According to the Toronto Sun, Raptors center Rasho Nesterovic has elected to pick up his 2008-2009 player option, which will keep him in Toronto for one more year.

Raptors centre Rasho Nesterovic exercised the player option on his contract for next season yesterday.

The 7-foot, 270-pounder averaged 7.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in 71 games last season, his second with the Raptors.

Nesterovic, who will make $8.4 million US next season, has averaged 7.0 points and 5.5 rebounds in 699 career games with Minnesota, San Antonio and Toronto.

He was a member of the Spurs’ 2005 championship team.

That’s right, Stephen A. – “Rahh-sho Ne-ster-ovic.”

The ten-year NBA veteran may not have held career averages, but his play to close out the regular season was more than a pleasant surprise. When second-year disappointment Andrea Bargnani was demoted from the starting lineup in late March, Nesterovic grasped his new opportunity with the ambition of a new man. Throughout the final 20 games of the regular season, Rasho unexpectedly held averages of 15.2 points and 6.7 rebounds per contest.

The 2008-2009 season may very well turn out to be a career-year for the Yugoslavian big man. It’ll be interesting to see if he can pick up where he left off at the back-end of this season. God knows, Toronto could use a reliable center.

Should he not appease Sam Mitchell and his coaching staff, however, Toronto may finally have a trading chip to play with. Nesterovic’s $8.4 million expiring deal will be of value around the league.

Regardless, it’s safe to say that Nesterovic is going to make Bryan Colangelo a happy man at some point.

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Posted By: Dustin Chapman

As many experts predicted, the Raptors were eliminated in the 2008 NBA Playoffs in a 5 game series against the Superman-led Orlando Magic.

It shames me to say, this is the outcome I had predicted.

If you watched any Raptors games near the end of the season, believe me you would have predicted the same thing. Our team was a disaster.

There is no excuse we can use. Chris Bosh was healthy, TJ and Jose were healthy, and all of our starters were healthy. So why were we not able to get it done in the last few games AND in the playoffs?

I blame it on a couple of things.

First of all, our coaching. I like our assistance coaches, but I hate Sam Mitchell. I hated him ever since he was hired to be a coach. Let’s face it, last year’s award he won was only given to him because of the fantastic job Colangelo had done after he came over. No matter what B.C. did, it still didn’t change the fact that Sam Mitchell can’t coach for shit. He just doesn’t know basketball like people claim he does. Unlike other former players that have become coaches who are usually guards that were smart players, Sam Mitchell was a tough and aggressive small forward, though he probably would have played power forward if he had more height.

He was a hustle player. You can’t take a hustle player and make him design plays for our team.

Mitchell is known by Raptors fans as the head coach who doesn’t know any X’s and O’s to save his life. Honestly, I think he would have better luck as a motivator than a coach, and that’s my honest opinion.

Now that we have covered dear old Sam, let’s talk about the players.

This season I have been shocked by the amount of comments our players make. With all the complaining and negativity I couldn’t believe this was a professional NBA basketball squad. Our players kept bitching and bitching about one another, though there were no direct shots, it was obvious the comments were unnecessary excuses for their poor play.

Especially Bosh, who is supposed to be the leader of this team. I understand the need to voice the concern as a team leader once or twice, but he kept going to the media like he was frequently getting picked on by bullies. Instead of complaining, why couldn’t he just keep it to himself and play better? I’m not saying he played bad but if he has so much time to pick out the whole team’s mistakes I think he being the leader of this team should pick out some of his own flaws, and improve on them so we don’t lose.

That was quite a rant. Although that still doesn’t cover everything, I’m gonna leave it like that for now, and hope you have enjoyed this update from the Raptors City Blog, blog for the Toronto Raptors.

Come back next time for our special Draft edition