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7:48:05 AM: Liveblogging the Raptors/Celtics matchup http://bit.ly/6aYlhG

8:07:43 AM: makes my heart swell when I see POB in uniform. (well, warmups at least…baby steps)

8:15:06 AM: Celtics are up 10-0 early… Happy New Year!

8:24:34 AM: Bargs finally showing that stroke.

8:46:42 AM: New blog post: Morning Coffee – Jan 10 http://altraps.com/2010/01/10/morning-coffee-jan-10/

9:51:30 AM: Morning Coffee – Jan 10 http://bit.ly/8N8rLh

12:21:10 PM: AltRaps Forum: Raptor News • Re: Houston goes after Bosh? http://bit.ly/5r0PHi
#raptors

12:21:12 PM: AltRaps Forum: Non-Raptor NBA News • Re: Atlanta Scorekeepers at it again; hurt my fanta.. http://bit.ly/6kQed4
#raptors

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Well, if you’re Chris Bosh, you come out and do what you have done most of the season: put the team on your back and hope they feed of your energy.

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……chill.

Honestly, there is nothing like the Toronto sports fan. We are 1-2 after playing 2 elite Eastern Conference teams and one mediocre, but up and coming, squad. Yet all you see are people losing their minds over how disappointing this squad is. Come on.

Personally I’ve always hated the “it’s just preseason” excuse. This year we had a full roster. Nobody was in camp that was trying to make the team. From the get-go, what you saw is what we had. Sure, we were missing Hedo and Chris and the deeper bench players were playing more minutes than usual, but after seeing lethargic effort after lethargic effort, did you really expect that they would kick it up a notch on opening night and keep it going for a few weeks? If you are a Raptors follower, you can’t honestly tell me you did especially when looking at past history.

Look, we are three games in and we are shooting the lights out in the arena. We are missing a defensive piece in Reggie Evans and Jose Calderon still looks like he just got off the tea cup ride at Disney. Give him some time to adjust. I hear ya that it shouldn’t take as long as it has, but it has. Deal with it.

Belinelli, even though most of you made him out to be, is not a saviour. Never will be. He is a Kapono-type player that has a specialty or two but will never carry this team. All you can hope for is that he shows effort when inserted into the game. So far he has.

Bargnani will be an up and down player through the course of his career. I love that he gets angry, as he did yesterday, and he holds himself accountable for his poor play when he does have days like that. Good on him. I guarantee he will have more ups than downs this season, so relax.

I still think Jack will take time to work into his new surroundings. Even at the scrimmage in Ottawa he did well creating for himself, but seemed to take a step back when creating for others. Once he gets down where people will be, he will be a major factor in how well this team does.

Also, lets face it. Douby, Banks, O’Bryant are IR fodder the entire year. Weems had a good pre-season, but against other teams 2nd and 3rd stringers. Johnson and DeRozan are good, not great, and both are on a learning curve (no matter what Amir says).

Hedo has been underwhelming to a degree but has also instilled a lot of what he was said to be bringing to this team. Room for improvement? Absolutely.

Bosh has been nothing short of a monster. Now we just have to hope he can sustain it…a tough task in this league.

So, we are 1-2 to start an insanely tough November. We can expect to see better play, though, from Hedo, Jose, and Jarrett, then add  on Evans and Weems. 4 out of the 5 of them were said to be major players in the turnaround of this team. Let’s give them the opportunity to show us that they can be just that.

Take a deep breath, enjoy the 2 days off without Raptors ball, and know it will get better. That feeling you felt on opening night will be back tenfold this season. Trust me.

I never thought I’d utter the words “Boy, this team is missing Reggie Evans”, yet here I am. Everything I’ve written in the “Bad” section so far this season (well, most things) could have been fixed with some more Reggie, and this game I find myself writing them again. A tough loss to an undermanned yet still relatively powerful Orlando Magic team will hopefully send the Raptors brain trust back to the drawing board. The time is fast approaching when “We need time to gel” is not going to be an acceptable excuse any more. Especially when the problems we’re having don’t appear to be chemistry-related, for the most part.

The Good

Where else to start but the sterling play of Chris Bosh. 35 points, another 16 rebounds, and some fiery play to dtry and bring the fickle ACC crowd back into the action. He’s now averaging 31 and 15 over tha first 3 games and is playing like he wants to win every game by himself. As yet he’s not showing signs of being frustrated with the lack of effort from some of team-mates, which could be a good or a bad sign. Nobody expects CB4 to average those numbers over 82 games, but if he can show that sort of effort the team will be just fine…once they figure out the kinks.

