The Bryan Colangelo to Masai Ujiri transition.

[BallaBalla]

Tim Leiwike admitted he was unfair in the way he handled Colangelo's departure and he regretted it. He stated that Colangelo had the best of intentions for this team along with an incredible basketball acumen that deserved more credit & respect on the way out. I feel the exact same way, I feel like a lot of Raptor fans peg him as a lame duck GM who made a ton of bad decisions (which of course he did have a fair share of). And while I agree Colangelo did a lot of directional flip flopping during his tenure along with making some questionable trades/draft picks that warrants a little wrath he ultimately made some good moves towards the end that paved the way and put Masai in this great position today. I think he deserves credit for that, after building that multi year contender in Phoenix we all had massive expectations that didn't work out here but because of his final moves I hold no ill will towards him. It actually ended up being a perfect transition between two great friends in Bryan and Masai and one that could build a winner for us.

As good as Masai's moves have been (and they definitely are top notch) a lot of what's working so well right now has Colangelo's fingerprints all over them. Drafting DeRozan, Valencunias, Ross. Bringing in Lowry and Dwayne Casey with his defensive minded approach. Re-signing DeRozan to a great deal that allows us future flexibility. Masai has now made the perfect financial moves in dumping Gay & Bargniani plus bringing in & trading for the right role players to fill out the roster (Vasquez, Patterson, Hansborough, Salmons) which has perfectly complimented the team. Don't get me wrong I'm not comparing these two at all because Masai has been the man so far but like I said I feel people only dwell on the bad Colangelo did here while overlooking the good. He's responsible for all 5 current starters and the coach right now and the truth of the matter is if we do end up contending over the next few years with Lowry, DeRozan, Valencunias, and Ross while having Casey at the helm people will have to give a lot of credit to Colangelo's final drafts and moves he made before departing..

I am not sure how many more times we're going to talk about this....BC made some good decisions and some bad ones.

The bad ones (Hedo, Bargs, Gay, Jermain O'neal, Jay Triano), were FFAARRR worse than his good ones. This is why his bad moves define him. We had losing records because of these decisions.

[BallaBalla]

No GM is perfect.

They all make mistakes.

The key is to make your mistakes smaller than the times you get it right.

I was a big fan of Colangelo for a long time but still gave him the benefit of the doubt until the Clippers game last season when he basically through the team and Casey under the bus during an in game interview.

With that said, Colangelo certainly got some things right but his mistakes ended up being larger than those things.

Considering how things worked out this season in the first 18 games - even without Bargnani! - it was clearly the right decision to let Colangelo go.

This would have been a luxury tax team LOTTERY team on par with the current Knicks team.

Bingo

[Hassan]

BC was for the most part great at drafting

[white men can't jump]

BC was for the most part great at drafting

Or at least good. His issues were always more about unwise trading and mismanagement of capspace (or cap exceptions).

[Fully]

Colangelo did not do Ujiri ANY type of service by handing off this team to him last summer. Masai inherited a capped out team that had about $30 million tied up in Bargnani and Gay until the summer of 2015, a lame duck coach, a 'neutered' Lowry, no first round pick, etc.

Someone mentioned it above but there's more to being a good GM than just collecting a decent grocery list of players. Of course there's a few key holdovers from the past few seasons but that doesn't mean that BC's genius was misunderstood or something. He had close to a decade in Toronto and the Raps were a complete non factor for all but one of them, and even then they were knocked out of the playoffs in 6 games.We're trying too hard to find a scale to measure BC's performance on when the results are really all we need.

BC should be the one thanking Masai as it's the Raptors success this season that has allowed Colangelo to save a little bit of credibility from his time in Toronto.

[stretch]

BC had a decent batting average drafting. DeRozan (allstar), Ross, JV, Ed Davis, and Bargnani all proved to be NBA rotation players at the least. The closest thing to a whiff was drafting Bargnani number one overall over Aldridge. In hindsight, I wish BC had drafted Hibbert in 2008 and Bledsoe instead of Davis in 2010. I like Ross' development but Drummond would have been special in 2012.

[stooley]

BC had a decent batting average drafting. DeRozan (allstar), Ross, JV, Ed Davis, and Bargnani all proved to be NBA rotation players at the least. The closest thing to a whiff was drafting Bargnani number one overall over Aldridge. In hindsight, I wish BC had drafted Hibbert in 2008 and Bledsoe instead of Davis in 2010. I like Ross' development but Drummond would have been special in 2012.

I completely understand passing on Drummond though, I don't fault him at all for that.

We had who many believed to be a franchise center arriving from overseas. And Drummond had multiple question marks that made 6-7 other teams pass on him.

[stretch]

I did say in hindsight, which is infallible.

[ezz_bee]

I'm also in the camp that BC did a passable to great when it came to drafting. Unfortunately, HE LOVED TRADING PICKS AWAY!!! He didn't do himself any favours by trading away picks.

[Nilanka]

If Colangelo were still here, Bargnani and Gay would be eating 30+ minutes per night.

That is all.

[Jamshid]

If Colangelo were still here, Bargnani and Gay would be eating 30+ minutes per night.

That is all.

Nicely SAID. BC has too many failed trades to be considered a good GM. There is a reason he is out of job and no one is asking for him. He had 7 years of total control and he accomplished ZERO.

[stooley]

Nicely SAID. BC has too many failed trades to be considered a good GM. There is a reason he is out of job and no one is asking for him. He had 7 years of total control and he accomplished ZERO.

Full disclosure: I think BC did a bad job.

But to be completely fair, it's more like he had 2 separate stints: he had 3 or 4 years to build a contender around Bosh, at which he failed miserably, and he had 3 years to rebuild. Luckily in that second stint, we removed him before he completely blew it.

[Nilanka]

Full disclosure: I think BC did a bad job.

But to be completely fair, it's more like he had 2 separate stints: he had 3 or 4 years to build a contender around Bosh, at which he failed miserably, and he had 3 years to rebuild. Luckily in that second stint, we removed him before he completely blew it.

To paraphrase:

"Stint 1 = crap

Stint 2 = somewhat less crap"

[Bendit]

For all those singing the BC praise song re his good/great drafting...can we check his draft record for the gems beyond the 10th pick and more importantly the second round? Most GMs (unless brain dead or not carrying a horseshoe) do reasonably well picking in the top ten of any draft.

And then we have his f/a signings or trades which is also a manifestation of skills-recognition and how they would compliment those of the current team members.

[OldSkoolCool]

For all those singing the BC praise song re his good/great drafting...can we check his draft record for the gems beyond the 10th pick and more importantly the second round? Most GMs (unless brain dead or not carrying a horseshoe) do reasonably well picking in the top ten of any draft.

And then we have his f/a signings or trades which is also a manifestation of skills-recognition and how they would compliment those of the current team members.

TY!

BC was awful in the second round. This speaks to lack of homework. MU on the other hand has done quite well in the second round, which means he puts in the time and works hard...when your boss works hard at his craft, it is likely that the employees do as well