TORONTO - Nearly eight years ago, the Raptors took a low-risk chance on an intriguing prospect out of Texas when they used a second-round draft pick to select the position-less P. Cheap Nike Shoes From China .J. Tucker. Tucker, a 6-foot-5, 225-pound bull, had the build of a power forward trapped in the frame of a shooting guard. By all accounts he was a misfit, destined to end up in the leagues scrapheap with the vast majority of its second-rounders. During his rookie season, Tucker played 21 games for Toronto, bouncing back and forth from the D-League before he was waived by the team less than a year into his NBA journey. After playing in six countries over the next five years, Tucker returned to the league and put up career-highs as a 28-year-old starting for the Phoenix Suns last season. The league has changed and, as a result, so has the need for players that are able to easily adapt. Enter Iowa State senior and Toronto-native Melvin Ejim, who is hoping to hear his named called sometime during the second round in this months draft. Like Tucker and many talented prospects before him, Ejim has been labeled a "tweener" - a hybrid player stuck in between positions as a result of size, strength or skill set. For a long time, the term carried a negative connotation in NBA circles. Who will he defend? How does he fit in? Now its become the norm. Tweeners, combo guards, stretch fours. As teams continue to challenge the defence with smaller, quicker lineups, the NBA is evolving into a league void of prototypical positions. On Thursday, the Miami Heat will begin their pursuit of a third consecutive title led by LeBron James, perhaps the most unique basketball player weve ever seen, capable of playing and guarding four or five positions on the floor at a high level. Last week, Oklahoma City was eliminated in the Western Conference Finals with three point guards on the court together down the stretch of Game 6. The team that ousted them and Miamis opponent in the Finals, the Spurs possess the versatility to match up with almost any style of play, thanks in large part to their versatile wings - Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green and Boris Diaw. Ultimately, what position you play is less important than the underlying question - can you play? At 6-foot-6, 220 pounds, Ejim is confident that theres a place for him and his well-rounded game on an NBA team. "I think it depends on how you look at the word tweener," he said following Wednesday mornings pre-draft workout in the Raptors practice facility at the Air Canada Centre. "If you see it as a valuable thing, then I think that I bring a lot of stuff. I think that Im a small forward and I bring versatility to be able to defend bigger guys, I have a strong body that can do a lot of things defensively. Then offensively [Im] versatile, can shoot the ball and play inside and out. And if you dont consider those good things, then I guess tweeners a bad thing." Ejim, the Big 12 Conference player of the year, has fully embraced his basketball identity. "Its better than being called a glue guy," he said of the tweener label. "Ive yet to see anyone say, yo, youre a tweener, we dont really do tweeners over here," Ejim joked. "And honestly, its not even about being a tweener, its about being a player. If youre somebody that can go out and play basketball on different levels and play at different positions, then youre valuable, youre a good player." Following Tuesdays auditions, a pair of combo guards, Jordan Clarkson and Nick Johnson - also expected to go in the second round - echoed a similar sentiment. Versatility will also be a valuable commodity when the Raptors make their first-round selection at pick no. 20. UCLAs Kyle Anderson is a point guard in a 6-foot-9 body, athletic Clemson product K.J. McDaniels can defend multiple positions, while NC States T.J. Warren projects as a versatile and unconventional scorer. All three wing players are expected to workout in Toronto later this week. "Its almost a positive in todays game," said Dan Tolzman, director of scouting for the Raptors. "You want the flexibility that if a team goes big against you, you have the ability to just shift guys over a spot and keep your best players out there. I think the same goes the other way. If guys go small, youd like to have perimeter players that can bang down low and can rebound hard when youre in a small ball game. I think its just the progression of the game." Working out alongside fellow Canadian Khem Birch, a Montreal-native out of UNLV, Ejim impressed the Raptors, not only with his versatility and commitment to defence but with his approach, maturity and professionalism. "He came in [wearing] slacks and a nice button-down shirt," Tolzman said of Ejim. "He looked like he was coming to an interview and I think that clearly it resonates with us because this is a professional job interview for these guys." With a couple second-round picks at 37 and 59, the Raptors could consider selecting the hometown product, who would be a welcomed addition within Dwane Caseys system. Although his skill set continues to fly under the radar in a talented, wing-heavy draft class, its not hard to envision him catching on with a team and working his way into a rotation, not unlike Tucker in Phoenix. "His niche in my opinion will be as a defensive player," Tolzman said. "Hes a strong defender and I think the level of intensity he plays with bodes well for guys that focus on defence because when they give their all, they impact the game somehow, even if their shots not there." Fake Nike Shoes From China . New York then missed its next six shots and scored only two points the rest of the night. The Los Angeles Clippers defence and the Knicks general ineptitude both played a role in the unsurprising finish to a meeting of two teams headed in opposite directions. Wholesale Nike Shoes From China . Pedroia reached the milestone with a little panache, hitting a grand slam in the sixth inning and propelling the Boston Red Sox to a 7-1 win over the Oakland Athletics on Friday night. https://www.nikeshoeschina.us/ . -- Theres been so much talk about Mike Moustakas at the plate that the third baseman ignored the conversation Wednesday -- even after doing something positive.The name of a certain pro football team in Washington, D.C., has inspired protests, hearings, editorials, lawsuits, letters from Congress, even a presidential nudge. Yet behind the headlines, its unclear how many Native Americans think "Redskins" is a racial slur. Perhaps this uncertainty shouldnt matter — because the word has an undeniably racist history, or because