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http://www.nba.com/raptors/
Top story 2 of 7.
Sho talks about Bosh.
Nice interview, although hopefully next time Rasho gets asked about himself.
" ( Bosh) is more similar to K.G. than to Timmy... Duncan. "
How cute.
I missed this before.
By the way my friend (Noel) should be playing angel/Ploto's friend (Rasho) next Thursday as Maccabi is playing the Raptors in Toronto.
How fun! I wish I could see that game, especially.
http://www.nba.com/raptors/
Top story 2 of 7.
Sho talks about Bosh.
Nice interview, although hopefully next time Rasho gets asked about himself.
" ( Bosh) is more similar to K.G. than to Timmy... Duncan. "
How cute.
Only fair- Bosh talked about Rasho today.
He said that Rasho is a good player overall and knows how to play defense- and talks on defense. He does a lot of little things that will help out. Rasho will take the load off- they'll run a few plays for him; maybe a lot if he gets going. Some nights he could be the main low post scorer. Also Bosh commented how Rasho has won everywhere he has played and that he can contribute a winning atttiude.
I don't know if you listened to Sam's interview today either. He talked about Rasho.
He said that if you watch Rasho on tape that he is always where he is supposed to be defensively-- that he very rarely makes a mistake. He mentioned that Rasho is a good passer and that they think he can be a scorer for them some nights, as well. He also talked about Rasho being an option they have never had before when they need a big body-- and that some nights he will be huge for them- while also acknowledging that some teams will play small. He mentioned the wear and tear on Bosh last season because they had to use him for that and how it wore him down by the fourth quarter. (That sort of goes along with what I had mentioned about Tim this season and whether the Spurs might some nights be forced to use Tim inside defensively on a big body.)
Last edited by ploto; 10-14-2006 at 12:10 AM.
Nice Article on the Euro-Raptors. It is great for them to all be so close together.
Raptors help European players adjust to new life in NBA - and Canada
TORONTO (CP) - Raptors rookie Uros Slokar says he has everything he needs for life in Toronto.
The Raptors helped the young Slovenian find a house, lease a car and open a bank account. And he never ventures far from home without his trusty map of PATH, the 27-kilometre-long underground pathway system that links the major buildings in downtown Toronto.
The first year in the NBA can be challenging enough. But after an off-season overhaul that brought several European players to the Raptors, Slokar and a couple of his teammates face their first year in the league far from home.
"All the major things - phone, somewhere to live, a place to eat, banking - the Raptors help me with everything, which I really appreciate," said Slokar. "Here it's different for us. We come here, you know you need a bank but you don't know where to go, you need to go into a bank, but who to turn to, what to say, how to open an account. . .? The Raptors help me a lot.
"I know the main things now - the CN Tower, the PATH, things like that. I have a map with me all the time, because you get lost immediately," Slokar added, laughing.
The 23-year-old forward from Ljubljana, Slovenia, lives alone in Toronto in a condo near the Air Canada Centre. Italian Andrea Bargnani, the 20-year-old rookie who became the first European taken No. 1 in the draft, lives nearby with his mom Luisa, who will stay with him until December. Jorge Garbajosa moved here from Madrid with his wife Ainhoa, and lives in the same building as Spanish teammate Jose Calderon and his wife Ana.
"Most of our guys who are on the team this year have travelled the world, but it's certainly a big change for them," said Marc Eversley, the Raptors director of basketball operations.
Eversley, who was hired by the Raptors in June after 10 years working for Nike, grew up in suburban Brampton. Part of his job is to help the new players adjust to life here.
"Whatever that means - setting them up with bank accounts, housing, cars, transportation, accommodations, all of those types of things," said Eversley. "Sometimes it's literally going and picking them up and taking them to see houses, or taking them out to the dealership to secure transportation for the year. Whatever needs to get done, we get it done."
GM Bryan Colangelo looked overseas when he revamped the Raptors this past off-season, prompting the nickname Euro-Raptors. Along with Bargnani, Garbajosa and Slokar, he added Slovenian Rasho Nesterovic, acquired in a trade with the San Antonio Spurs, and Anthony Parker, an American who had played the past six seasons with Israeli powerhouse Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Raptors head coach Sam Mitc bristles at questions about the cultural differences of his players, saying recently: "I don't see these guys as being from different parts of the world. They're basketball players. The world has shrunk."
But the Europeans do face unique challenges, which the Raptors try to address. There's the language issue, ranging from Bargnani and Calderon, whose grasp of English is shaky at best, to Garbajosa, Slokar and Nesterovic, who speak excellent English.
