalism (not always the same thing). His innate ability to create fluid teams seemingly at will is impressive, as are the 2 Executive of the Years on his resume. And yet, his teams win loss ratio hasn’t been great since… well a while. Yes, BC ran into a run of bad luck. Being a GM is ultimately a high stakes poker game. You have your cards, you have your stack of chips and you make the best hand you can using a combination of the two. Sometimes you get on a roll and win every hand, whether you have good cards or not, whether you played the hand well or not. Sometimes you land in a rut, and take some bad beats. Sometimes you run into someone with a hot hand and are just outplayed, and sometimes you get yourself in trouble by making bad decisions. Bryan hasn’t gotten outplayed or made too many bad decisions in my books, which is why I’ve stuck by him. My reasoning is fairly simple. Clearly he’s in a rut, but sooner or later his luck is bound to change. Luck has a way of evening out over time, since at the end of the day it’s just probabilities.

That may be true for mere mortals, but as all NBA fans know, Colangelo is no mortal. Bryan entered his rut around 2008 and we are now in 2010. The rut’s only gotten deeper than it was at the start. His moves, all made with the best of intentions using sound logic and good common sense just haven’t worked. Injuries, chemistry trouble, and poor locker room leadership have over the years conspired to leave almost all Raptors moves in shambles. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, today the Raptors franchise stands at the gates trying to evade the Cerberus.

That franchise is lead by Colangelo. Whether he meant to direct the franchise to where we stand now, whether it was just a series of unfortunate events that ended us up here, whether a trap door opened and the entire franchise fell through it, the fact of the matter is today as I write this, at around 3pm on July 7^th, this Raptors franchise is staring at Armageddon. Chris Bosh leaving while taking less money, as a free agent. Despite two years of both Bosh and BC explaining every possible reason why this wouldn’t happen, here we are.

That’s despite Bryans efforts to appease Chris that saw him go so far as to hire Bosh’s old college point guard to hang with. Despite all the make-overs, despite all the pleas, CB4 at the last second appears to have turned from baby-face to heel on the entire city of Toronto. Instead of the help me; help you scenario that had been much ballyhooed for the past few years, what Chris instead said to this city and its basketball fans was closer to Amar’e Staudemires goodbye tweet: GONE! And we’re left with nothing. Nothing but the memories of crapping the bed in the playoffs. In the years we made it that is. Bosh is leaving the Raptors for no players, and no picks. Not even a freaking trade exception.

After the better part of a decade supporting him, for Bosh to turn around and give a slap to the face of the only city and franchise that he has ever known absolutely floors me. I’m still stunned by the turn of events. To put on my Stephen A hat: this is a slap that may end up wounding fans of the Raps more deeply than even the wounds left by Vince Carter. This would guarantee Bosh years of passionate anger and vitrol Bosh’s way from up North. Much will be written of that in the weeks and months to come, of course depending on how the next 48 hours shake out. I’m sure that the stories will be written right up to Chris’s first game back at the Hanger, when the stories will inevitably turn to “What will Bosh’s reception be? Will the fans boo for how he left, or cheer for his legacy?”

The problem though is who knows what Bosh’s legacy is in this city any more. It seems to get worse and more tarnished every hour. Two weeks ago he would have returned next season to a guaranteed standing ovation, a mixture of gratitude for the past and best wishes for his future from Raps fans. Now the only debate is whether the crowd will be yelling “Booooo!” or “Ruuuuuuuuuu!” as he runs onto the court. After the tweets, the teases, the flirting comments and eyes with other teams, after reneging on promise after promise, statement after statement.

First he would only go somewhere to be the alpha dog, he didn’t want to ride anyones coat tails. When I attempted to contact Chris to ask about this statement, his assistant told me Bosh was unable to come to the phone at the moment, he was too busy folding Wades laundry.

Then he would ensure that he would work with Bryan, as a thank you to the franchise that had taken such care of him. 2 hours before the official announcement that Chris chose Miami, ESPN was reporting Colangelo was sitting by the phone, waiting for a call.

He certainly wouldn’t leave almost $30 million on the table, nor an extra year. I’m a business man, he said. And like every good business man, upon leaving his previous business venture he took care to ensure he napalmed every bridge he could find. Just in case you know…

This whole thing really saddens me, I’m not going to lie. I may not have thought Bosh was a top 5 player in the NBA, but I thought he was a top 5 person. Maybe I was naive but I really believed he was the rare pro athlete with some self awareness and a solid character.

However ugly it is that we now get to see Bosh driving the metaphorical Bronco down the 401 after leaving the ACC, the fact of the matter is Bryan Colangelo is no Nicole Brown in this whole scenario. Colangelo put himself in a position where he trusted Chris to hold his word. Sadly, that decision appears to have proved misguided. If Bosh walks away from the Raptors for nothing, suddenly BC’s record isn’t so stellar. He took a team outside the playoffs with some cap room and a borderline super star in 2006 to a team in 2010 that’s outside the playoffs with no cap room and no borderline super star. Or all star. Or even top 40 or 50 players in the league.

I stood by Bryan when the Turk trade fell apart (and god knows how I feel about Hedo), but at this point given the GM talent currently available (I’m looking at you Kevin Pritchard) it’s time for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to make a change. The possibility that Miami would use the cap space they were able to clear in the Jermaine O’Neal/Marion swap on Bosh himself was bandied about at the time that the Raps acquired The Matrix, and was quickly dismissed as too improbable. Well, it happened, and it will be a long long time before Colangelo will be able to get the egg off his face from that kind of embarrassment. Who knows if he ever will. His confidence at this point has to be wavering, after 3 years of ‘meh’ results. Now to get publicly humiliated by his former franchise player, and supposed business partner?

More importantly to me than either the futures of Colangelo or Bosh is the future of the Raptors as a franchise. All the team and fans can do is attempt to move on as quick as possible from what can only be described as an unmitigated disaster. Even if that means holding a CB4 picture to your chest while listening to “All out of love” in the dark while rocking back and forth. Whatever you have to do to get over this whole fiasco, and by whole fiasco I mean essentially the last 6 years of being a Raptors fan, whatever you have to do to recover you have to do. We don’t have another one waiting in the wings like when Vince left. This time, the Raps as a franchise are ‘single’, for the first time since, well ever. First we had Mighty Mouse, then T-Mac, Vince, and finally Bosh. Our stars have always overlapped.

Yes, it is possible one of the current crop of Raptors is that next star but right now clearly none are there or even that close to stardom. The Raps as a franchise are in total flux, which means that the only way to truly move on is to start over. The Raps have some good young talent, a glut of good athletic big men, a solid point guard combination, a decent market and nowhere to go but up. The Raptors job isn’t the black sheep job it used to be. Maybe it’s time to start looking at giving the keys to the franchise to someone else and see what they can make of it. It seems like we all just need a clean break