T.J. Ford's next self-admitted mistake will be his first, so anyone who knows the former Raptors point guard wouldn't have expected him, upon his arrival at the Air Canada Centre last night, to offer an open-armed apology for his part in screwing up the squad last season.
But while he didn't say he was sorry, Ford did, some six months after he was dealt to the Indiana Pacers, survey his old team's troubles and make a salient point. "As you see, I wasn't the only problem," said Ford.
Considering how poorly things had been going for the home team in the lead-up to last night's Raptors-Pacers game, five straight losses and almost as many mail-in efforts, it was perhaps a little surprising to hear the crowd welcome Ford so warmly, with nary a boo raining down. Perhaps he wasn't heckled out of joint because, when you glimpse the Raptors roster today, Ford embodies so many of the qualities that are desperately lacking in the local sub-.500 heroes.
Maybe folks are a little wistful at his memory, even if he was a chief source of chemistry-killing locker-room friction last season, when he refused to play nicely as a backup to Jose Calderon - this after Calderon lifted the team during Ford's absence with a career-threatening injury. Where is Toronto's quicker-than-average perimeter player who can break down a defence, create a shot, push a tempo? There isn't a reliable one currently residing in the 416.
And maybe, too, the rabble knows better than to berate a welcome guest, a rare sub-.500 opponent in a tough early season slog. The Raptors won a matchup they were supposed to win last night, 101-88. And the point guards weren't an especially riveting part of the game story, although Calderon's 14 assists outdid Ford's tally by 10 which, for a night, underlined the team-running steadiness in which the Raptors invested.
Still, you can't talk about this team's recent history without revisiting the saga of the doomed platoon, which was broken up by the deal that brought Jermaine O'Neal to Toronto and sent Ford, Rasho Nesterovic and the draft pick that became Roy Hibbert to Indy. Neither player has been as efficient since the split. And Ford's sordid road - his struggles with injuries related to his congenital narrowing of the spine and his unrepentant intractability - runs parallel to Toronto's descent from the hope of a 47-win campaign two seasons ago to its current directionless malaise.
What went wrong last year, in Ford's retelling?
"We just didn't have the same bond, same chemistry, for some strange reason," he said.
Calderon maintains there was never any friction between the point guards, and the reasons for the discord, all of them, may never publicly emerge. What we do know is Ford's one-time tightness with Chris Bosh is no longer. ("I haven't spoken to (Bosh) since the playoffs," said Ford, who, in his closest contact with his old friend last night, took a hit to the face that didn't draw a whistle but saw Ford shaken up and removed from the game for a spell).
What we do know is that Sam Mitchell, the coach who was replaced by Jay Triano last week, isn't Ford's esteemed mentor. While Ford wouldn't speak the name of the person he called last season's "main problem," he inferred it was a certain former bench boss now collecting cheques from the Atlanta suburbs. The Raptors, after getting Triano his first official win on their fourth try, can only hope he's right.
"I'm not a guy to point fingers," said Ford, laughing, and certainly not at the self-realization that, whenever anything went wrong on his watch in Raptorland, he was the first to point a finger at any jersey but his own. "I may end up with these guys (again). This is the NBA. It recycles. Sam may be my coach again. You never know."
