Hey there, it's B-Huge while I welcome Mr.Nesterovic to Toronto and hope he does well I'm not going to openly gush about this trade just yet. I'm not about to issue any preposterous statements such as this from Robert MacLeod of The Globe & Mail:
"And now the trade for Nesterovic provides the Raptors with their first legitimate centre since Eric Montross played for Toronto in 2001-02."
How wrong is this statement? Let me count the ways...
1. MacLeod is assuming that Nesterovic is a legitimate centre. Now, he is 7 feet tall and plays centre. I cannot deny those facts but the Raptors have had plenty of guys that tall who have played centre in the past 5 years. Nesterovic averaged 4.5 points and 3.9 rebounds in 18.9 minutes last season. The much-maligned Rafael Araujo averaged 2.3 points and 2.8 rebounds in 11.6 minutes last season. I don't see too much of a difference besides the sheer amount of booing Araujo received from the crowd.
2. MacLeod is assuming that Eric Montross was a legitimate centre. In 2001-02 Eric Montross averaged 2.4 points and 2.9 rebounds in 13.4 minutes per game. Apparently Raptor fans should have been jumping for joy because Araujo was giving us Montross-like numbers. If Montross was a legitimate centre then Araujo certainly is too.
3. The Raptors had no one playing centre from 2001-02 until yesterday's trade. Hello! Antonio Davis seemed to fill the role quite well. I'm not sure what definition of "legitimate centre" MacLeod is using. No matter how often Davis cried about not being a centre, he was the Raptors' centre while he was here and he did a pretty good job. Actually, Davis remains the best centre to ever play for the Raptors. Sure Davis wasn't 7 feet tall but neither is Ben Wallace and nobody thinks that he isn't a legitimate centre.
4. Hakeem Olajuwon played centre for the Raptors in 2001-02. He averaged 7.1 points and 6.0 rebounds that year in just 22.6 minutes per game. But the memory of Eric Montross's awesome season is what stood out in 2001-02 for MacLeod.
5. Loren Woods averaged 2.3 points and 4.1 rebounds in 12 minutes last season. He was giving us Montross-like numbers too! Had the Raptor fans known we had two Montross-like legitimate centres on our team last year we might have been quite a bit more disappointed with our win total. How come Coach Mitchell wasn't fired? How can a team with TWO Eric Montross-like players not make the playoffs?
Besides, we all know the Raptors last legitimate centre was Nate Huffman.
Yes, it's off-topic, but I believe we have a new entry for the next Tournament of Assholes:
On March 30, Minnesota Timberwolves center Eddie Griffin was drunk and masturbating
when he crashed his luxury SUV into a parked Suburban outside a store in
Minneapolis, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the man whose Suburban was hit
in the crash.
WCCO-TV obtained copies of 911 calls and store surveillance video of the incident,
along with an accident report the police submitted to the state, reports WCCO-TV's
Caroline Lowe.
Several of the 911 callers that night said Griffin was drunk. One witness said
Griffin told him he was watching pornography in a DVD player mounted on the
dashboard of his Cadillac Escalade SUV when he struck a Chevy Suburban parked on
University Avenue Southeast.
Posted by: Lacqued | July 01, 2006 at 02:22 PM
Excellent news! The Masterbaters are in dire need of a versitile power forward.
Posted by: The Blue Baller | July 03, 2006 at 05:13 AM
He was charged with car-jacking.
Posted by: nutbuster | July 08, 2006 at 08:43 AM