Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo announced Wednesday that Sam Mitchell had been fired. (More golf shats!) Here’s what they’re saying out in the ether about the NBA’s latest head coaching casualty …

Raptors Republic:
"Your opinion of Sam may differ with others but there is one fact you
cannot ignore: his X’s and O’s were very weak and his resource
utilization was very poor. Sam was a reactionary coach and never
managed to successfully outsmart any other coach in a playoff or
regular season series. The gamble of starting Bargnani at the SF
position against Orlando was a suspect decision that arguably cost us
the series. His situational play-calling was poor and his substitution
patterns extremely suspect and he alone cost us at least 5 wins last
season."

BlogTO: "The reality though is that Colangelo has put together a team that’s not nearly as good as he thinks it is. He let one of their best bench players, Carlos Delfino, sign overseas at the end of last season, and failed to find a decent back up point guard or veteran character guys outside of the injury-prone Jermaine O’Neal that would help with team chemistry."

Tom Ziller, FanHouse: "If you took a time machine to 2005 when Colangelo took Toronto’s reigns, and you said Smitch — the antithesis of the prototypical Colangelo coach — would be around until December 2008, we would have all called you crazy. (I mean, you have a time machine and you’re worried about the Toronto Raptors coaching job? Weirdo.) Mitchell stuck around longer than he had any business to, and he’ll get another job. Hopefully his next gig will have a team that better fits his persona/philosophy (smashmouth, defensive basketball)."

David Aldridge, NBA.com: "’This team’s a lot better than an 8-9 record,’ Colangelo said during a late afternoon teleconference. ‘Despite the criticism of this roster, this is a roster that was put together on a consensus basis…you might look back at last season, and the games, a series of games, where we underachieved. Expectations were high.’ Of equal concern in Toronto is how the franchise is progressing between now and the summer of 2010, when franchise player Chris Bosh becomes a free agent. The Raptors, according to a source, were concerned that a poor playoff performance this season — or missing the postseason altogether — was unacceptable when they only have 18 months to convince Bosh to stay in Canada. The Raptors have been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs each of the past two years. ‘How bad would (missing the playoffs) be?,’ the source asked."

Hardwood Paroxysm: "What to say about Sam Mitchell. Well, I don’t think he’s necessarily a bad coach. I mean, he’s not terrible. That’s all I’ve got. But he was never Colangelo’s choice to run the team, and to say that they were at odds would be putting it lightly. Maybe Smitch could’ve done better if he was in a position to succeed, with a likeminded front office and a handpicked roster. Or maybe he’s an unimaginative mule who refused to budge and compromise to come to terms with the roster he had. Whatever, it’s in the past. I’m sure Smitch will get another chance at the head coaching thing, with this strange inbred cesspool of recycled head coaches that we have."

Celtics Blog: "Whether or not Mitchell was the cause of the problems thus far this season in Toronto is debatable, and perhaps that debate will be affected by what the future holds for the Raps.  For now, however, it appeared the Raptors’ front office decided that someone needed to take a fall for the team’s uneven 8-9 start out of the gate this season.  As is often the case in pro sports, it tends to be a lot easier to remove the coach than to change the on-court personnel (plus, changing the players is often seen as an implicit admission of fault on the part of the general manager)."

Commenter "Hollywood Gino", RaptorsTalk: "It really was only a matter
of time. When Bosh was frustrated and did not join his team in a
timeout a week or so ago the writing was on the wall."

Raptors Republic: "Possible coaching candidates: Avery Johnson, Flip Saunders, Ettore Messina, Jeff van Gundy, Mark Jackson, Eddie Jordan, PJ Carlesimo, Dell Harris, Tom Thibodeau … I think the next coach needs to have some experience so that there’s no on-the-job training and more importantly so that he can command the immediate respect of the players. We have a few veterans on this team that need to buy into the system we’re running and if players are iffy about what they’re doing on the basketball court, they’ll never perform up to their effort or talent levels. Look at Doc Rivers as an example, he’s gotten the Celtics to buy into defense, we need a coach who can sell the team something they feel enthusiastic and passionate about. ‘More Shats’ wasn’t good enough, we need to set tangible, definable and realistic goals about what this team can do on the court and then go about achieving them in a systematic manner. This team needs to find an identity and stick with it, be about something specific rather than hand-wave about different basketball ideologies and achieve nothing in the process."

A poem from White Chocolate Blog: "Oh the things that we’ll miss / Sam I’ll make a list / Your Snarl and your wit / You never took shhh / You were grumpy and sad / Most days you were mad / When the team wasn’t hot / You’d say they didn’t make "Shaats" …

Oh, what the hell, here’s one more Samuel poem via Pete Marasmitch.

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