Antoine Wright was a huge difference-maker in this game. When he came into the game in the second quarter, the Raptors were getting obliterated by the outside shot. Wright changed the tone of the defence and made those shots difficult, and it’s no coincidence that the Raptors’ run happened while he was in the game. Again in the third quarter, the Magic started to pull away and Wright came in. The Magic turned the ball over on the next two possessions, leading to Raptor baskets. DeRozan hasn’t been bad, but Wright is making a strong case to start.

Despite an invisible first half, where he just didn’t get into positions where he should be getting the ball, Andrea Bargnani came on strong in the second half. He finished with 26 and, had he been fed the ball consistently in the fourth, may well have brought the Raptors to the finish line. The Raptors are going to need a more consistent effort from Bargs if they want to be considered a threat this year, and by that I mean a threat throughout the game. He can’t disappear for whole halves at a time, no matter how strong he comes back.

One thing that did get rectified from the Memphis game was the overpassing. Instead of passing up the open shot to try and find a nicer open shot, the Raptors took shots where they were comfortable. For a team of good jump shooters (for the most part), this should happen more often. You can tell from Bosh’s two 3-pointers that the open shots were being taken, and as long as they are falling there’s no reason to stop.

A lot of people are down on the point guard play so far. I’m tempted to agree to a point (as you will see below, and the pun was not intended), but today I saw two things from Calderon that encouraged me. The first was that his passing to people in the paint has got better, and he found both Rasho and Bosh in some great positions in the first quarter. That pass was one of the things that Calderon seemed afraid of last year (pushing the ball upcourt being the other) as he did everything he could to avoid turnovers. The second is something he’s stopped doing that used to drive my crazy. Three or four times a game, José would penetrate into the paint, turn the corner and dribble right back out again to the top, head down the whole time. It made no sense to me and it almost always led to a late-clock scenario. I haven’t seen it yet this season, and today when he got into the key he was looking to score. Long may it continue!

The Bad

Almost everything in this section is linked. It all starts with the Raptors’ inability to stop teams from scoring from outside. Throught this game the Orlando shooters had a field day, whether it was on drive and kick plays from Jameer and J-Will, on the inside-out plays where Dwight Howard drew double-teams, in transition where nobody bothered to pick up the shooters on the wings, or on poor rotations during help defence. Some of this can be put down to players still learning their roles, but most of it is just bad basketball sense.

That led to career nights for two, well, scrubs. JJ Redick may be pushing the definition of “scrub” a little, but he had a career-high against us and looked like an all-star, something which I can guarantee has never been said of him. Ryan Anderson is a lot closer to the designation, having had a decent but not outstanding rookie year in New Jersey. Anderson hit five threes and was made to look like a dangerous scorer by our defence, which was slow to realise he could hit that shot and slow to pick him up. Toronto has a reputation for giving up these nights to lesser lights (remember Desmond Mason going for a perfect night? Ramon Sessions tearing us up?), and against a team missing 3 major pieces it’s a more egregious error. Dwight Howard did not beat the Raptors, and that makes this one harder to swallow.

All through the pre-season and the first 2 games this season, Devlin, Sherman Hamilton and Leo were waxing lyrical about what a great signing Jarrett Jack was, and how the point guard situation in Toronto was so much better with Jack as the backup instead of Ukic. Now anyone who’s ever read a Lansdell blog before will know that I was and still am an unabashed Roko Ukic fan, so this stance rankled with me from the start. To see the way José and Jack (especially Jack) have started REALLY calls that opinion into question. Jack has shown me, well, jack. He hasn’t scored, he hasn’t made great passes, he hasn’t provided a different look or a higher tempo when he checked in. He hit his first 3-pointer in the third quarter today. Not of the game, of the SEASON. Defensively he’s somewhat of an upgrade, but Jameer Nelson was an equal-opportunity torcher today. Calderon is looking like a guy who hasn’t played in 6 months, and Jack is supposed to be the contingency plan in that situation. When do Banks, Douby or Belinelli get a look?

You wouldn’t have known it when watching the game, but Toronto actually out-rebounded Orlando. Why isn’t that in the Good section? Well, I would trade the +4 rebound differential for some defensive rebounds when the game was on the line. The D would be good enough to force a miss, only to see Howard or Anderson or Barnes scramble and get the ball back. That hurts.

