Times have changed…
In what is surely going to be one of the more impactful days in recent Raptors’ history, Bryan Colangelo is expected to meet with the MLSE board some time today to both review his recent performance and to pitch his plan for the future.
In a special edition of RaptorBlog Radio, Drew and I are joined by Dwane Casey as we reflect back on the season that was.
In his second appearance on the show, coach Casey talks about the defensive ceiling of the Raptors’ athletic core, how the offence might change heading into next season, how Rudy Gay and DeMar DeRozan can become more efficient offensive players, the value of Amir Johnson, the ongoing Andrea Bargnani situation and what’s changed since the last time he joined us on the eve of the season.
On Monday I attended the season ending media conferences for Dwane Casey and Bryan Colangelo, which you may have watched yourself live and can still watch for yourself in its entirety at raptors.com. While we can go through every little thing that the Raptors’ coach and General Manager said, I chose instead to highlight the parts of the pressers that stuck out to me.
You can find my thoughts on Casey’s media availability here.
Below, you’ll find some talking points from Colangelo’s presser and my thoughts on some of those points…
On Monday I attended the season ending media conferences for Dwane Casey and Bryan Colangelo, which you may have watched yourself live and can still watch for yourself in its entirety at raptors.com. While we can go through every little thing that the Raptors’ coach and General Manager said, I chose instead to highlight the parts of the pressers that stuck out to me. Below, you’ll find those talking points and my thoughts on some of those points.
First up was Dwane Casey…
Most basketball fans knows about the statistical/analytical revolution happening in the NBA right now, similar to what baseball went through years earlier that inspired “Moneyball” – both the term and the film. The advanced metrics unearthed during this revolution have helped us break down and understand both games better than ever, regardless of the traditionalist criticisms, and the NBA recently added all of the advanced stats you can ask for to its own website.
The NBA may actually be surpassing Major League Baseball in terms of how far this revolution will be taken thanks to “SportVU,” a program currently used by half of the Association’s teams which records every single second of action on the floor “and spits it back at its front-office keepers as a byzantine series of geometric coordinates,” writes Zach Lowe of Grantland.
Lowe’s fascinating feature on SportVU should be read by all, especially basketball savvy Raptors fans who want the organization to immerse itself in stats and analytics, as one of the main points the in-depth feature makes is that “The NBA is undergoing an analytical transformation, and the Raptors are one of the teams at the forefront.”
Sandwiched in the intriguing Grantland post which focuses on the Raptors are a few talking points for Raptors fans…
