Expiring deals give Raptors options for next year

MICHAEL GRANGE

From Friday's Globe and Mail

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February 21, 2008 at 9:40 PM EST

You want excitement? You want trade deadline intrigue?

You would like the Toronto Raptors to be the centre of the online rumour mill?

Come back, oh, in about a year or so.

You can start the rumours now. Scan the club's salary commitments for next season for yourself and fire up that trade machine.

You want expiring contracts? The Raptors will have expiring contracts. And in the NBA, salaries that are coming off the books are as sexy as a hotel lobby full of small dresses at all-star weekend.

Anthony Parker will be in the last year of his deal. So will Jorge Garbajosa. Rasho Nesterovic, too. Throw in Jamario Moon and Maceo Baston and Raptors president and general manager Bryan Colangelo will have roughly $23-million (all currency U.S.) in expiring contracts to barter with.

Depending on what happens with Carlos Delfino, who will be a restricted free agent next summer, there could be even more room to wiggle. Joey Graham will have just one year remaining on his deal. Kris Humphries will have two more, but at a fairly modest total of $5.9-million over the two seasons.

Kind of makes you all funny inside just thinking about it.

A creative basketball executive who likes to work the phones can have a lot of fun with some tools like that to play with.

"We made dramatic improvements last year. To some degree a lot of the cards in the deck were played," Colangelo said. "Now it's a matter of being a little more patient and waiting for those opportunities. … At this point we have to look at where we are, the contracts that we have, next year we're going to be in an interesting situation."

If there's one lesson to be gleaned from a fantastic February of trading across the NBA, where there's been a steady migration of big names to good teams, it's that having some expiring deals to move can yield some spectacular results, as in: Shaquille O'Neal spectacular, or Pau Gasol spectacular.

So no, trading Juan Dixon for the Detroit Pistons centre Primoz Brezec, as the Raptors did yesterday in their sole trade-deadline manoeuvre, hardly quickens the pulse.

Dixon was aching for a chance to show he deserves another deal and Brezec was equally disappointed at not playing first in Charlotte and more recently in Detroit.

If he can beat out Humphries and Nesterovic, he can have his share of minutes in the Raptors' big-man rotation. If he can't, his deal expires this season, too. Colangelo also gets to make the point to his locker room that he won't tolerate players who don't want to be here. If you want to go, off you're sent.

But the more important message was that there's a time to make big, bold and even dangerous moves and, for Toronto, this isn't it.

First of all they didn't have the pieces — only Dixon and Darrick Martin had deals expiring this season — and Colangelo didn't want to tie his hands for the future.

Not to be overlooked is the Raptors' luxury of not really having to do anything, thanks to their Eastern Conference address.

With a 29-23 record, the Raptors were holding down the No. 4 seed in the East before play last night.

With a bit of luck, and the return of guard T.J. Ford, it's conceivable the Raptors could reel in the Orlando Magic and hold off the reconfigured Cleveland Cavaliers and finish with the third-best record in the East.

As long as that means missing a first-round playoff date with the Cavaliers — who, as a strong offensive rebounding team with an elite wing, represent the mother of all match-up problems for the Raptors — they have a chance of winning a playoff round before running into Boston, Detroit or Cleveland.

Making it to the second round with a young team? That's the kind of progress that agents notice when they're trying to find interesting (read: winning) situations for veteran clients in the off-season or the trade deadline.

More significantly, the Raptors are 4 1/2 games in front of the Washington Wizards at No. 6; six games ahead of the New Jersey Nets at No. 7 and 6 1/2 games up on the Philadelphia 76ers at No. 8.

Barring a significant collapse, the Raptors are going to finish either third, fourth or fifth.

So for Colangelo there was no need to mortgage the farm now, not when he knows that 12 months from now there will be a whole league out there looking to sell stuff cheap, and the Raptors will be sitting on a mountain of expiring cash.

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