Raps looking to replace Maurizio Gherardini?

[disoblige]

Im sorry but this is BS. You DONT exclude other people because they are different.

Actually, you do that all the time in professional sports. Certain players don't fit the mold of your team so you don't pick them.

because of this ? :

It has nothing to do with race; it has to do with where the person is from

[OzzyAZ]

I think you're an idiot. You don't know what half these guys do, but you want them out? Do you realize Eric Hughes has been vital in the development of some of our young players, they he goes in nights during the season to work with anyone who will come to the gym? All I have ever heard of Hughes is positive, and he's not earning top dollar.

Highlight in Raptors RED who you want off this mgmt team:

Bryan Colangelo President & General Manager, Alternate NBA Governor
Wayne Embry Senior Basketball Advisor
Maurizio Gherardini Senior Vice-President, Basketball Operations
Jim Kelly Senior Director, Scouting
Steve Fruitman Senior Director, Basketball Administration
Marc Eversley Assistant General Manager
Alvin Williams Director of Player Development
Jay Triano Head Coach
Alex English Assistant Coach
Micah Nori Assistant Coach
Scott Roth Assistant Coach
Eric Hughes Assistant Coach/ Basketball Development
Francesco Cuzzolin Assistant Coach/ Strength & Conditioning
Bob Zuffelato Scout
Scott McCullough Head Athletic Trainer
Rory Mullin Assistant Trainer/Athletic Therapist
Ray Chow Assistant Trainer/ Massage Therapist
Jon Lee Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach
Dr. Paul Marks Team Medical Director/ Orthopaedic Surgeon
Dr. Howard Petroff Assistant Team Medical Director
Kevin DiPietro Equipment Manager & Travel Coordinator
Paul Elliot Assistant Equipment Manager
Doreen Doyle Team Services Coordinator
Willis Richardson Team Security Consultant
Bob Peterson Video Coordinator
Jon Goodwillie Assistant Video Coordinator
Graeme McIntosh Assistant to General Manager's Office
Courtney Charles Basketball Operations Coordinator
Jim LaBumbard Director, Media Relations
Roven Yau Coordinator, Media Relations
Phil Summers Assistant, Media Relations

Hey, at least he axed the "guys in the truck."

[sanity]

No I'm trying to say since Toronto is a hockey town, the fans like their players to give it their all on every play. Guys like Bargnani and Turkoglu obviously don't fit well in a city like that.

Agree 100% but I think it gets associated (unfairly) with ethnicity. I remember years ago we were dogging Charlie V. for being lazy as hell. If we were to pick up... say, Nocioni, fans would love that guy. Of course it would've only made sense when we were in the playoffs and such

[Lawnmower Man]

No I'm trying to say since Toronto is a hockey town, the fans like their players to give it their all on every play. Guys like Bargnani and Turkoglu obviously don't fit well in a city like that.

Agree 100% but I think it gets associated (unfairly) with ethnicity. I remember years ago we were dogging Charlie V. for being lazy as hell. If we were to pick up... say, Nocioni, fans would love that guy. Of course it would've only made sense when we were in the playoffs and such

Yea. The best way to describe Toronto is that it is a "white-collar city" with a "blue-collar mentality".
This is the reason why Rob Ford (who has a rep for being very hard-working) won the mayoral race, over George Smitherman (who has a rep for being very lazy).

Any sports team that exhibits a "hard-working" culture, will always get the love here. Guys like JYD, Bonner, and Alvin were praised here in large part due to them being perfect examples of this Toronto culture. Bargnani....not so much.

[Lakonomy]

I'm sorry, but I still don't understand. Aren't all cities in love with hard working players? Why just Toronto? What does this have to do with race (or background)? Would your opinion or ethnicity or race or background change if we had, say, Andre Kirilenko instead of Bargs on the team?


And George Smitherman, aka furious George, who overcome a lack of any post-secondary education to become the Premiers right hand man, the first openly gay cabinet minister, the guy who passed, among other things, legislation that no one else could pass simply because he worked harder at it than anyone else (e.g., the Wait Times Strategy, and the Green Energy Act), is lazy?

