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The Toronto Raptors' point guard situation is settled — for now.
But the endless debate over the relative merits of Jose Calderon and T.J. Ford will be settled only when Ford is traded.
It's the only sensible thing to do.
Not because Ford can't play, but mainly because he can — sometimes breathtakingly well — and wants to so badly that he's willing to continue to despite a congenital spinal condition that makes every hard on-court collision a life-altering crapshoot.
For Ford, playing is living. And he wants — needs — to live in the style he's been accustomed to dating back to his roots as a Texas high-school basketball sensation.
Can he even picture himself coming off the bench over the final three years of his contract with the Raptors?
"No. Not till the end of my career," the 25-year-old said after practice yesterday. "That's who I am right now. That's where I'm at.
"In the NBA, I think I'm a starter. I don't think I'm a guy that comes off the bench and plays limited minutes. I don't think that's my style."
His self-belief is considerable because it has to be. It's hard to be a 5-foot-10 NBA player if you spend a lot of time wallowing in self-doubt.
And it should be pointed out there's no record of Ford requesting the change in the lineup that had him return as a starter on Wednesday for the first time since he injured his neck on Dec. 11.
That move was initiated by Calderon, who let it be known he was willing to move to the bench if the coaching staff felt it would help the team with the playoffs looming and the Raptors slumping. But it was made necessary because Ford couldn't accept coming off the bench.
He tried. He said the right things. Some nights he even played well, and the nights he didn't were not all his fault — as his teammates' tendency to stand and wait around in the guts of games wasn't something that started when Ford returned from eight weeks on the shelf.
But in recent weeks, counselling Ford as he tried to get his head around not being the engine that makes the Raptors run was busy work for nearly everyone in the organizational hierarchy.
But in the summer, the Raptors will have to pay top dollar to sign Calderon, a restricted free agent who has improved in nearly every significant offensive category over his three NBA seasons and played point guard with an all-star calibre efficiency over the three months he had the full-time starting role.
Presuming he signs a deal something close to what Ford commanded — four years and $33-million (all currency U.S.) — the Raptors will be committing to paying about $18-million to one position (if you factor in a $2-million deal to bring over point guard prospect Roko Ukic from Europe).
The eggs-in-one-basket approach runs contrary to conventional front-office wisdom, but it has merit because it would give the Raptors 48 minutes of all-star-calibre point guard play, as long as both Ford and Calderon accepted the concept of a long-term platoon system.
What has become evident in recent days is that while Calderon might be willing to live under that system, Ford is not.
Asked whether he could imagine a future playing 24 minutes a game, or some version of that, for 82 regular-season games, Ford was again pretty clear.
"No," he said. "This year was a different scenario, because I was hurt and I was out. But if that didn't happen, I was showing I was one of the best guards in the east at the time."
Why trade Ford and not Calderon?
Fair or not, Ford's showcase lasted all of 17 games this season before he was sent to the floor on a flagrant foul by Atlanta Hawks rookie Al Horford. Ford missed 1 1/2 seasons after he was injured in a similar circumstance in his rookie year.
As well, the Raptors can't let an a valuable asset such as Calderon be signed away.
And they can't tie up such a large portion of their salary total in one position if Ford has let it be known he'll be happy only in a platoon if he gets most of the at-bats.
And while having Calderon as a gifted understudy isn't without precedent — see Manu Ginobili and the San Antonio Spurs — it's a dangerous precedent for an organization to set if one player is so determined to be on the floor that he'll paint the club into a corner to make it so.
Which is why Raptors president Bryan Colangelo, barring a sudden and sincere change of heart by Ford, should help him realize his vision of himself as an NBA starter, albeit it in another NBA uniform.
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