Raptors have security blanket in Calderon
Friday, December 14, 2007 | 06:46 PM ET
Starting on Saturday, National Basketball Association teams can now take a long hard look at their summer spending and decide whether it was all worth it. December 15th marks the official point when teams can trade draft picks or free agents they signed over the summer, provided they signed them at least three months ago.
It's an occasion that usually kicks off the silly season within the real season in the league; when trade talk becomes the daily grist of the rumour-mill websites like Hoopshype and RealGM. It's not that teams couldn't have traded players before the 15th - Orlando shipped forward Trevor Ariza to the LA Lakers earlier this year, for example - but now, with this extra pool of players to add to convoluted four-team deals, trades become much simpler.
Which means, if the rumours are to be believed, that a whole bunch of point guards are going to be changing jerseys.
Among the players most often cited in trade rumours are New Jersey's Jason Kidd, Philadelphia's Andre Miller, Sacramento's Mike Bibby, Memphis's Damon Stoudamire, Miami's Jason Williams and Smush Parker and Seattle's pair of Earl Watson and Luke Ridnour. I haven't even mentioned Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks or Cleveland's Eric Snow, players whose contracts are so bad relative to the player's value that it's hard to imagine anyone biting on a deal for either of them.
Evidently half the teams in the league are unhappy with their point guards.
A week ago you might have considered the Toronto Raptors potential players in such a market, dangling, as they could, one of two very good point guards in Jose Calderon and TJ Ford. Surely a team willing to make a play for Kidd or Bibby would be willing to offer Toronto something enticing for one of the pair.
But if Toronto general manager Bryan Colangelo was ever, in his darkest moments, entertaining such a deal, TJ Ford's horrific-looking injury in Tuesday's game with the Atlanta Hawks has surely changed that.
Ford was taken off the court in Atlanta in a stretcher after Hawks rookie Al Horford hit him in the forehead and snapped his neck back in the closing minutes of a 100-88 victory over the Hawks. He was taken to a hospital and was able to move normally afterward, though he said upon returning to Toronto on Wednesday that he needed about a week to rest before he could resume exercise.
"I am definitely feeling a lot better compared to last night," he said. "I'm still sore and still in pain, but not as much as I was as soon as the accident happened."
The injury is a major blow to the Raptors and to Ford, who was sidelined the entire 2004-05 NBA season following neck surgery and has a spinal condition which makes him more prone to such injuries.
But it also highlights why the team's braintrust was right to keep Calderon during a summer when fan message boards were hollering for the team to swap the Spanish point guard in return for a small forward.
At a time when former playoff teams like the Miami Heat are begging for anybody who can play the position and quality teams like the Phoenix Suns or San Antonio Spurs are an injury away from giving the keys to their offence to players like Marcus Banks and Jacque Vaughan, the Raptors didn't lose a beat when Ford went down.
On Wednesday they pounded the Dallas Mavericks, with Calderon scoring 12 points and handing out seven assists in an efficient, if unspectacular, game.
You can't buy that kind of security. Or, at the very least, the price for such a luxury just went way, way up.
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About the Author
Paul Jay has been writing about basketball for seven years, working as a basketball columnist for Rogers Sportsnet and writing for CBC Sports, Raptors Insider, Dose and appearing on air with Sportsnet and Raptors TV. In his 12 years in journalism, Paul has written features for some of the best publications in the country, including the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, Saturday Night, Canadian Lawyer and This magazine. He first joined CBC.ca during the 2004 Athens Olympics and currently writes online for CBCNews.ca as a technology and science writer.
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Comments
Richard Chang
Toronto
This topic is very interesting I was just talking abuot this with few of my colleagues. Jose Calderon is a very good point guard and so is TJ ford. One can score points easily and dish out some asissts. The other shoots very well, takes good shots and can dish out 10-15 assist per game. That is what every team in the NBA is looking for a good starting point guard that can get the job done (TJ ford) and a backup point guard who is equally as good if not better (Jose Calderon) There is no doubt that if we re-sign Jose, he is going to ask for way more money because he knows how valuble he is now to the Raptors and as a point guard. I feel that Jose is comfortable being with the raptors and doesnt want to leave, but if he ends up leaving. We better get an allstar guard.
Posted December 17, 2007 02:22 PM