Finally, there was no killer insitinct in the Raptors this afternoon. No knockout punch. So many times Toronto pulled within 7, 6, even 4…but they let it slip. They couldn’t get that one last stop or that one extra basket to make it a one-possession game, and Orlando always seemed to have an answer to stop Toronto’s runs. Quite often, that answer was a three from Redick, Anderson or Nelson.

The Ugly

Can I give it to Reggie Evans’ suit? Dude makes millions of dollars a year and always turns up looking like he’s cougar-hunting.

In all seriousness, the one play that really told the story of this game was early on. The Magic missed a shot and Ryan Anderson got 2 putback attempts against 3 Raptors, and kept the ball alive long enough that it looked like he might just end up with it. Simply put, Anderson wanted it more and put everything he had into getting it. He didn’t, but the effort was something we’ve only seen from Bosh this season.

That’s all from me folks. I’ll be back for Wednesday’s game against Detroit. Stay cool, rock hard.

The title says it all.

After just over a week of asking for something as simple as a click, Patrick O’Bryant achieved his goal of 2500 followers on Saturday night.  The result? As of 10:30pm Saturday, we have $8830 confirmed as pledged to the Team Up Foundation and I am still getting emails and DMs. If you would still like to donate, feel free to use the “donate” button on the Team Up page and make your donation on behalf of Patrick O’Bryant. If you feel you don’t want to use your credit card, please mail your donation directly to the Foundation, again noting the reason for your donation. If you do decide to donate, please DM me on twitter (@altraps) or email me at altraps@altraps.com to let me know the amount so I can keep a tally.

I have had more than a few people ask not to be identified as pledging and I can understand it. I’ve received a few messages from people asking me to help them raise money since I started this and, while flattered, it’s not my specialty nor do I have the deepest of pockets.  Also, this whole movement was thanks to 2500+ people. Sure, I made the first financial motion, but the wave of emotion, giving, and enthusiasm was made from a lot of ripples. Everybody had a part in this and hopefully you take something from it.

Again, many many thanks to Patrick and fortressman for financially being huge right out of the gate. Just between them the Foundation will be able to help many people. From there, though, more than 25 people and organizations have stepped up with pledges to charity for something that is free. Almost 30 people, most all strangers to each other, stepped up to donate money to a charity on behalf of a guy who plays the game they love to watch. Where amazing happens, indeed.

Sunsfan4life and Liston checked in daily with ideas and inspirational messages to both Patrick and myself. Neither showed any doubt, both called in favours, and not one of them asked for any recognition. I’ve never met either of them, but I’m glad I know them.

Nat77, DocNaismith, Romy Aquino, etc etc etc……never let the end goal fade from peoples minds. RT’d, blogged and rallied for the cause. Many thanks.

Finally, sincere thanks to everyone listed here. You made amazing happen. Be proud.

In the week where professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, at 56 years old, announced he was returning to wrestling, the hopes of Raptors fans everywhere did exactly what his old entrance music said: they came crashing down, and it hurt inside. Some of the less pragmatic fans, who had crowned this team as the next NBA champion on the back of their performance against a tired Cavaliers team who were on the road, are experiencing a serious crash this morning. Even the more cynical of Raptors fans could not have expected this result. So how does it break down?

The Good

Well, this shouldn’t take long.

The one bright spot that shines out is the performance of our “franchise player”, Chris Bosh. CB4 was everywhere in the first half and ended up with 37, 12 boards, 4 assists, 2 blocks and a steal. Like I said, everywhere. One of the things a franchise player needs to do is pick the team up and put them on his back when they aren’t clicking, and Bosh tried. He scored whenever he wanted, from wherever he wanted, and in the first half especially he looked unstoppable. The combination of Gasol and Randolph looked bush league against him, and frankly I’m surprised that Gay didn’t play him more often. Regardless, this kind of performance from Bosh is exactly what I need to see in order to buy him as a team leader.

This is going to confuse some people, but I think the result of this game is a good thing. The Raptors needed a loss to bring them down to earth, but more importantly I think the fans did. One win over the Cavs does not make this team a title contender any more than a loss to the Grizzlies makes us a lottery team. I keep bringing it up, but the 72-win Bulls lost to the considerably-fewer-win Raptors and still won the championship. If the Raptors had managed to pull out a win here, it would have been ill-deserved and would have papered over too many of the cracks that showed against Cleveland and re-emerged against Memphis. These need repairing and fast if the team has any designs on the playoffs.

