By Walter Dubowec

Three things the Raptors will do without this summer are (1) a draft pick (2) a summer league team and (3) a summer Charity Game. I can’t remember a summer without not one or two, but without all three.

Looking forward to the NBA draft, checking out the performance of our young stars in Summer League and watching a high-scoring exhibition game at the ACC in July have been three off-season staples for hard core Raptors fans.

Come to think of it, it’s not like Summer League was ever very exciting. For every highlight like Bargnani's 20 point effort, we had to deal with many more lowlights like Hoffa’s 10 foul game. Other than that, the anticipation of catching a couple of Summer League games always was greater than actually seeing what amounted to very poor, ragged basketball.

                    
                   Raptor First Round Picks In Summer League Play- One Good, One Not So Good

Who could forget stellar rosters like the 2002 squad which included the likes of:

Michael Bradley
Maceo Baston
Derrick Dial
DeeAndre Hulett
Jermaine Jackson
Yogi Stewart
Olden Polynice

And those were the good players that summer!

In fact, the only thing worse than Summer League were the so-called NBA Charity Classics at the ACC. Classics was a term used loosely. These games were a tradition started by Vince Carter and carried on last year by Steve Nash. Honestly, these games proved to be a terrific disappointment. Half of the supposed stars were no-shows, so we ended up watching a bunch of Raptors who were in town for Caribana weekend join the likes of Shammond Williams, Janero Pargo, Mateen Cleaves and Milt Palacio.

Last year’s no-shows included Allen Iverson, Rafer Alston, Ricky Davis, Marquis Daniels and Stephen Hunter. Nonetheless, it was all for charity so that’s all good. This summer, Steve Nash takes his Charity Game to the West Coast which leaves the ACC empty. Chris Bosh was a logical choice to pick up the tradition, but his summer commitments to USA Basketball made it too difficult.

Oh well, we will have to do without a summer basketball game with a final score of somewhere around 180 to 175. Can’t say we’re really missing much.

That leaves us with the dilemma of no first or second round draft pick for 2007. Hopefully, Bryan Colangelo can work some of his ‘magic’ at the pre-draft camps in Orlando and convince a team to part with a draft pick so that Toronto Raptor fans have something to look forward to this summer.

Otherwise, Raptor fans may just have to wait until training camp opens in Europe next fall.  Ouch.