A few little things that have come up because it’s early, there wasn’t much sleep and my mind isn’t fully engaged quite yet.

Deal?

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Doesn’t take an awful lot of time to ferret out of bit of news during a visit to the NBA final, even if it isn’t done deal at the moment.

According to a couple of people I spoke to last night, the Raptors truly are looking at former players at to add to Dwane Casey’s staff in some capacity and an interesting name popped up:

Jerry Stackhouse.

The former player has already been in Toronto to chat with Raptors officials as the search for people to replace the departed Bill Bayno and Tom Sterner.

It’s not a done deal by any stretch, I was cautioned, but there is a Dallas connection between Stackhouse and Casey and Stackhouse strikes me as just the kind of tough, “I don’t give a crap” kind of long-serving former player who might be able to show the likes of DeMar DeRozan and Terrence Ross some tricks of the trade.

Now, others told me last night that Stackhouse is “one of a few” guys the Raptors have talked to – I bet more names come out the longer a group of former players, coaches, writers and friends chats at something like a final series – but it does at least show what I thought the Raptors needed on the staff, a former player not far removed from playing who could garner the respect in the locker room that’s needed.

There is also no real rush to get the coaching staff filled out but sooner rather than later might be a good idea. You’d certainly expect the full staff in place before the Summer League season arrives, though.

Because part of the Vegas trip will include workouts with current veteran Raptors before summer league begins and because assistants tend to spread out during July and August to work individually with players, having everyone on board makes sense.

Again, I’m not sure Stackhouse is a lock but he’s definitely on the roster.

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Heard about this somewhere and it totally works, no?

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Okay, it’s like 7 a.m. there, I’ll be done this in a while and don’t have to go to practice until 11 a.m. The afternoon should come a bit open so please get some mail in so I can do it and not have to get up at some ungodly hour tomorrow to finish it.

It’s askdoug@thestar.ca and my goal is to get tomorrow’s done today and Sunday’s done tomorrow so all I have to do is stagger up and post it rather than think on either morning.

Thanks.

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So Adam Silver does his annual “Commish Looks At The League” thing before Game 1 and there’s really only one snippet of news that would be of burning interest to Raptors fans.

You know how they keep winning the Atlantic Division and that’s guaranteed them a Top 4 seed? Those days may soon be gone, according to Silver.

“We are very focused on the divisional seeding process, and I think we are going to take a very close look at whether we should seed at least one through eight by conference as opposed to giving the division winner that higher seed.

So that is something we are taking a close look at that, and we may change that fairly quickly. As I've said earlier, that is a vestige of a division system that may not make sense anymore.”

It hasn’t had an impact on Toronto yet – they were going to be seeded higher than Washington and Brooklyn by record the last two years regardless – but it some day might.

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One thing Silver did basically rule out was seeding playoff teams league-wide one through 16, citing early-round cross-continent travel that may wear down teams needlessly. This year, for instance, it would have been Golden State-Boston in the first round and asking the team with the league’s best record to fly across North America to play a first-round series makes no sense.

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Here’s our luck

Two nights without a game out here and the Giants are away. Too bad because that looks like a great park and while it’s nice to know they’re home next weekend if we have to come back for Game 5, if Kyrie Irving is out (we’ll learn a bit more on that in a few hours), I don’t see us coming back for Game 5.

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One thing about being out here these days?

Whenever you turn over in the middle of the night and can’t sleep you can flip on the TV and see tennis. Not that I’m a huge tennis fan but the semis and final of a Grand Slam are usually pretty compelling enough that being able to see them makes up for ridiculous sleep patterns.

Go Tsonga!

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We’ve been remiss in bringing this up as often as we should have in this space but the women’s basketball team is having a pretty solid run through Europe on its exhibition tour.

Canada ran its record to 4-1 with one game remaining by grinding out a win over Italy yesterday.

The results don’t mean an awful lot given that they are just exhibition games and the Canadian team is missing a couple of players and the Europeans are looking toward EuroBasket rather than this tour but winning always beats losing.

After they get done with the tour today, the women get a bit a break before the real season begins with the Pan Am Games and then the biggie, the Olympic qualifier out in Edmonton.

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Anyone know a sports bar in San Fran that might be showing Canada-China from the women’s World Cup tomorrow?

Thanks.

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