the team says it uses the word with respect, or because in a truly decent society, some would argue, what hurts a few should be avoided by all. But the thoughts and beliefs of native people are the basis of the debate over changing the team name. And looking across the breadth of Native America — with 2 million Indians enrolled in 566 federally recognized tribes, plus another 3.2 million who tell the Census they are Indian — its difficult to tell how many are opposed to the name. The controversy has peaked in the last few days. President Barack Obama said Saturday he would consider getting rid of the name if he owned the team, and the NFL took the unprecedented step Monday of promising to meet with the Oneida Indian Nation, which is waging a national ad campaign against the league. What gets far less attention, though, is this: There are Native American schools that call their teams Redskins. The term is used affectionately by some natives, similar to the way the N-word is used by some African-Americans. In the only recent poll to ask native people about the subject, 90 per cent of respondents did not consider the term offensive, although many question although many question the cultural credentials of the respondents. All of which underscores the oft-overlooked diversity within Native America. "Marginalized communities are too often treated monolithically," says Carter Meland, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. "Stories on the mascot issue always end up exploring whether it is right or it is wrong, respectful or disrespectful," says Meland, an Ojibwe Indian. He believes Indian mascots are disrespectful, but says: "It would be interesting to get a sense of the diversity of opinion within a native community." Those communities vary widely. Tommy Yazzie, superintendent of the Red Mesa school district on the Navajo Nation reservation, grew up when Navajo children were forced into boarding schools to disconnect them from their culture. Some were punished for speaking their native language. Today, he sees environmental issues as the biggest threat to his people. The high school football team in his district is the Red Mesa Redskins. "We just dont think that (name) is an issue," Yazzie says. "There are more important things like busing our kids to school, the water settlement, the land quality, the air that surrounds us. Those are issues we can take sides on." "Society, they think its more derogatory because of the recent discussions," Yazzie says. "In its pure form, a lot of Native American men, you go into the sweat lodge with what youve got — your skin. I dont see it as derogatory." Neither does Eunice Davidson, a Dakota Sioux who lives on the Spirit Lake reservation in North Dakota. "It more or less shows that they approve of our history," she says. North Dakota was the scene of a similar controversy over the state universitys Fighting Sioux nickname. It was decisively scrapped in a 2012 statewide vote — after the Spirit Lake reservation voted in 2010 to keep it. Davidson said that if she could speak to Dan Snyder, the Washington team owner who has vowed never tto change the name, "I would say I stand with him . Fake Nike Shoes. we dont want our history to be forgotten." In 2004, the National Annenberg Election Survey asked 768 people who identified themselves as Indian whether they found the name "Washington Redskins" offensive. Almost 90 per cent said it did not bother them. But the Indian activist Suzan Shown Harjo, who has filed a lawsuit seeking to strip the "Redskins" trademark from the football team, says the poll neglected to ask some crucial questions. "Are you a tribal person? What is your nation? What is your tribe? Would you say you are culturally or socially or politically native?" Harjo asked. Those without such connections cannot represent native opinions, she says. Indian support for the name "is really a classic case of internalized oppression," Harjo said. "People taking on what has been said about them, how they have been described, to such an extent that they dont even notice." Harjo declines to estimate what percentage of native people oppose the name. But she notes that the many organizations supporting her lawsuit include the Cherokee, Comanche, Oneida and Seminole tribes, as well as the National Congress of American Indians, the largest intertribal organization, which represents more than 250 groups with a combined enrolment of 1.2 million. "The Redskins trademark is disparaging to Native Americans and perpetuates a centuries-old stereotype of Native Americans as blood-thirsty savages, noble warriors and an ethnic group frozen in history," the National Congress said in a brief filed in the lawsuit. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the term is "very offensive and should be avoided." But like another infamous racial epithet, the N-word, it has been redefined by some native people as a term of familiarity or endearment, often in abbreviated form, according to Meland, the Indian professor. "Of course, it is one thing for one skin to call another skin a skin, but it has entirely different meaning when a non-Indian uses it," Meland said in an email interview. It was a white man who applied it to this particular football team: Owner George Preston Marshall chose the name in 1932 partly to honour the head coach, William "Lone Star" Dietz, who was known as an Indian. "The Washington Redskins name has thus from its origin represented a positive meaning distinct from any disparagement that could be viewed in some other context," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in June to 10 members of Congress who challenged the name. Marshall, however, had a reputation as a racist. He was the last NFL owner who refused to sign black players — the federal government forced him to integrate in 1962 by threatening to cancel the lease on his stadium. When he died in 1969, his will created a Redskins Foundation but stipulated that it never support "the principle of racial integration in any form." And Dietz, the namesake Redskin, may not have even been a real Indian. Dietz served jail time for charges that he falsely registered for the draft as an Indian in order to avoid service. According to an investigation by the Indian Country Today newspaper, he stole the identity of a missing Oglala Sioux man. Now, 81 years into this jumbled identity tale, the saga seems to finally be coming to a head. The NFLs tone has shifted over the last few months, from defiance to conciliation. "If we are offending one person," Goodell, the NFL commissioner, said last month, "we need to be listening." ' ' '