Raptors Worst Mistake/s

[TheGloveinRapsUniform]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1...yer-comparison

Ouch. Two Raptors players in the Top Ten.

What do you think is/are the worst mistake/s the Raptors ever made, from management down to the players?

My top would be hiring Colangelo.
Next would probably be drafting Araujo
and third is not trading Bosh a season earlier.

[mcHAPPY]

1) Not drafting AI over Araujo.

2) I don't regret hiring Colangelo. I don't regret drafting Bargnani. Colangelo's refusal to trade him when he still had value is the issue.

3) The Jermaine O'Neal trade which led to Marion trade which led to Turk sign and trade.

[Axel]

Araujo is definitely #1. Needs based reach for a bad player instead of taking one of the better options out there.

Worst thing was, at no point did that pick seem like a good choice.

The Raptors biggest mistake was the VC trade. Nothing else had the impact to set the franchise back so far as that deal did. Bosh leaving wasn't as painful as giving VC away for nothing.

[planetmars]

1) Not keeping Vince happy (too much front office movement leading to Vince becoming Wince and getting peanuts on the dollar for his inevitable trade)

2) Keeping Bargnani for too long

3) Drafting Bosh over Wade.. Looking at this in pure hindsight. Wade won a championship and then lured Lebron to play with him to create a dynasty. Would that happen in Toronto? Unlikely, but I would like to see that played out.

Hoffa is ranked up there but lots of teams miss out on draft picks.. those other teams seem to rebound pretty quickly though.

[Rapstor4Life]

1. Letting Vince Go

2.Hoffa

3.Holding Bargs for too long....

*Bonus: Letting Bosh walk for nothing......

[Craiger]

1) Firing Glen Grunwald

everything since is just an extension of that one action.

[slaw]

This is hard. In no particular order:

- Sam Mitchell getting into fights with Alston and Carter
- Paying Mourning $9 million to win with another team
- Vince Carter on stage with Nelly while he was injured and the Raps were getting blown out in Orlando(?)
- The idiot who fell asleep with ice on his foot, damaged his nerves and had to retire (Taylor? Tyler?)
- Chris Childs forgetting the score in the playoffs against Detroit
- Kobe's 81
- The VC Deal
- Drafting Araujo
- Signing Turkoglu
- Drafting Bargnani
- The Triano Era

[JStockton]

All moves (aside frm signing Calderon) by Babcock.

[Mediumcore]

Not finding enough playing time to keep T-Mac happy. If we were able to sign T-Mac to an extension where would this franchise be now? VC would have been happy and stayed and by the time T-Mac blew up we would have had two exceptional wings we could have traded for any number of assets.

Bargnani over Aldridge and then holding onto AB for as long as we have.

Not trading Bosh before he walked.

[white men can't jump]

Not finding enough playing time to keep T-Mac happy. If we were able to sign T-Mac to an extension where would this franchise be now? VC would have been happy and stayed and by the time T-Mac blew up we would have had two exceptional wings we could have traded for any number of assets.

Bargnani over Aldridge and then holding onto AB for as long as we have.

Not trading Bosh before he walked.

This is total BS. The franchise invested TONS of time into T-Mac, a totally raw rookie out of high school who by his 3rd season was playing 30+ mpg, and the consensus second best player on the team only because Vince was older and further ahead in his development.

McGrady leaving had nothing to do with how the franchise treated him, and everything to do with McGrady's immaturity and ego. They could've, and actually would've, bent over backwards to keep him. HE wanted to leave. For what? To be the man? Well he was joining an Orlando team with Grant Hill, who was an even more established (temporally) star in the league than Carter. He's just a little sissy bitch who was scared of winter and being away from his mommy or something.

*And I think his career speaks for itself. Low character guy. Only cared about numbers and glory, and didn't know how to play winning basketball.

[Papa Burgundy]

1.) Trading Vince - the package was a disgrace, and time has told that things could have been fixed ... major setback.

2.) Signing Turk - the last ditch effort to keep Bosh ... lost CB4, and were left trying to ditch Turk - setback.

3.) Firing Grunwald - He built a great thing, was let go ... leading to the drafting of Hoffa, and trade of Vince ... setbacks.

[white men can't jump]

1) Not keeping Vince happy (too much front office movement leading to Vince becoming Wince and getting peanuts on the dollar for his inevitable trade)

2) Keeping Bargnani for too long

3) Drafting Bosh over Wade.. Looking at this in pure hindsight. Wade won a championship and then lured Lebron to play with him to create a dynasty. Would that happen in Toronto? Unlikely, but I would like to see that played out.

Hoffa is ranked up there but lots of teams miss out on draft picks.. those other teams seem to rebound pretty quickly though.

