Toronto GM Bryan Colangelo has had a rough few months. Recently, he took a shot at Chris Bosh and implied that he quit on the team late in the season.

Hedo Turkoglu is no fan of Colangelo, and he had a few choice words about the situation:

“People have to realize something is wrong with that organization and nobody wants to go there any more,” he said in a phone interview from Turkey, where he is captaining the Turkish national team at the World Championships. “It’s not just the players who see this.”

“It’s funny that people will talk behind your back,” Turkoglu said of Colangelo. “If he was feeling this way, why not have the guts to say it during the season? Why not say it to Chris? Now that Chris has left, it’s not nice to say those things.

“Chris has been a franchise player and he did a lot of good things for the Raptors,” Turkoglu added. “I don’t think Chris is the type of player to quit on his teammates.”

Remember, Turkoglu was the one who agreed to terms with the Blazers last summer and then changed his mind because he wanted to play in the more cosmopolitan city of Toronto. So he’s a little flaky in his own right.

Still, the Raptors are a mess. Given his recent track record, I wonder how long they’ll keep Colangelo around.

Chris Bosh responded to claims made by embattled Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo that he ‘checked out’ at the end of the season.

Here’s exactly what Colangelo said, via the Toronto Sun:

“Despite limited swelling and any excessive damage on an MRI, he felt like he needed to sit for six more games … I’m not even questioning Chris’ injury. I’m telling you he was cleared to play subject to tolerance on his part, and the tolerance just apparently wasn’t there and he chose not to play,” Colangelo said.

“The fact that our season was spiralling downward and we were hoping he’d come back sooner and we were also dealing with a few other things at that point … we were really struggling there.”

“Whether he was mentally checked out or just wasn’t quite into it down the stretch, he wasn’t the same guy. I think everybody saw that, but no one wanted to acknowledge it.”

Colangelo is acting like a jilted lover and is trying to cover his own ass. He could have traded Bosh last summer or at the February deadline and gotten something in return, whether it be someone like Joakim Noah from the Bulls or maybe David Lee from the Knicks. His defenders say that no team would have traded for Bosh not knowing if he’d re-sign, but I think both Chicago and New York (or L.A., Oklahoma City or Houston, or any number of teams) would have rolled the dice to get the opportunity to re-sign him to a max deal, since that was reportedly what he was after. (Before you Raptor fans start slamming me for speculating, do you really think the Lakers would have turned down a Bosh-for-Bynum deal in the middle of last season? Really? Go and look at yourself in the mirror — do you really believe that?)

Granted, the Raptors were fighting for a playoff spot at the time, so had Colangelo made the trade, his fan base might have revolted. But that’s only because they didn’t see the writing on the wall.

Bosh (sort of) responded to Colangelo’s allegations in an interview with Sportsnet.ca:

“No, at any time, did I ever give up,” Bosh told Sportsnet. “You know, I take that very seriously. I work hard every time I step on the court — practice, games, shoot-around, whatever you want to say — I take this job seriously and I take my effort on the court seriously.

“I play this game as hard as I can every time I step on the court. On the back of my jersey, it says Bosh,” the 26-year-old forward continued. “The Boshs are hard workers. We have a lot of pride in what we do in our jobs and in life. There was no time, at any time, that I ever stepped on the court — in my NBA career, in my life — and stop playing hard or give up.”

Bosh is talking about his on-court effort while Colangelo accused him of packing it up early when he was injured. Those are two different things. I’d like to hear Bosh answer questions about his injury.

He also asked Toronto fans not to boo him when he comes back to play.

Yeah, right.

John Hollinger didn’t use the I-word, but he blasted the Toronto front office for not understanding the basic rules of the salary cap with regard to the Matt Barnes Debacle.

The whole Matt Barnes saga was jaw-dropping: It appears both Barnes’ agent and the Raptors’ front office leaked to the media that Barnes would sign a two-year, $9 million deal with the Raptors in a sign-and-trade — in fact, every major outlet reported it.

Only one problem: The deal wasn’t even remotely legal under the salary-cap rules, revealing a shocking ignorance of a very important piece of the business on the part of NBA professionals.

Look, this is pretty basic stuff. I’ve seen stories suggesting this was some inscrutable piece of salary-cap arcana, and it’s just not true. For starters, a sign-and-trade deal has to be at least three years. Has to. That’s not a difficult rule to understand. I’m pretty sure all of you got it immediately. That’s why every single sign-and-trade deal that any of these guys has ever done has been for at least three years. You’d think they’d at least know from experience. But right there, much energy was spent negotiating a deal that couldn’t happen.

Second, Orlando couldn’t sign-and-trade Barnes under those terms. He had no Bird rights because he had played only one year on his current contract; the most he could be offered by the Magic this season was about $1.9 million. Again, this isn’t some obscure footnote; it comes up every single year because so much of the league’s rank and file are on one-year deals.

Finally, Orlando could have re-signed Barnes using its midlevel exception, except that (A) the Magic had already used it, and (B) you can’t do a sign-and-trade using the midlevel exception. Toronto couldn’t use its midlevel on Barnes either, since it had already been bestowed on Linas Kleiza.

In a nutshell, the deal had to be a sign-and-trade for at least three years, starting at no more than $1.9 million a year, or it couldn’t happen. This was obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the salary-cap rules. That it wasn’t to the two parties involved is disturbing.

In defense of Toronto and Bryan Colangelo, Hollinger said himself that he didn’t know for sure who leaked the information about Barnes’ supposed deal, though Barnes himself was confident enough about the signing that he even tweeted the news on his feed. So the deal must have progressed at least that far without Toronto realizing that it was an impossible trade to make.

Based on what I’ve seen of Colangelo’s work in Toronto, I’m not a fan. T.J. Ford, Jermaine O’Neal, Shawn Marion — none of those acquisitions worked out. The Turkoglu signing was a moderate disaster and he mishandled/misread Chris Bosh’s situation over the course of the season. He did end up getting a couple of (very late, by the look of it) first round picks and a big trade exception from Miami as part of the Bosh sign-and-trade that could turn into something, but it’s pretty obvious now that the Raptors should have traded Bosh before February’s trade deadline in order to get a good prospect out of the deal. Who knows — maybe the Raptors would be sitting on Andrew Bynum or Derrick Favors (via the Nets’ first round pick) had they shopped Bosh earlier in the year.

Hindsight is 20/20, but one wonders what the team would look like now if the Raptors had drafted Brandon Roy in 2006 instead of Andrea Bargnani. Bargnani is developing and offers some hope for the future, but Roy and Bosh would have been devastating in the pick-and-pop. Instead, Colangelo drafted a power forward to play alongside his best player, who was also a power forward.

Again, a number of teams passed on Roy that night, but still, what if…

It’s a spoof of Dan Gilbert’s letter. Pretty funny.