Sixerscan wrote:Maybe they should just quit on their team the way Vince did back in the day.
The raptors organisation quit on vince long before he quit on them.
Did he go a little overboard handling his crappy situation in toronto? Yes. However, i can't think of any superstar that got worse treatment from his team than vince got in toronto. Fact is the raptors surrounded him with subpar players, did some bad drafting and at the end drafted his replacement. Now, i won't put the blame solely with the front office since some of it goes to mcgrady as well. I think it's safe to assume they envisioned to build a dynasty around vc and tmac which obviously became impossible once the latter decided to quit on that dream. Still, they had four seasons to build around vince after tracy left, they failed miserably. On top of that, they completely ignored his requests. It's only natural he wanted to leave since they weren't committed to building a winning team. I'm pretty sure most superstars would've wanted to leave in that situation. And the only option to leave was by forcing a trade.
But yeah, he's a loser because he wanted to leave a team content with losing. What do you think his no dunking comment was about? All the raptors cared about was selling tickets and merchandise (not winning). That dunk comment basically meant he was tired of losing and being the raptors cashcow and circus act. To me this is understandable for a 27 year old athlete who knows that he probably only has a few prime years left. But yeah, he's a loser who only cared about showing off and didn't care about basketball or winning. Afterwards he carried the nets to the playoffs, but that was obviously just to spite the raptors. He doesn't care about winning. Give me a break...
And to raptors fans who keep complaining, you should keep in mind that carter put toronto on the map. Hell, of course this is pure speculation, there might be no toronto raptors left today without vince. Either way, if you want to blame anyone blame tmac for ruining your chance at a potential dynasty. Or blame the front office for surrounding him with d-league talent and at best a couple of role players during his SIX years there. (Except for tmac who was already there before vince and later on bosh, who obviously was too young, they maybe would have had two seasons of overlapping prime together)
As far as this "elbow". There was obviously no malicious intent. What i see, especially from the second angle:
- After the foul call and semi-flop by vince: Devin starts raising his arm, stops at the top and for a split second looks like he's about to come down like you would when you're going to hack someone.
- Vince sees this motion and raises his arm to try and block what he thinks is an incoming hack.
- Booker's smart enough not to follow through and: a) vince's 40 year old reaction time doesn't recognize this in time or b) he does know and simply makes a dumb decision to go ahead and hit devin's arm anyway
- Len does what he's supposed to do, i'm sure in real time and from his angle it might have looked like carter elbowed booker in the head. He stood up for his teammate, i have zero issues with that.
