It wasn’t a pretty season for the Raptors, as the team never recovered from a 1-15 start, but it wasn’t a total loss from a fantasy perspective. Sam Mitchell couldn’t get his guys to play defense and they stopped trying toward the end of the season, and the Raptors ended up as the fourth highest scoring team in the league. That made unlikely fantasy stars out of perennial waiver wire bait such as Mike James and Morris Peterson, rookie Charlie Villanueva, and it helped Chris Bosh rise to the upper echelon of fantasy stars. With former Suns mastermind Bryan Colangelo on board as the new GM, expect more offensive fireworks. This team has few established NBA players outside of Bosh and Peterson, so expect those two to continue to shoulder the load, and look for some others, such as Fred Jones, Anthony Parker or Andrea Bargnani, to emerge as the season progresses.

The Stud: Chris Bosh, FC
Last preseason I was skeptical that Bosh would make the leap to superstar in just his third season. I suspected it would take one more year for him to reach level. I was wrong. Bosh turned in a fabulous campaign that was marred only by a thumb injury that ended his season 12 games early. That’s an injury that shouldn’t linger – the Raptors were basically playing it safe with their franchise player – so there’s really nothing not to live – no, nothing not to love about Bosh going into this year. He’s drastically improved in each of his three seasons, notching huge gains in FG% and scoring rates, and he’s young enough to keep getting better. He’s the rare center-eligible player who is clearly his team’s top scoring option (and makes 80% of his free throws). He plays for a high scoring team that is likely to run even more this year. Besides that thumb injury he’s proven to be very durable. If you’re looking for weaknesses, it would be nice if he blocked more shots and could average 10 boards per game consistently, but that’s nitpicking. Bosh is no longer a superstar in the making – he is a superstar. Like the player he’s long been compared to, Kevin Garnett, he won’t pour in 40 points with regularity like other top picks, but at just 22 years old he’s already just about as consistent as they come. There’s not much difference between Bosh and Yao. We’d still lean towards taking Yao first, but Bosh should be gone within the first 15 picks of your draft.

The Support: Morris Peterson, GF
Just when we all gave up on MoPete, he comes through with a stellar season that saw him finish 41/59 on the player rater. Until last year Peterson’s durability was his strongest asset. Playing in 82 games helped him finish the year with a respectable rank on the player rater, but that didn’t always mean he was worth having in your lineup on a day-to-day basis. That changed last year, especially after the all-star break when the Raptors shortened their rotation, gave up playing defense and engaged in shootouts every night. Peterson averaged a staggering 43.1 mpg in 29 post-ASB games last year. Even guys like Jared Jeffries, Quinton Ross and Jason Collins would have value with that many minutes. OK, not Jason Collins. MoPete averaged 20.7/4.5/2.8 with 2.5 3s and 1.3 steals in those contests, as he and Mike James just went crazy, especially with Bosh missing those last dozen games. Look closely, though, and not much changed at all in Peterson’s game, except he launched more 3s. All of his percentages and rates were right around his career norms. It’s all about getting that bump from 30.6 mpg to 38.3 mpg. Hey, have we ever mentioned how minutes is the most important stat in fantasy basketball? Oh, we mention it all the time? Well, here’s why. Peterson enters the season as Toronto’s clear #2 scoring option and it’s scary to say this, but he makes a very solid mid-round selection.

The Supporting Support: T.J. Ford, PG
Ford got off to an extremely quick start last year, winning player of the week honors early on, but before a very strong finish he was struggling to even offer value as a PG3. But let’s not be too negative – it was great to see Ford back and fairly effective after missing an entire year. He improved his shooting from 38% to 42%, showed a much better knack for getting the ball in the basket and even connected on 35 3s after hitting only 5 in his rookie season. But his assist rate plummeted from 9.7 p40 to 7.4 p40, his steals remained average for his position and he still turned the ball over quite a bit. The Raptors gave up a possible all-star to get Ford, so expect him to get every chance to show he was worth it, which could help his value. He’s a worthy starter in almost all leagues, we just don’t particularly like PGs who aren’t especially helpful in two of the three main PG categories.

The Sleeper: Jose Calderon, PG
We’re still not ready to take the injury-risk tag off Ford, so that means Calderon has some nice sleeper value, as he would step in as the starting PG should Ford go down. The two are actually very similar players for fantasy purposes – point guards who don’t really shoot 3s, are merely average in steals, but can rack up the assists when things are going well. Calderon had a slightly better assist rate than Ford last year, while turning the ball over less frequently. He didn’t show much scoring ability, and doesn’t seem likely to be very good in any category other than assists. But you know that if a PG gets 35 mpg he’s going to have some value, so that’s why Calderon is worth watching. We expect him to make some appearances in As the Point Guard Turns this season.

The Slacker: Rasho Nesterovic, C
Another one of those guys who someone will draft in the very late rounds because they need a center and they see that Nesterovic had the most blocks of any of the remaining centers left, so why not? Here’s why not – he stinks. Cross out that 02-03 season with the Wolves when he averaged 11.2 and 6.6 with 1.5 blocks on 53% shooting. He got his $42 million after that, he never needs to do that again, so he definitely won’t. Nesterovic is a solid shot blocker and rebounder, and should be able to give the Raptors 20 or so decent minutes in the middle, but he’s very unlikely to be worthy of a starting slot in fantasy leagues, even if he’s the starter. You can – and should – do much better for your C2 slot. If you draft Nesterovic there, expect to stay very busy on the waiver wire all year.

Double Dribbles: Fred Jones isn’t anything special, but he can put up numbers when given the minutes. Which makes him similar to about 87% of other swingmen in the NBA, but still. He stepped up for the Pacers in the Malice the Palace fallout, averaging 16.1 ppg in nine contests he started after the brawl. He might very well get the chance to see 30 mpg with the Raptors, which would give him borderline fantasy value … John Hollinger expects big things from #1 pick Andrea Bargnani, therefore we expect big things from him. Just not right away. Andrew Bogut was the previous #1 pick, and he was thought to be as well-polished as could be, and he checked in at #104 on the player rater last year. So temper your expectations, at least early on, but Bargnani … We won’t pretend to know much about Anthony Parker, but he might get an opportunity to battle Fred Jones for serious minutes. We just worry that he’ll have a tough time adjusting to the NBA like another former Maccabi Tel Aviv star, Sarunas Jasikevicius … Darrick Martin is the brother of a former intern of mine (yes, I have interns!). She gets free tickets to lots of games. That makes me jealous. That is all. What, you weren’t expecting me to say anything about Martin having any fantasy value, were you?