There are lots of reasons not to like Smitherman, but saying he lost the mayoral race because he's lazy, and using it to back up an argument of why Toronto hates lazy 'euro' athletes, is some kind of ignorance.

[Lakonomy]

And why does everyone hate Fruitman? He's obiously an asset in terms of his knowldge of trade rules and the cap. It's not his fault that the crazy 4 way trade he worked out to fit legally within the rules of the CBA wound up netting Hedo - he's an accountant, and a very good one from what we've seen, not a talent evaluator.

[T_Biggums]

Please take bargnani with you Maurizio!

I'm sure this has been quoted for truth a bunch of times already.

Its about time we start building a team with the best athletes, I wouldn't mind a GM who actually played basketball too like Stockton or maybe even Oakley. That fat POS Maurizio is a waste of skin

[Lawnmower Man]

And George Smitherman, aka furious George, who overcome a lack of any post-secondary education to become the Premiers right hand man, the first openly gay cabinet minister, the guy who passed, among other things, legislation that no one else could pass simply because he worked harder at it than anyone else (e.g., the Wait Times Strategy, and the Green Energy Act), is lazy?

There are lots of reasons not to like Smitherman, but saying he lost the mayoral race because he's lazy, and using it to back up an argument of why Toronto hates lazy 'euro' athletes, is some kind of ignorance.

First of all I jut have to say, LOL!

Now that you've given me a great laugh for the day, I'll enlighten you a bit.

First of all, your statement deeming George Smitherman as hard-working for "overcoming" the lack of a high school education to become Health Minister is laughable and shows how delusional you are.

A person that does not want to stay in school to finish their Secondary school diploma, is a perfect display of a lack of hard work and places low value on education. George Smitherman had a connection to get into the Liberal Party and dropped out of school because he could move up in his career without having to work hard, without earning his educational degrees, and move up in this world by networking with the political elite (most notably with Dalton McGuinty who hooked him up with his more recent gigs).

I don't see how your statement about him opening up as being gay supports any argument that he is hard working. If anything, it's helped his career by making him a more popular figure.

As for his efforts in public Health, please. You don't want to bring that up. I worked for eHealth and have seen the contracts and the culture that was going on duirng his time. $650 Million worth of non-competitive contracts for friends, free catering for internal staff meetings almost daily, no travel or convention authorizations required for anyone, project and contract overruns simply covered by additional public money with signoff that was just a formality...it was ridiculous. When Sarah Kramer took the fall for the eHealth scandal, it was for the "hard work" that Smitherman was responsible for. They gave her $350K plus a bonus of $115K to take the fall for Georgy and that was that.

Ford on the other hand, is a guy who has terrible media skills, is politically incorrect with everything he says, can't network or schmooze with the political elite if his life depended on it...yet somehow gets voted as Mayor of Toronto. How? Because he has a strong reptation in his ward as being very hardworking and that is something that Torontonians respond well to. The same ways Torontonians respond well to players who exhibit this same sort of hard work and effort for their sports teams.

[Reignman]

Nah, Ford won because he came up with the perfect campaign slogan at the right time "stop the gravy train". With people suffering during the recession they obviously gravitated to the guy that said he'd stop wastefull spending and it worked like a charm.

Hard work had nothing to do with it.

[T_Biggums]

Toronto is the worst place to have players like that.

I'm sorry, Turkuglu was an NBA player and we all know he was signed to keep Bosh interested in re-signing. Portland wanted to sign him for the same money. It had little to do with ethnicity and everything to do with the fact he was the best FA on the market that summer. To weave that into some anti-Euro argument is intellectually impoverished.

What are you arguing here that our GM had a gun to his head and brought in a terrible basketball player because of it? The Euro move was a failed experiment no one can argue that. Garbajosa played half a season and was okay, remember he was glued to the bench the second year. Jose was good in spurts but absolutely terrible as a starter. Parker is American... Bargnani was a complete disappointment. Rasho was good but nothing more than a role player. Hudo was just awful, Bellinelli terrible, Slokar scrub I'm sure this list can be added to too.

