Empty the Bench

We interrupt your normal NBA playoff programming for the following announcement: Toronto Raptors PG Jose Calderon has had it up here with coming off the bench. As a soon-to-be restricted free agent, he also wants a significant raise in salary. And as a little icing on his homemade cake of discontent, it sounds like he’s been daydreaming about choking T.J. Ford.

“I would like to start and that’s the most important thing,” Calderon is quoted as saying in yesterday’s edition of the Spanish daily sports newspaper El Mundo Deportivo, a sentiment he first shared with visitors to his website. “I’ve been two years with [Ford] but I don’t know if I could be another year because things would have to change.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but midway through the season Calderon voluntarily surrendered his starting position to Ford, who’d grown a little bitchy about his role as a reserve. At the time I thought that maybe this spoke volumes about the Spaniard’s competitiveness—or more specifically the lack of it—but maybe there was something else behind it. Was Ford becoming too much of a cancerous malcontent? Was Calderon simply taking one for the team in the name of padding Ford’s ego? I pose these as questions because I really don’t know (and am not trying to pull a Peter Vecsey by stating conjecture as fact), but there was clearly something going on there behind the scenes.

Jose Calderon Photo Credit: Icon SMI

Here’s what I do know, however: as a starter, the 26-year-old Calderon averaged 13 points, 9.1 assists, 53% FG, 1.2 steals, and 1.2 triples. All of those numbers dropped off a cliff once he stepped aside for Ford. Comparatively, Ford put up 14 points, 7.4 assists, 51% FG, and 1.2 steals/per. In other words, there’s not too much of a dropoff between the two. Ford is quicker and plays the passing lanes better on defense, while Calderon is steadier, a deadlier perimeter threat, and less injury-prone.

In an ideal world, the Raptors figure out how to make this combo work; Ford is still on the books for a guaranteed $16.5 million over the next two seasons, with a player option for another $8.5 in 2010. He’s not going anywhere. If the Raptors decide the two can’t coexist, Calderon is clearly the more tradeable asset. But if/when they go that route, they’re stuck with a point guard in Ford who’s always one bad fall away from missing a lot of time. Good luck figuring this one out, Bryan Colangelo.

Related: Jose Calderon, T.J. Ford, Toronto Raptors