OK let’s see…umm…OK, Bargnani had 6 rebounds to follow up his 5 in the first. His detractors have often said that if he could just average 5 boards a game, they’d be happy. We’ll he’s at 5.5 now. Despite a slow start last night he played very well in the third quarter and was instrumental in the Raptors making a comeback in that period.

And…uhhh…hmm. Rasho had 8 with 6 boards and 2 blocks in 8 minutes and tried really hard to make a difference. And that’s about it. Can I go to the bad now? Please?

The Bad

Yay!

There was regression here. Once again the guys in red shirts seemed to be allergic to the painted area of the floor, especially on the defensive end. Almost half the Grizzlies’ points came in the paint, and the Raptors were badly out-rebounded. It’s not like the Grizzlies have league-best rebounders on their team, or the likes of Dwight Howard to bang down low. Frankly put, nobody but Bosh competed down low. They got bullied, they got pushed around, and Memphis basically scored at will and got what they wanted to get. The Memphis bigs just wanted this more, and it showed. Zach Randolph is a good player, personality issues notwithstanding, and his play should not come as a surprise. Marc Gasol is due to break out, so that shouldn’t surprise either. What DID come as a shock was the play of unheralded rookie Demarre Carroll, and I think he was effectively the difference.

So how did the Raptors respond to this? By shying away from physicality. Bargnani fouled out and Bosh had 4 fouls because they were the only two people stepping in front of penetrating Grizzlies. Well, Bargnani may have made some bad decisions but the fact remains that Turkoglu, Calderon, Jack and DeRozan all picked up their FIRST foul in the last 3 minutes of the game. This tells me that they made no effort to body up on the Grizzlies to keep them out of the paint or off the boards. Need more proof? Both OJ Mayo and Mike Conley had 6 rebounds. DeRozan and Calderon had 4 COMBINED.

The seeds for this loss were planted very early. Although the Raptors stayed fairly even throughout the first 20 minutes, they were trying too hard for that extra pass and ended up taking too many shots with 5 seconds left on the shot clock. One more pass is good, but 3 more passes is too much. Most of the passing was around the perimeter, with little to no effort on the part of Calderon, DeRozan or Turkoglu to penetrate and break down the Memphis defence. Once they figured out that they were doing this, Memphis had gained back the confidence that they lost after being humiliated by Detroit.

And to top it all off, the coaching. I cannot for the life of me figure out why, when you’re trailing and in need of points AND stops, your lineup is Calderon/Jack/Wright/Turkoglu/Bosh. No Belinelli, no DeRozan. At the very least I would have expected some offence/defence switching on dead balls, especially to get Belinelli’s shooting touch in the game. As it happened the Raptors had great difficulty scoring down the stretch, and not because of great defence.

The Ugly

I can’t choose between the two top contenders, so we’ll call it a tie today. First, Calderon brings up the ball with about 5 minutes left, Raptors stuck 5. Bosh comes out 3 feet beyond the 3-point arc to set a pick and Calderon goes left. Bosh drops and sets another screen…and Jose pulls up for 20-foot jumper that misses BADLY. With your only genuine rebounder having just set a screen for you, there is nobody to rebound that Jose. Horrible decision, horrible shot and it cost Toronto the momentum they were trying to build.

Contender number 2 is another late-fourth play that again cut the legs out from under the Raptors in their comeback attempt. Turkoglu runs off a screen and turns to pass…across the key and 3 players. No trouble to guess what happened there. For a guy who was touted as having excellent basketball IQ and as being a point forward, this was a terrible decision.

Take heart Raptor fans. This was one game out of 82. A real test now awaits on Sunday as we have to bounce back and face possibly the best team in the East. See you then.

OK, admit it. You panicked. It’s OK to put up your hand and confess that when the Raptors went from 21 up to a tied game, you had flashbacks. I know I did. We’ve been burned too often by this often tantalising team to expect any different.

Sometimes a complete shock isn’t a bad thing. The Raptors bent but did not break, they weathered the storm (albeit a storm that had hit Boston a night before and played itself out) and they came back firing. Although I’m not ready to anoint this team as a championship contender just yet, I think we saw some good signs last night.

