TORONTO (Ticker) - If you listen to the Toronto Raptors, all this talk about the new makeup of their roster is a bunch of Eurotrash.
Yes, the Raptors have two players from Spain, two from Slovenia and another from Italy. They have yet another who was born in America but has spent the last five seasons playing in Israel.
And all but one have been brought in by new president Bryan Colangelo, who since leaving the Valley of the Sun for the chilly shores of Lake Ontario in February has been cornering the market on players with a European pedigree.
Still, if you listen to All-Star forward Chris Bosh and coach Sam Mitchell, the notion of the Raptors being a European team is, well, a foreign one.
"I don't know European style, I don't know American style," Bosh said. "I just know basketball."
"It's not that big of a deal to us, it's really not," said Mitchell, who is from Georgia - the state, not the republic. "I think you guys make more of a deal of it than we do. We never talk about it."
They must be the only ones. Colangelo's construction project has turned the Raptors into perhaps the most intriguing team in the NBA, one that is throwing around the word "playoffs" after winning just 27 games last season.
On their roster, the Raptors have second-year point guard Jose Calderon and rookie forward Jorge Garbajosa, two key components of Spain's title team at the 2006 World Championships. They also have veteran center Rasho Nesterovic and rookie forward Uros Slokar, both of whom hail from Slovenia.
With the top overall pick in the June draft, Colangelo ignored the deep crew of American collegiate underclassmen and chose Italian 7-footer Andrea Bargnani, who has been compared to Dirk Nowitzki.
And just for good measure, Colangelo also signed guard Anthony Parker, a former first-round pick who won a pair of Euroleague MVP awards with Maccabi Tel Aviv.
"(Toronto's) a great city, has a European feel to it, great people and diversity," Parker said. "It's a great place to be."
However, despite looking European and feeling European, the Raptors will not play European - whatever that means.
"Basketball in Europe is basketball, too," Calderon said. "Here, (there is) more 1-on-1. There, more basket control. I don't know. You have to change a little bit your mind about basketball, but basketball is basketball. You have to play basketball."
Although he witnessed a heavy dose of it in the World Championships over the summer, Bosh isn't quite sure what playing European means, either.
"If that means taking advantage of what you do best, then that's running the floor, getting up and down the floor quickly, that's what we need to do," he said. "If it's passing and cutting, then that's what we need to do, that's what we'll do."
The Raptors certainly have the personnel for that. Colangelo also spent some time acquiring American players such as T.J. Ford, Fred Jones and P.J. Tucker, all of whom thrive in an up-tempo atmosphere.
Ford, acquired in the deal that sent promising forward Charlie Villanueva to Milwaukee, is perhaps the fastest player in the NBA. Jones is a former Slam Dunk champion who attacks from the wing. And Tucker is extremely athletic.
"The best thing to do in the NBA is get easy points, fast breaks," said Ford, who averaged 6.6 assists per game last season. "It's so hard to score these days in the half-court set, so the guys that we have can get out and run, shoot the ball, dunk. So this just gives us a little advantage of getting the ball out a little faster, and getting an easier basket before the defense sets up."
Add that trio to Bosh, who runs the floor as well as any power forward in the league, slasher Morris Peterson, and the European contingent that believes in people movement as well as ball movement, and the Raptors appear to have a Phoenix Suns starter kit.
"I don't follow what the other guys are trying to do; we're just trying to play the type of game that we think is going to give us the best chance to be competitive and win," Mitchell said. "We feel we have the personnel to do that and that's what we're trying to do.
"We're not trying to follow a trend of the league or pretty much trying to figure out what other teams are trying to do as far as tempo and style they're trying to play. We're trying to develop a way that we feel can be effective for us, and we think we have the personnel to play that way."
Before penciling in the Raptors for an appearance in the Eastern Conference finals, however, there are some other matters to be addressed.
Toronto was one of just four teams last season with a pair of 20-point scorers. Someone is going to have to account for the 20 points per game that came from Mike James, who left as a free agent. And that's before factoring in the 13.0 points per game that came from Villanueva.
The Raptors were 29th in defense at 104 points per game and last in opponents' field-goal percentage at 49.1 percent. It's awful hard to run when you are taking the ball out of the basket and stepping over the baseline to inbound.
Finally, the Raptors were 27th in rebound differential and steals and 28th in blocks, other factors that tend to slow down transition offense.
"We gotta be committed to it (rebounding) and obviously we need more people to do that," Mitchell said. "If our defense gets better and our rebounding gets better, we're going to have the chance to win a lot more games."
As a generalization, Europeans aren't known for their desire to mix it up in the NBA; there were none in the top 20 in rebounding last season. Although Garbajosa has a reputation for toughness, Bargnani is a face-up player and Nesterovic never has been known as a rebounder.
There are other factors, too. Garbajosa, Bargnani and Slokar come from an environment where teams play no more than two times a week, almost never on consecutive nights and almost always in the same time zone.
Contrast that with the grind of the NBA, where teams sometimes play four times in five nights in four different cities and multiple time zones. Calderon was having a fine rookie season until he admittedly gave in to fatigue and injury.
"The NBA game is hard," he said. "You get tired. Sometimes during the season you feel like your body is dead. Your body has to adjust."
Raptors fans may have to adjust as well. There has been a strong positive vibe around the team since Colangelo arrived and made the Vince Carter mess a part of history.
But the team has nine new faces, plays 18 of its first 28 games on the road and has both the coach and point guard in the final year of their contracts - not exactly a formula for success, even in the weaker Eastern Conference.
"It may take some time," said Peterson, the longest-tenured Raptor. "That's what I want the fans to understand - it's not going to happen overnight. We're moving in the right direction and we have a chance to make the playoffs."
So who are the Raptors? Colangelo's team? A European team? A running team? A playoff team? Leave it to Mitchell, one of the NBA's straight shooters, to sum it up.
"We're the Toronto Raptors," he said. "Canada's team."