Yeah, I've often wondered about the bold.

On Hoffa, I agree, but also think it is just classic bad management regardless of the fact that it was Toronto who committed the error. It showed a total lack of foresight. I'll break it down how I see it.

Even at that time, the amount of true Cs who can play in the post was diminishing. Howard and Okafor got drafted, and they were both expected to become great big men. But really only Shaq and Yao were significant threats. Then some lesser ones like Ilgauskas, and hybrid guys like Gasol, Duncan, JO, who had good size but didn't really impose themselvs on the game in a physical manner. There are lots of poor picks in that 2004 draft by other teams doing similar things....Just consider that Josh and JR Smith, who were both well known and highly touted HS prospects in that draft, went later than Hoffa, Robert Swift, Kris Humphries, Andris Biedrins, and Al Jefferson. All those guys were drafted in teh 8-15 range. The Smiths went 17 and 18.

While it was certainly a need for the team, the team had lots of holes. They already had Bosh and Carter was still there too. This was a make or break summer with Carter. Getting back to foresight...You have the most athletic wing in the game, arguably ever, and rivalled only by the greats like MJ and Dr. J. You also have a young PF who is arguably the most athletic young big in the game. Your first move as GM is to draft a slow-footed C who can't get up and down the floor fast, and who was only successful in college because of his size/maturity, which became very ordinary in the NBA. The RIGHT guys to target in that draft should have fit the possible athletic combination of VC and Bosh. Carter wanted the team to pursue Steve Nash as well, to get an established PG and hopefully C as well (like Magloire), to keep making playoff pushes.

The Raptors draft board should've looked something like this:

Deng (who went 7 right before them)
Iggy
Josh Smith
JR Smith
Sebastian Telfair....he was highly touted probably would be as high on 3rd on this list, but I assume they would have still gone after a PG in free agency, since they did end up signing Alston that summer.
Humphries and Biedrins should've maybe been the only bigs on their board, and probably if they were going to trade down.

If they had drafted an athletic wing, and then tried to make the changes Vince wanted, that could've become a great team for another 5-6 years, despite the loss of McGrady and the patch job done by Grunwald to make the team competitive for a few years.

I just always picture a lineup something along the lines of this, going with guys rumored that Vince may have wanted them to go after, and if they managed to keep the pick and draft Iggy.

PG: Nash
SG: Carter
SF: Iguodala
PF: BOsh
C: Magloire (who had a couple of solid years left and still would've been good to have for matching up against brutes)

If they manage to keep Peterson and can fill the bench adequately, that's a very good team in what was a weak East for those years. Even if they only add Nash and the draft pick, and make about any other trade with Davis to get a big back or to fill the bench. Now, this last part is total speculation in hindsight, but I firmly believe it starts and stops with the draft plans. It's all tied together. You draft a guy like Iggy or one of the Smiths, and you have to go after Nash because it just makes too much sense with that athletic lineup.

[ceez]

three that immediately come to mind:

1. Trading vince carter for next to nothing. Awful. Amazingly awful. It was around this time i stopped being a casual basketball fan and starting to understand all the other stuff and couldn't believe it. Babcock was a such a dunce. Thinking about it now and i'm getting angry. Moving on...

2. Hoffa. We all knew this was stupid. Babcock should have been fired after this but noooooo.

3. Trading for Jermaine O'Neal. Ugghhhhhhhh. I'm a big "don't trade first round draft picks" guy but I get why they wanted immediate help (somewhat) and didn't really fault BC for making this kind of move just not Jermaine O'Neal. Yes let's trade a first round pick for a guy who hadn't been healthy for a couple seasons beforehand and coming off a major knee injury. That'll turn this team into a contender. I think this was the exact moment i started doubting in BC.

[phez]

I'm pretty sure we got nothing in return for Bosh too.

[Mediumcore]

This is total BS. The franchise invested TONS of time into T-Mac, a totally raw rookie out of high school who by his 3rd season was playing 30+ mpg, and the consensus second best player on the team only because Vince was older and further ahead in his development.

McGrady leaving had nothing to do with how the franchise treated him, and everything to do with McGrady's immaturity and ego. They could've, and actually would've, bent over backwards to keep him. HE wanted to leave. For what? To be the man? Well he was joining an Orlando team with Grant Hill, who was an even more established (temporally) star in the league than Carter. He's just a little sissy bitch who was scared of winter and being away from his mommy or something.

*And I think his career speaks for itself. Low character guy. Only cared about numbers and glory, and didn't know how to play winning basketball.

Some pent up emotions about T-Mac? I always thought he was a low character guy too, but none the less if we could have done what it took to keep him it could have changed the fortunes of this franchise to this day.