Leafs and Raptors Moves

- I'm perfectly happy that the Leafs bought out Darcy Tucker. As I have said before I want this team to be terrible next year so they can have a great shot at John Tavares. The Leafs have been stuck as a decent but not good enough team for the past 15 years and it got them nowhere. I can remember the St. Louis Blues string of 30 something consecutive playoff runs and how utterly useless a record it was because they never won a Cup and could never get any better because they were always drafting in the low 20's.

The Leafs were headed in that direction and have correctly decided to actually stink and rebuild instead of continually striving for bronze. Watching Mats go will kill me but letting him is the right thing to do.

- The thing about the Raptors picking up Jermaine O'Neal for the 17th pick, TJ Ford and the corpse of Rasho Nesterovic is that Ford didn't have a huge trade value because of his history of back injury and you have to trade salary for salary in the NBA. So to trade a flawed Ford they had to get a flawed O'Neal in return. It also has the benefit of making it clear that Jose Calderon is the teams point guard, which is what I wanted all along. Jermaine O'Neal can absolutely play when he's healthy, the problem is he just isn't healthy all the time anymore. He gives the Raps the defense they need inside, shot blocking and rebounding they really lacked and another legitimate scoring option. It also gives a potential 20-10 sidekick to Chris Bosh. He wasn't too motivated in Indiana because things were such a mess there (you try being a leader on a team with Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson) but I think a change of scenery, especially to a place with a rabid fan base (small but rabid granted) will energize him.

The best case scenario for the Raps is that he plays 65 games a year and is healthy going into the playoffs. And he better be healthy because at over $20 million a year he eats up more than a third of the teams cap space. Worst case scenario is that he misses half the season and the playoffs. But even that isn't that bad because the Raps then have a huge expiring contract to use as trade bait next year going into what could be the best free agent class of all time in '10.