Last season, a team official accompanied Calderon and his wife to English classes. This year, Eversley made sure the two Spanish players had rooms in the same hotel, and then condos in the same building, so their wives could be close to one another.
"They are together so it's easier for them," Calderon said of the wives. "When we start flying, going away to play, it's hard because they feel like they are alone here, but with somebody, they can go out, they can do something. Without somebody, it's tough for them."
The new players live in a cluster of condos near the lakefront.
"I've got Pape Sow in my building, I've got Rasho just across, I've got both Spanish guys Jorge and Garba across the street," said Slokar. "It's like I'm home."
The newcomers are presented with a "welcome book" when they arrive in town, that lists everything from where to shop to where to eat, including a list of international restaurants.
Calderon and Garbajosa have been embraced by Toronto's Spanish community. Friday night, Calderon and Garbajosa attended a dinner at the Spanish Consulate in Toronto. At the Raptors' intrasquad game last weekend in Waterloo, Ont., a female fan draped in the Spanish flag and her two children chatted with the Spaniards after the game.
"For us, we feel good, everybody is taking care of us, everybody is trying to help us," said Garbajosa. "But when you are so far from your house and you see somebody come from there and they have your flag, it makes you feel happy. It's important for us."
"We walk around the city and the people know you, try to talk with you, say 'how are you feeling, do you like Toronto?"' Calderon added. "I think it's great people in Canada. Our life here is perfect."
The fact Toronto is such a multicultural city certainly makes for an easier adjustment.
"Toronto being an international city and having Greektown and Little Italy, there's a section of the city where a lot of people from Spain can hang out and feel comfortable and feel like they're not too far removed from their own cities or countries - Toronto certainly has an international flavour to it that a lot of cities in the U.S. don't have," said Eversley.
Slokar said it's the little things about Toronto though, that remind him he's in an entirely different country.
"The very small things that people take for granted, from paying the cheque in a restaurant - with gratuity, without gratuity? - to going to a store that is a big store and it's open 24 hours a day, which is unbelievably great," said Slokar. "Back in Europe, everything closes at 8 p.m., and it has a break in between, like from 1-3, so you don't have the luxury of buying everything you want. Here, you need milk, you just go to the grocery store and it's open, you need fruit, you just buy it. That's one of the things I love here."
Perhaps some of the cultural differences will rub off on the Raptors. After the buzzer sounded to end the Raptors open scrimmage Saturday in Waterloo. European players stood at centre court and applauded the crowd - a tradition in Europe in basketball, as well as other sports.
http://www.news1130.com/news/sports/...ntent=s101347A
Applauding the crowd is my favorite tradition from the European game. I would like to see the NBA do it.
That's Italian, not european.
Nesterovic to take pressure off Bosh
Seven-footer may lack a scoring touch, but Raptors like veteran big man's game
ROBERT MACLEOD
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...TPStory/Sports
TORONTO -- During his first eight years in the National Basketball Association, Rasho Nesterovic was never much of a scorer.
There was that career blip during the 2002-03 regular season when the seven-footer soared to a career high of 11.2 points a game while starting 77 contests for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Timberwolves, however, weren't so impressed by this offensive surge, allowing the Slovene to become a free agent. Nesterovic left town to sign with the San Antonio Spurs. But, in his three years with the Spurs, Nesterovic's offence tumbled.
Last year, starting 51 games alongside perennial NBA all-star Tim Duncan, Nesterovic's scoring average dipped to 4.5 points, his lowest output since his rookie season in 1998-99. His career average over eight years in the league stands at an even seven points.
He is now with the Toronto Raptors, who secured him over the summer in the trade that sent popular Matt Bonner and the brooding Eric Williams to the Spurs.
And it wasn't Nesterovic's offensive capabilities that the Raptors so coveted. It was his big body -- 270 pounds of imposing muscle that the Raptors hope will act as a security blanket for Chris Bosh, who was required to do much of the heavy lifting at centre last season.
As the season wore on, having to battle players who were often 40 pounds heavier -- or more -- extracted a physical toll on Bosh, who still averaged 22.5 points and 9.2 rebounds and made the NBA all-star team.
"In the fourth quarter, it took his legs away," coach Sam Mitc said of the pounding Bosh received.
With Nesterovic expected to be pencilled in as the starting centre once the regular season begins early next month, Bosh will be able to concentrate more on his duties at power forward, which is much more suited to his slender 225-pound, 6-foot-10 frame.
