Big Impact: Jose Calderon

Jose Calderon may seem like an insignificant piece of the Rudy Gay trade, but I'm here to tell you hes not. As much as the Toronto Raptors have been tough to watch the past few years, they have always had a couple of interesting players I keep my eye on(most notably Ed Davis and DeMar DeRozan ).  Most games would consist of horrible rebounding, forced off balance shots and easy layups for the opposition, there was one bright spot,  Calderon . Always in control and efficient , he seemingly was the driving force in keeping the Raptors close through the first half or sometimes the 3rd Quarter. A great outside shooter with even better vision and passing ability, Jose was the unsung hero of a miserable team and was mostly cast off as part of the problem by people that only check box scores and look at the standings.

Another team I had taken interest in(yes, I do waste a lot of time watching pointless games) was the Detroit Pistons. They also had some interesting young pieces and I found myself rooting for them this season. The feeling I got as Andre Drummond's ability slowly developed and came into focus was that they have the front court of a 7 or 8 seed eastern conference team, but the selfish, schizophrenic  backcourt that will keep them in the lottery. Nothing personal against Brandon Knight, I love his natural skill, but I think he needs some more time to develop and was cast into far more responsibility than he could handle.  Both he and Stucky have more bad shooting nights than good and don't have the control over the team that a PG of a playoff team would. I left it at that and stopped watching them, I paid attention to Drummond's quietly exciting rookie season off the bench  through the box scores and was left wondering what the Pistons were gonna do with their top 15 pick next year.

Then, it happened... the Pistons traded for the perfect piece. After I was done patting myself on the back for diagnosing the Pistons problem and being on the same page as them, I became excited.  If they aren't to proud and allow Jose to shift into the starting lineup, they can make a playoff run. Losing Prince will certainly hurt, but with Monroe and the budding star Drummond down low, they have a shot to grab the 8 seed.