That worry-free netherworld, presumably, is the immaculate office of Bryan Colangelo, the Toronto general manager who continued to publicly enthuse yesterday how much he "likes" a Raptors roster that sits in 14th place in the NBA's 15-team Eastern Conference.

No matter that each of Colangelo's three seasons in Toronto gets worse than the one before it. No matter that each move he makes gets more perplexing than its predecessor. Colangelo and one of his bosses, Larry Tanenbaum, were seen together in Phoenix after the deal went down at the NBA all-star weekend yesterday, shoulder to shoulder, perma-smile to perma-smile. The happy pals were going for it, baby! They were making a gutsy run at the eighth and final playoff seed in the top-heavy East!

They were also making clued-in fans want to puke.

If you, like a lot of observers, figured Colangelo shipped O'Neal for the summertime salary-cap space - this so he could begin to rebuild the team to entice Chris Bosh, a free agent in 2010, to stick around - Colangelo had news for you. The GM said he would only have about $10 million (U.S.) to spend under the cap this summer, far less than he boasted he would have in 2010 when he defended the off-season deal to acquire O'Neal.

And he'll only have that kind of spending money - in a summer in which Hedo Turkoglu and Lamar Odom amount to the head of the free-agent class - if he renounces the rights to all the could-be free agents in the Toronto stable, among them Marion, Anthony Parker, Joey Graham and Carlos Delfino. That seems unlikely, since yesterday the GM spoke of the prospect of re-signing most of those guys, of sticking largely with the status quo in which he still has faith.

It's becoming difficult to have faith in an executive who gave away Moon, a minimum-salary find that amounted to the rare unequivocal home run of Colangelo's tenure, while taking back a millstone contract in Banks; who ditched another first-round pick in the process; and who passed off Marion's recent decline - he's averaging 12 points and 8.6 rebounds, his worst numbers since his rookie year - as a product of Miami's slow-paced approach. The Raptors and Heat, after all, are playing at essentially the same pace this season, each of them averaging about 95 possessions per game.

Marion, who'll be 31 this spring, clearly isn't the same athlete he was when Colangelo had him with the Suns. And though Colangelo did his usual spiel about the Raptors running more, he said the same thing when Jay Triano took over for Sam Mitchell and his team remains at the bottom of the league in fast-break points. He should know that by giving up net rebounds in O'Neal and Moon, it'll conceivably be even tougher for the Raptors to get out on the fast break.

All that said, the schedule lines up favourably for the Raptors. They're only five games out of eighth and no one would be surprised if they mounted a late-season charge and flirted with post-season. To some - certainly to Colangelo and Tanenbaum - that would be an exciting pursuit.

But to anyone who understands how it all works - to anyone who hasn't lost sight of the supposed goal of long-term title contention - chasing the eighth playoff seed is a hollow thrill ride to mediocrity. Talk of re-upping with the status quo this summer is scarier still.

Who's crying here? Only anyone who's still awake.