An interesting tidbit that was first brought to my attention late last night by TSN.ca's Tim Chisholm.

Hoopsworld is reporting that Portland Trailblazers' guard Jamal Crawford is on various teams radars as the trade deadline draws near, and one of those teams is the Toronto Raptors.

Say what?

Yep, at face value this doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I was led to believe that the Raptors plan was to keep salary low, add solid, young talent, and upgrade defensively.

Acquiring Jamal Crawford, a 31 year old, trigger-happy combo guard, not known for his defense tendencies, who has another year on his contract (albeit a player option) does not exactly fit any of the aforementioned three criteria.

The only way I could see this occurring is if Bryan Colangelo thinks he's able to dump someone else of lesser value, off on the Blazers in the process. I'm just not sure who that would be considering Barbosa is expiring, and I'd argue that others like Amir Johnson and Linas Kleiza are too valuable to move for only Jamal.

Maybe though Bryan's taken a look at the free-agent landscape next year, and figures that grabbing Crawford now, is the safer bet than placing all his eggs in the free-agent market basket.

The NBA trade deadline is only 10 days away, so we'll see how this shakes out...