[Lawnmower Man]

Nah, Ford won because he came up with the perfect campaign slogan at the right time "stop the gravy train". With people suffering during the recession they obviously gravitated to the guy that said he'd stop wastefull spending and it worked like a charm.

Hard work had nothing to do with it.

Changing the culture of an organization is nothing but hard work and had everything to do with it.

People voted for Ford because they were confident that he could change the freespending culture that currently exists in the municipal sector. His previous record (especially his zero expense summaries) proved it. He was a proven hard worker and everybody knew this. Smitherman, on the other hand, contributed to this "gravy train" in the past and his record was the complete opposite's of Ford's. Smitherman flip flopped on his platform during the election and people did not have confidence that he would be driven enough to change the current culture in office. It takes a lot of hard work to change the culture of an organization, and (justifiably) nobody had faith that Smitherman could do it.

[Lakonomy]

First of all I jut have to say, LOL!

Now that you've given me a great laugh for the day, I'll enlighten you a bit.

First of all, your statement deeming George Smitherman as hard-working for "overcoming" the lack of a high school education to become Health Minister is laughable and shows how delusional you are.

A person that does not want to stay in school to finish their Secondary school diploma, is a perfect display of a lack of hard work and places low value on education. George Smitherman had a connection to get into the Liberal Party and dropped out of school because he could move up in his career without having to work hard, without earning his educational degrees, and move up in this world by networking with the political elite (most notably with Dalton McGuinty who hooked him up with his more recent gigs).

I don't see how your statement about him opening up as being gay supports any argument that he is hard working. If anything, it's helped his career by making him a more popular figure.

As for his efforts in public Health, please. You don't want to bring that up. I worked for eHealth and have seen the contracts and the culture that was going on duirng his time. $650 Million worth of non-competitive contracts for friends, free catering for internal staff meetings almost daily, no travel or convention authorizations required for anyone, project and contract overruns simply covered by additional public money with signoff that was just a formality...it was ridiculous. When Sarah Kramer took the fall for the eHealth scandal, it was for the "hard work" that Smitherman was responsible for. They gave her $350K plus a bonus of $115K to take the fall for Georgy and that was that.

Ford on the other hand, is a guy who has terrible media skills, is politically incorrect with everything he says, can't network or schmooze with the political elite if his life depended on it...yet somehow gets voted as Mayor of Toronto. How? Because he has a strong reptation in his ward as being very hardworking and that is something that Torontonians respond well to. The same ways Torontonians respond well to players who exhibit this same sort of hard work and effort for their sports teams.

Hey, like I said in my post, there are plenty of reasons why you might not like Smitherman, including the ehealth scandal and how he got flown out so Caplan and Kramer would take the fall. But, I can tell you that one thing he is not is 'lazy.'

And, to get the thread back on track, I still don't understand what Smitherman (lazy or not) losing the mayoral race has to do with what you and other posters have implied, that 'Euros' should be run out of town.

[Lawnmower Man]

And, to get the thread back on track, I still don't understand what Smitherman (lazy or not) losing the mayoral race has to do with what you and other posters have implied, that 'Euros' should be run out of town.

The reasons why the "Euros" have a bad rap here is because our "Euros" these past few years relied moreso on their talents and put in little effort in the other, "hustle" areas. In some cities, you can get away with that. Not so much over here.

I'm not opposed to Euros, and neither are most Rap fans, but it's understandable that some would feel this way toward Euros as the ones we've had here so far don't really place and emphasis on the "Hustle Board" stats that would make you a hit in Toronto.

Our problem, for many years now, has not been a lack of talent for scoring, shooting, etc. It's been on the rebounding and defense. The players we've had definitely have the physical tools to correct this, but have shown an unwillingness to focus on this area (as Bargs confirmed when he said he focuses on things "more important").

In a city with a blue-collar mentality, stuff like this doesn't fly.