With Oliver and I providing our arguments for and against keeping Bryan Colangelo around last week, the Colangelo debate dominates this week’s edition of RaptorBlog Radio.
Of course, Drew, Oliver and I also touched on the Friday night collapse in L.A., Dwane Casey’s lack of late game faith in Jonas Valanciunas and the comeback win over the Cavs on Sunday.
With Oliver posting his case for keeping Bryan Colangelo yesterday, it’s time that I dig into the case against extending Colangelo.
I probably maintained faith in the man they call B.C. longer than most, and in truth, am always one shrewd Colangelo move away from being back on the B.C. bandwagon, as it seems most others are as well. There’s something about him that makes you at least want to believe. As a teenager myself when Colangelo arrived in Toronto, he restored respectability and relevance to my beloved Raptors. When the team won 47 games and its first division title in his first full season at the helm, it seemed the heights of our future successes were as tall as his trademark collars.
But alas, while Colangelo seemed to have a Midas touch for that first year on the job, nearly every major transaction Bryan has signed off on since then has backfired, and while deep down there is probably a Colangelo fan waiting to reemerge in many of us, the decision of whether or not to extend or fire a sports executive comes down to business. And from a business perspective, we’re talking about a team that looks destined to miss the playoffs for a fifth straight season for the first time in franchise history. And that’s really saying something considering how futile this franchise’s history has been.
Of course, losing faith in Colangelo runs much deeper than simply missing the playoffs again…
When assessing the performance of an athlete, coach or GM/executive, there are two qualifiers that you must abide by – large sample sizes and recent sample sizes. Large sample sizes are necessary to eliminate the effect of outliers. A recent sample size is necessary because you have to give someone an opportunity for personal improvement on the job. If a player or executive shows a large new sample of work, why do we care about what he did in the past?
With that in mind, let’s take a look back at Bryan Colangelo’s tenure in Toronto, with a quick comment on each major trade, free agent signing and draft pick BC has made during his seven years as President and General Manager of the Raptors…
The first game of a new era in Raptors basketball ended like so many before – with Toronto losing a heartbreaking game in the final seconds and the officials playing a big part in the finish.
Now here are some thoughts on the game…
With the Raptors mired in another losing streak and sitting 11 games under .500, now a nearly insurmountable 6.5 games out a playoff spot, much of the talk among fans and observers is about what the Raptors have to do to improve, specifically in the short term.
Much of the talk is about what moves have to be made. But if you ask me, the real concern for a team at a delicate stage of a rebuilding process should be more about what moves have to be avoided.