The Good

This is a team still working on that elusive “chemistry” thing. That said, it didn’t show all that much last night. One play in particular sticks out, in the last part of the second quarter. Calderon, Belinelli, Turkoglu and one other (I think it was Wright) skipped the ball all around, each time getting into a slightly better position, until finally Turkoglu get a 15-foot runner to drop. The ball movement was great, but we’d seen it before. What encouraged me was that the passing had a reason behind it, and nobody settled for the 3 because they knew they could get it at any point in the clock. The players all supported each other, and when the crowd keyed into that it get THEM psyched up in turn, making a loud and hostile environment for a tired Cleveland team. This seems like a group of guys who like each other, and although there were times last night where you could see misunderstandings, the level they are at so early is a cause for optimism.

As are some of last night’s stat lines. 16 rebounds for Bosh. 3 blocked shots for Turkoglu. 11 assists for Calderon. DeRozan getting 5 boards. Antoine Wright drawing charges and making himself a nuisance. With the exception of Turk’s blocks, these players are capable of putting out these numbers most nights, and we need to see it. As a team the Raptors were only out-rebounded by 1, which is promising for a team that has its woes in that department. You can’t judge the quality of a performance by the stats alone, but these numbers are promising.

Also promising was the way in which Bosh and Bargnani especially reacted to the game. Quite frankly, the officials did everything in their power to give this game to Cleveland, and made some HORRIBLE calls on the starting bigs for Toronto. Both men avoided technicals and buckled down to the business at hand. Bosh worked hard, got to the offensive glass and got to the line, while Bargnani scored in every way he could.

Although Bosh and Bargs had the two biggest games in terms of points, almost everyone who saw the court had an impact. Calderon’s 3-point play in the fourth iced the game for the Raptors, and he seemed more inclined to takes risks with the ball knowing that both Jack and Turkoglu could take the pressure off if needed. His 11 assists actually felt like 11, whereas normally I find myself wondering how Jose’s numbers got so high. Both Antoine Wright and DeMar DeRozan did good jobs on King James, although they got burnt a few times. You cannot expect to guard a player of that calibre and shut them down totally. Rasho saw limited minutes but also had a key offensive rebound and putback during one of Cleveland’s runs that got the crowd on their feet. Belinelli was everywhere and I could have sworn he had at least 15 (he finished with 10). No sign of his itchy trigger finger from the preseason.

The Bad

Quite apart from Cleveland’s big run, which you would expect from a team of Cleveland’s quality, there were things in this game of which Jay Triano and company need to be aware. No game is perfect and after such a big win it may seem cruel to pick on a few shortcomings, but it would feel wrong writing a post-game report without finding SOMETHING to complain about.

I didn’t have to look too hard. As a team we are still porous on defence. Although the dribble-penetration wasn’t as effective as normal against us, the back cuts were. DeRozan in particular lost his man a few times and when we play the Spurs, that will be death. Against a team that can drag Bosh or Bargs outside the paint, it will be worse. Someone like Okur or Troy Murphy will make even bigger holes in the defence, allowing Deron Williams and TJ Ford to have their wicked way with us. Nothing new (hell, last year we were nice enough to give Ramon FREAKING Sessions a career night), but cause for concern.

The help defence also needs tuning. The first man was coming over fine all night, but one glaring example saw Bargnani leave Shaq to double-team LeBron, and nobody rotated. You can guess the result of that play. This is something that will (hopefully) come with chemistry.

Finally, once the Cavaliers started putting on some pressure and mounting a comeback, too many Raptors started settling for 20-footers. If memory serves it was DeRozan driving to the hoop that gave the Raps a collective slap in the face, fortunately just in time to stem the tide. THIS CANNOT HAPPEN. I have spoken before about Raptoritis, that disease which seems to afflict anyone who puts on the dino print. No matter how much they used to drive and dish, post up or slash, in Toronto they become jump or 3-point shooters. Jason Kapono was some kind of Bizarro World version of that. As long as DeRozan can keep being that antithesis to Raptoritis, and he brings a couple of people with him (Turkoglu and Belinelli both made some nice drives last night), this SHOULD resolve itself. However in the past, the one holdout has been assimilated.

The Ugly

The Ugly is where I’ll nominate one Raptors play for the worst of the game. This is a no-brainer here. Andrea Bargnani makes a steal, breaks down the court all alone…and MISSES THE DUNK. If the Raptors had lost by 1 or 2, this would have been a BIG moment.

I’ll be back with the Grizzlies game late Friday.