As we moved towards the draft and free agency we will be tossing out a trade idea or two. Possible trades are always a hot topic.

First up? Acquiring Al Jefferson.

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The Raps don't face off against the 76ers until Saturday but we thought we would run Blogging With the Enemy one day early. A big thanks to Jordan at Liberty Ballers for responding to our questions for the second time this year. Make sure to check his site out, even if it's just to check up on Jason Kapono...

LB:  The fans want him gone, management wants him gone, and the players won't come out and say it, but speculation is they want him gone as well. Jordan is a lame duck. Various sources have confirmed that he will be fired sometime after season's end. There have even been reports of management waiting until the end of the season, because they think bringing someone else in would win more games, and ultimately lose ping pong balls. I'd like to see Jeff Van Gundy coach the Sixers next year. I think he's a perfect fit, and rumor has it, the Sixers are interested.

LB: Kapono had little to no impact up until the recent two-game winning streak. Once Thad and Lou went down with injuries, EJ was forced to start Kapono. Sixers fans rejoiced when Kapono entered the starting lineup, believing he would help seal the deal for a top 5 pick. Unfortunately, Kapono's ability to stretch the defense actually opened up the Sixers offense and helped them win two games they shouldn't have - ending what we were calling Mission WTF (Wall, Turner, Favors). The dude can't win with Sixers fans, even when he plays well.

Big picture, the trade was a wash. We don't need either player. We weren't making the playoffs either way. I do miss Reggie Evans as a person, but not enough where I'd say it was a bad trade. It was probably better for the Raptors; however.

Brian Blanco - AP

There has to be a RaptorsHQ t-shirt in this pile somewhere!!!!!!! (AP Photo/Brian Blanco)

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One of the reasons we joined the SBN Family was because of their dedicated tech team and the amount of resources spent on projects that we simply have not found the time to turn our attention to.

Case in point? The SB Nation Store.

The network has recently launched the SB Nation Store - the only problem is there isn't much in it yet. That being said other member sites of the network have started to fill the "virtual shelves" with some pretty cool stuff.

The HQ team is currently throwing around some ideas on t-shirt designs but we wanted your input, too, and many of you likely have better design skills than we do, anyway. Hence, a t-shirt concept design contest.

PRIZES

If we chose your design we will purchase a T-Shirt for you. Of course if we fall in love with a couple of designs we may put it to a vote or, in the alternative, buy a couple of t-shirts for the respective co-winners.

INSTRUCTIONS

Email an image (or several images) to raptorshq@gmail.com with the subject line: "T-Shirt Contest", and what name you'd like cited on the site. Include a brief explanation of what goes where, i.e.: which image goes on the back, which on the front, et cetera.

For example:

Front of Shirt

RHQ Logo

Back of Shirt

Night out in Yorkville with the flu - $150

Pizza Pizza with Sprite - $17

"Ball"  - $25

Hedo for 4 more years? - Priceless.

The deadline for all submissions is 11:59pm, April 18, 2010.

IMAGE GUIDELINES

Do not use any logos or images you do not have the right to use. That includes the likenesses of NBA players.

Do try to be simple and direct. The best shirt design's message will be readily apparent at a glance.

DETAILS

By submitting images to the contest, you're agreeing that should we choose your image as a winner you give us the design to use either as is or as the basis of a design for a t-shirt to be sold on SB Nation's Store, without further compensation. If your design is not chosen as a winner, you're agreeing to let us post those images on the site, as we'll probably do to show the "honorable mention" designs in a future post.

It's possible, due to the vagaries of our t-shirt process, that none of the designs will be used on a shirt, but if that happens, we'll still pick a winner and post designs on the site. Any questions? Email us.

After the post by Franchise we thought we would gauge the pulse of the HQ community on CB4's future.

Chime in.

WIthout Chris Bosh the Raptors went to the swamp a secured win number 30 on the season

The key reason for the 106-89 victory? Team play and an inspiring performance from Rasho Nesterovic.

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I won't beat around the bush here - All-Star Saturday Night was a total snoozer and one that people will easily forget. 

From a one-hour H-O-R-S-E game to a bland dunk contest there was little to talk about after the "festivities" in Dallas.

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With the Raptors' next game not until Friday night, Franchise takes a moment to get away from the Bosh rumours and Indiana fall-out to thank the readers for a great 2009.

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Could Wright be defending the likes of Bryant as Toronto's starting 2 next year?

After yesterday’s Star-Trek related post, the title of this morning’s may suggest that I’m continuing with the sci-fi theme and using X Files as the analogy for today.

