An NBA player celebrating a birthday isn’t exactly a story, but if there’s one Raptor whose birthday is worth writing about, it’s probably Amir Johnson, who turned 26 years young last week. Amir has been heralded as a “young veteran” given the fact that as the last high schooler drafted into the NBA, he’s already played eight seasons at that tender age of just 26.
To put that in perspective, he’s only 10 months older than Stephen Curry.
Image creation courtesy of theScore’s Sean Keay
I don’t how many people envisioned the first two weeks of the Raptors’ off-season being dominated by Phil Jackson to Toronto rumours, but nevertheless, here we are.
If you remember from when the Jackson/Raptors rumours began to heat up on Friday after the Tim Leiweke hire, Toronto’s biggest potential competitor in the chase for The Zen Master was thought to be Seattle if Chris Hansen could successfully move the Kings there. However, with the committee of NBA owners recommending on Monday that the relocation of the Kings be blocked, and therefore recommending that Seattle stays without an NBA team for now, Toronto’s biggest challenger appears to have taken a pretty crushing early blow, and I wasn’t the only one thinking that way…
I was going to write a quick collection of thoughts on how the appointment of Tim Leiweke to President and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment is good news for the Raptors going forward because of his breadth of NBA experience.
And then this happened…
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…
