Doug Smith: Raptors mailbag: Is it time to find a replacement for Jakob Poeltl? - Toronto Star

In this week's mailbag, Doug Smith takes questions on Kawhi Leonard's status, the ideal NBA arena, early takeaways and much more.

Doug Smith is a sports reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on BlueSky: @smithraptorsbeat.bsky.social.

A nice full, varied Ye Olde Mailbag makes it feel a bit like the olden days here.

Thanks for that and enjoy while I’m trying to figure out what time it really is, after going three hours west but gaining one on the time change.

Hi, Doug. In the last mailbag, a contributor pointed out the fact that France had surpassed Canada as far as the country with the most NBA players outside the U.S. By the way, a couple of Canadians on the Wizards are not listed as Canadian on the NBA players page, so I think Canada is still very slightly ahead. But when you look at the list of players from France and Canada side by side there is one thing that really stands out, and that’s height and weight.

It would appear that France has more top-quality big men than they know what to do with, and that Canada has more top-quality guards and wings than we know what to do with. I could extend this observation as well to European versus Canadian (NBA and EuroLeague) players as well. Aside from two or three “still developing” Swede, Spaniard or Lithuanian guards in the NBA, it seems like Europe can’t produce quality backcourt players unlike the rest of the world, and that Canada (aside from Zach Edey) can’t produce top-notch centres like the rest of world.

A quick glance at the rosters of the 20 EuroLeague clubs will show mostly guards from North and South America as well as naturalized Americans or player of European background who grew up in the U.S., but very few from even the Balkan and Baltic basketball-crazy countries.

How can you explain the very large discrepancy? Why can’t Europe produce guards? Why are there so relatively few Canadian big men? 

I honestly think the only explanation is that things are cyclical and this is the cycle we’re in.

Plus, I’m not sure saying Europe can’t produce guards and Canada fails at producing bigs is historically correct. Maybe now, but not always.

Europe’s had great guards like Tony Parker, Šarunas Marciulionis, our own José Calderón, Dennis Schröder, Ricky Rubio and that’s not even mentioning Luka Doncic. And for years, Canada’s main export was bigs — Bill Wennington, Todd MacCulloch, Joel Anthony, Mike Smrek — and we couldn’t develop a guard.

I presume it will shift back the other way in time.

There is one constant, though. An NBA coach working with the Chinese program from years leading up to and including the Yao Ming era once said to me, with frustration and truthfully: “A billion people, can’t find a point guard.”

Raptors fans will be forced to go to a streaming site instead of turning to Sportsnet or TSN to watch the games.