And while I was a big fan of the show, and even David Duchovny’s sleaze-filled performances in Californiacation, that’s not the case.

Instead, the title simply reflects that while I’ve been quite skeptical of Colangelo’s work so far this off-season, I hope more than anything that I’m wrong in my criticism. After all, it now sounds like he’s managed to extract two wing players from Dallas via last night’s convoluted sign-and-trade for Shawn Marion; something that seemed unfathomable just days ago.

To top it off, from the sounds of things and because of this deal, it also seems like BC now has regained the mid-level exception!

If this isn’t a stroke of genius I’m not sure what is frankly.

Marion looked to be a goner, the team was cash-strapped despite what the most ardent fans would have you believe, and as I wrote yesterday, after the top four guys, this team was essentially a Klingon (Evans), a member of the Borg (Humphries) and the security crew in red shirts from the original Star Trek series.

Now, things are starting to look quite different.

While neither are stars, both Devean George and Antoine Wright are upgrades over…um…nothing, which was in essence what Toronto was working with at the wing positions outside of DeMar DeRozan and Hedo.

Because of his size defensive abilities, I could even see Wright starting at the 2, suddenly giving Toronto a very big starting line-up, with spots 2 through 5 being manned by players 6-7 and over.

The possible arrival of Wright is ironic in fact considering that a) he essentially replaces Joey Graham as another forward from that draft class who has failed to live up to expectations and b) this was a player as one of our readers pointed out, who the master of condescension Doug Smith referred to as being essentially useless and out of the league this season.

Interesting then this morning that suddenly Mr. Smith is referring to him as "serviceable" isn’t it?

Now Toronto’s line-up (including the mid-level) could foreseeably look something like this:

PG: Jose Calderon, Roko Ukic, Marcus Banks
SG: Antoine Wright, Carlos Delfino, DeMar DeRozan,
SF: Hedo Turkoglu, Linas Kleiza, Devean George
PF: Chris Bosh, Reggie Evans, Nathan Jawai
C: Andrea Bargnani, Patrick O’Bryant

That’s a bit better isn’t it?

I plan on looking at the impact of these additions statistically once things become official but on paper, this is already a better scenario than 24 hours ago and don’t expect the Legomaster to rest on his laurels.

In fact looking at that roster, she’s a bit thin up front so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Toronto go after only one of Delfino or Kleiza, and use the rest of the mid-level on a respectable big man. (Rasho?)

I’d still like to see a bit more athleticism added into the mix and perhaps a real back-up PG, but it’s tough to complain much when Colangelo managed to rid the team of Humphries’ contract and fill some gaps all in one fell swoop.

Do I still feel that the team should have waited until next year to sign Andrea?

Yes, this is still something that I can’t understand.

With the salary cap expected to fall sharply, I’m still bewildered as to why you pay Bargs $10 Million now, when you could probably get him for half that next year? It's not like he's going to be an unrestricted free-agent so Toronto can always up the ante to match and based on the league’s financial situation, I’d fall out of my chair if that amount ended up exceeding what they’re presently paying him.

Think about this for a second.

If the cap falls down to the $50 to $53 Million range, that means everything else, mid-level included will drop. This year's restricted free-agents are having serious trouble getting the offers they feel they deserve (see Lee, Millsap and Marvin Williams) mostly because of teams tightening wallets and over-spending on unrestricted free-agents with mediocre upsides like Ben Gordon.

So how bad is it going to be next year when names like James, Wade, Nowitzki and Stoudemire could be available unrestricted?

Does anyone really think that suddenly teams are going to throw $12 Million at Bargs knowing that Toronto could look to match? That scenario hasn’t unfolded this summer with much less talent on the market so I’m not sure why things would suddenly change next summer when there’s LESS money to be had!

Both with that and the Hedo signing I really think that Bryan Colangelo is rolling the dice here but I understand that at times as a GM that’s what you’ve got to do.

Sometimes it results in an over-the-hill Jermaine O’Neal, sometimes it results in drafting Amare Stoudemire.

It’s much easier however for me to swallow said gambles when other more sure-fire pieces are put into place around these moves. The proposed Marion sign-and-trade isn’t alleviating all my concerns, but it’s certainly helping.

In fact, you could argue I think that this could be Bryan Colangelo's best trade yet, one-upping getting something for nothing in the Hoffa deal.

Again, I want to believe that BC’s big moves are indeed shrewd maneuvers that take this team to the top.

He’s made some major changes to last year’s motley crew, and now I’m just hoping for a few more Lego pieces over the next while to really get me excited about next season.

FRANCHISE