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The Toronto Raptors left practice yesterday digesting the news that teammate Jorge Garbajosa was going to have more surgery on his left leg and ankle and possibly was done for the season.
It went down surprisingly easily. All-star Chris Bosh hardly seemed devastated by the news.
“He's just a guy who brings a lot of chemistry to our team,” Bosh said. “He can shoot the ball from the outside, he's a good defensive player, he's where he is supposed to be and he gets a couple of steals a game. We're going to miss that.”
It was a reasonable breakdown of the Garbajosa effect, but since training camp started, he hadn't been able to provide even a shadow of that. The fact is, the Spaniard has already been more or less replaced. The timing is awkward, though. A Spanish television crew is in Toronto to broadcast Wednesday's game between the Raptors and Memphis Grizzlies, who feature two of their own Spanish stars, Pau Gasol and Juan Carlos Navarro.
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It's not just Garbajosa's leg that's a problem. After the season had started and Garbajosa's playing time was dwindling, one Raptors insider explained the problem facing the Spanish star and the Raptors.
“Last year, the challenge facing Garbajosa was the competition in the NBA,” he said. “This year, the challenge is the quality of the roster.”
Garbajosa had a good rookie season as a 28-year-old. With him starting, the team was 34-26, though the turnaround wasn't instant. And it would be hard to pin the success on the player everyone calls Garbo; after his devastating leg injury, the Raptors were 8-3 to finish the season.
He's a savvy big man who spreads the floor, but shot just 33 per cent from the three-point line, never really giving the impression that he had the range for the nearly 24-foot heave. His best contributions were defensively, because he was clever enough to match up with both smaller and quicker forwards as well as bigger, stronger ones, giving coach Sam Mitchell all kinds of flexibility with his lineups.
That's why Mitchell used to call him his “security blanket.”
But Garbajosa was found lacking in the limited minutes he did get this season. He struggled shooting the ball in the exhibition season, a shortcoming that was originally dismissed as rust but looks different after Raptors guard Jose Calderon told reporters on Monday that Garbajosa had been working out with the Spanish national team for five weeks before the start of the European championship on Sept. 3.
The reality is that by NBA standards, Garbajosa is an average to below-average shooter. Defensively, he struggled to guard small forwards in the early going this season, which robbed him of the one advantage he had on others looking to crack a competitive lineup.
He might have come around had his leg behaved. But the emergence of Jamario Moon would have made it difficult for Garbajosa to find the 28 or so minutes he earned last season. Kris Humphries has fought hard to earn the spare minutes at power forward and centre as the designated “energy guy.” Joey Graham showed at the end of last season that he can be productive with steady minutes playing a combination of small forward and power forward, but he hasn't left the bench, thanks to injury and roster depth.
The biggest contribution Garbajosa could have made to the Raptors would have been during last season's first-round playoff loss to the New Jersey Nets. The team needed some calm toughness and guidance. Maybe that would have been his time to shine.
No one was able to even guess yesterday when Garbajosa might be back and healthy again, but he might already be yesterday's model.