"I think for us having Rasho gives us some options," Mitc said yesterday after practice at the Air Canada Centre. "There are nights we're going to play against, not necessarily a dominating centre, but just a big body. And in the past we didn't have that guy with experience that knows how to play, that can go out there and play that guy.
"And if you watch Rasho, if you watch him on tape, defensively he's where he's supposed to be all the time. He very rarely makes mistakes defensively. He's a good passer. We still believe he's going to be able to score for us some nights."
Nesterovic has yet to display that scoring form. Through Toronto's first two preseason games, while averaging 12 minutes of playing time, he has made only one of six shots.
"This is just the preseason," Nesterovic said. "Coach is trying to find the guys that are going to be able to play during the regular season. Players are trying to find their role within the team."
While in Minnesota, Nesterovic had the opportunity to play alongside Kevin Garnett and in San Antonio with Duncan, considered the two top power forwards in the NBA.
Nesterovic believes Bosh deserves membership in that elite club.
"He's an all-star, he's one of the best guys in the league," Nesterovic said of his new teammate, whose free-flowing style most reminds the big man of Garnett. "If he's going to keep working hard, which he does, he's going to definitely improve even more."
Bosh, who will see more preseason action tomorrow when the Raptors play the New Jersey Nets at the Air Canada Centre, said he is just thankful to have Nesterovic along to take some of the weight off his shoulders.
"He's going to take a lot [of pressure] off," Bosh said. "We're going to run a few plays for him, maybe a lot of plays if he gets going. He might have a lot of nights where he's the low post scorer.
"We just want to take advantage of having a low post body that's experienced down low."
A less optimistic article about Rasho :
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1160776234392
Big Rasho might clog up the Raptors' speed lane
Go-go style differs from game that Nesterovic offers
Oct. 14, 2006. 01:00 AM
DAVE FESCHUK
Intent on playing go-go basketball this season, the Raptors have built their team for speed. They acquired a blindingly quick point guard, T.J. Ford. They have huffed and puffed through a training camp exercise in which the shot clock, normally equipped with 24 seconds, expires in seven.
And, in unrelated news, they traded for Rasho Nesterovic, the 7-foot, slow-footed Slovenian with three years and $23.5 million (all figures U.S.) remaining on his deal.
Sam Mitc , the Raptors coach, was being nice about Nesterovic's key physical limitation yesterday. "Rasho can run," said Mitc , which, translated into the vernacular of a frank-talking coach with relative job security and his general manager's confidence, equates roughly to: "I've known quicker three-toed sloths."
Time will tell, of course, whether Nesterovic's presence makes sense to a team on the run.
Mitc , to hear the coach out, offered at least one plausible use for Nesterovic's lumbering frame. When the Raptors play one of the handful of teams that still employs something resembling a physically dominating centre — the defending champion Miami Heat's Shaquille O'Neal, say, or the Chicago Bulls' Eddy Curry () — Nesterovic could be indispensable. In the past, after all, the task of rubbing up against those imposing forces often fell to Chris Bosh, who would shoulder the load after frontcourt mates such as Rafael Araujo and Jerome Moiso and Loren Woods were exposed as pretenders.
Bosh often expended so much energy battling the bigger men that he was rendered ineffective for the game's stretch run. "It took his legs away," Mitc said of Bosh.
If the Raptors are spending Nesterovic's salary of $7.3 million to save Bosh's legs, it could be construed as a wise investment. Bosh, after all, signed a contract extension expected to be worth nearly 10 times that amount this summer. But Nesterovic — and here's a bit of barroom trivia that'll trip up your hockey-haired pals — is Toronto's highest-paid player this season. Bosh, playing for $4.3 million in the final year of his rookie deal, doesn't begin earning the big gorgonzola until 2007-08, when he is expected to gross, depending on the salary cap, about $13 million.
"In the past, we didn't have that (big) guy with experience who knows how to play," Mitc said. "If you watch Rasho, if you watch him on tape defensively, he's where he's supposed to be all the time. He very rarely makes mistakes defensively and he's a good passer and we still believe he can score points at times."
Said Bosh: "He's going to take a lot (of pressure) off. And we're going to run a few plays for him; maybe a lot of plays if he gets going. He might have a lot of nights where he's the low-post scorer."
That last scenario is unlikely for a couple of reasons.
One: Nesterovic, despite starting 83 per cent of his 548 regular-season games, has a career average of exactly seven points. Another: The Raptors are going to be a jump-shot-happy club. And if they can remember to occasionally get the ball to Bosh on the block in between the barrage of 25-footers, they'll be doing well.
Still, Nesterovic, 30, has proved himself as a competent and intelligent role player, sharing the frontcourt with two of the game's superstars in Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. He was on San Antonio's championship team in 2005. He has skills.
But the Spurs, who were beaten by the quicker Mavericks in last year's Western semifinal, got rid of him for a reason, acquiring Matt Bonner and Eric Williams and a future second-round pick in the exchange. Perhaps his kind, the big guy who can't make his free throws (he's a career 55 per cent bricklayer), is as an out-of-fashion dinosaur.
"You see how the league is going," Mitc said. "A lot of teams go small and so (Nesterovic's role is) going to depend on what other teams do. But there are going to be nights when Rasho can be huge for us."
How many nights and at what price to the pace? One of this season's intriguing unknowns.
Ploto- thanks for the interview recaps. I will go back and listen. Yesterday I only had time for one.
I love that Euro- Raptors article. Raptors sound like an excellent organization. I think Sho, Slokar, etc is in good hands.
Interesting that Sho is living in a condo. I wonder if his family moved with him. I just assumed they did.
Thanks for the article Kori.
Really?And it wasn't Nesterovic's offensive capabilities that the Raptors so coveted. It was his big body -- 270 pounds of imposing muscle that the Raptors hope will act as a security blanket for Chris Bosh
"I think for us having Rasho gives us some options," Mitc said yesterday after practice at the Air Canada Centre. "There are nights we're going to play against, not necessarily a dominating centre, but just a big body. And in the past we didn't have that guy with experience that knows how to play, that can go out there and play that guy.
"And if you watch Rasho, if you watch him on tape, defensively he's where he's supposed to be all the time. He very rarely makes mistakes defensively. He's a good passer. We still believe he's going to be able to score for us some nights."
Did Dave's dog get run over right before he wrote that last article. Geesh!
Rasho was about 270 when he bulked up to guard Shaq his first season with the team. By last year, he wasn't 270 anymore and this year he looks back down to the 255 or so he was his last year in Minnesota.
Even the Spurs said last season that Rasho was running the floor the best he had for them.
Angel- don't let the San Antonio concept of a condo fool you. Lots of cities have beautiful condos. Check out the ones being built by the Air Canada Center.
http://www.mapleleafsquare.com/flash/main.htm
And... if you'd like to purchase a condo that's available now on the waterfront, here is one for sale for $1.2 M. 3/3 over 3300 sq ft-- 38 th floor. Check out the tub
http://www.torontocondosandloftsonli...php?ltl=137996
Last edited by ploto; 10-14-2006 at 11:23 AM.
Running isn't Rasho's best quality.
If Raptors play run&gun, it will be difficult for Rasho and it will be stupid for Toronto (Bosh is more a half court player than Stoudemire, Ford isn't Nash and they haven't a player like Marion who can rebound and run).
I think too that Rasho will do well with Toronto because big centers are mainly in the east and because Bosh is a true PF (Duncan is a PF/C).
Obviously running is not his strength, but he is in really great shape and is leaner than a couple of years ago-- that was my point.
Thanks for the links.Angel- don't let the San Antonio concept of a condo fool you. Lots of cities have beautiful condos. Check out the ones being built by the Air Canada Center.
http://www.mapleleafsquare.com/flash/main.htm
And... if you'd like to purchase a condo that's available now on the waterfront, here is one for sale for $1.2 M. 3/3 over 3300 sq ft-- 38 th floor. Check out the tub
http://www.torontocondosandloftsonli...php?ltl=137996
Wow! Those are fantastic- great space and spectacular views.
I have a Spurs basketball card of Sho ( which he autographed for me, twice.
3-0 Baby! Whoosh!
http://www.nba.com/games/20061015/NJ...scoreboardhome
Fans from Slovenia might like to know that Boki played really well today-- shot the ball well- was aggressive- had a huge dunk! I hope he finally finds his spot where he can get consistent minutes.
I feel like I should know this but I don't...
Boki????
Wait- are you talking about Nachbar?
Toronto at Cleveland about to tip off.
And finally... the audio on NBA.com works.
Noel is in Toronto right now, Angel. Should I have him go slip your phone number to Rasho?
Noel is in Toronto right now, Angel. Should I have him go slip your phone number to Rasho?
Yes please.
Sho rocking both ends of the court.
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