"It definitely felt good," Ford said of the warm welcome. "I was just excited to be able to play in front of our fans. It definitely made me feel good inside to know I’m appreciated, and I just wanted to come out and give them as much excitement as I could and show them I’m back to myself."
It was the Toronto Raptors’ 1000th NBA game, and it was like so many others before it: shaky offence, porous defence and a loss, the 586th in franchise history against 414 wins.
The difference is this version of the team is supposed to win at home against struggling opponents, given the Raptors’ playoff aspirations and all.
Instead, it was the lowly Los Angeles Clippers who could hold their heads high after their 102-98 win.
Cassell is just one name being mentioned in a pretrade deadline arm’s race that has emerged in the past week, with the Los Angeles Lakers adding Pau Gasol, the Phoenix Suns trading for Shaquille O’Neal and the Dallas Mavericks rumoured to be in hot pursuit of the New Jersey Nets’ Jason Kidd.
The Raptors have shown little inclination toward getting into the game, given their aversion against long-term contracts and because the only expiring contracts they have to deal — Juan Dixon and Darrick Martin — aren’t likely to deliver a major piece in return.
But games like Friday night’s suggest the team is still vulnerable in two key areas. Once again, Toronto was bullied on the boards as Los Angeles outrebounded it 45-33. As well, the Raptors still have no answer for tough, fast, physical wing players in the mould of Maggette, who seemed unbothered — and occasionally unguarded — by Raptors rookie forward Jamario Moon.
"We told our guys, ‘The guy who guards Maggette has one job — find him in transition and deny him the ball,’ " Mitchell said. "It doesn’t get any simpler than that."
"We’re not good enough to look at team’s records and think we can just show up and play," Mitchell said. "We’re not."
"There are a number of women who are lining up to meet you," says one professional athlete who plays in Toronto. "You have access to a lot more women. They know what restaurants you’re going to go to, what clubs you’re going to go to. And they make themselves presentable, walk in your line of sights so you can see them. It’s calculated."
Those last two words are the tricky part.
When you are an athlete, you are automatically more attractive. And that appeal only grows more powerful as your income and fame grow. One Toronto athlete’s wife once went into the bathroom of a high-end, luminary-filled restaurant to hear young women assessing the famous young men inside by income, and was shocked that the women knew exactly how much each man made. A Toronto reporter on the plane to an NBA All-Star Game overheard the young women in the next row boasting of how one, or both, intended to get pregnant by one of the NBA players in attendance on the weekend.
"There are women out there who are doing that," said the athlete. "Women who are sizing up which guys they think they can hook up with, or get their claws into."
As sure as a basketball is round, the Raptors were exposed like so many previous times this season.
Of the many flaws that exist, the most glaring is the Raptors’ inability to defend athletic players on the wing, offensively minded athletes who can put the ball on the floor and attack the rim on virtually every possession.
"We can’t get down on ourselves," Bosh, who left the game by pouring in a team-high 29 points, said.
"We didn’t play well defensively, plain and simple. We have to take this as a learning experience."
The ACC faithful gave T.J. Ford a resounding ovation when the lightning-quick point guard entered last night’s game in the second quarter.
As soon as Ford made his way to the scorers’ table, fans stood in unison and warmly greeted Ford when his name was called.
Neither Jamario Moon nor Carlos Delfino was able to keep Maggette in check and Bosh had his hands full with Thornton. At 6-foot-8 and 220 pounds, the rookie had more quickness than Bosh figured on and he scored nine of his 19 points in the final quarter.
"I wish I could play it over again. I would have done a few things a little bit better, but I have to give him credit," Bosh said. "He’s quick, he’s fast and he made plays."
Western dominance didn’t excuse last night’s 102-98 Toronto loss to the injury-ravaged, Cassell-less Clippers. Though the Raptors have been holding their own against the opposite conference, going 9-9 heading into last night, they mailed in a horrible third quarter that bled into a sloppy fourth.
And in a bit of bad-times nostalgia on the occasion of not-so-storied franchise’s 1,000th game, they looked clueless when it counted.
Can they get better for the stretch? The Raptors – though GM Bryan Colangelo works the Blackberry judiciously – don’t have a surplus of expendable talent to dangle into the fray. More than that, they like their long-term trajectory, and don’t want to mortgage the future improvement curve for this year’s run.
"When we play the way we’re capable of playing, we’re pretty good ourselves," said Mitchell. Yesterday their win-loss record would have been pretty good enough for precisely 11th place in the wicked, wicked West.
Had a chat with Clips coach Mike Dunleavy before the game and he’s as big an Alvin Williams fan as lots of us are. Dunleavy did draft him when he was in Portland and then tried valiantly to get Williams back as a free agent in 1999. Dunleavy said the only reason Alvin didn’t go back to Portland was that Toronto had promised him a starting spot, a job Dunleavy didn’t think Alvin was ready for at the moment. Turns out that 1999-2000 season was pretty dismal for Alvin, who fell out of favour with Butch Carter and found himself buried on the bench.
Mail’s full of anti-Sam stuff this morning and one dude says he’s never, ever, ever going to watch another game (until Sunday, I’d bet) because the coach cost them the loss to the Clips. No, no, no, not because he was supposed to guard Corey Maggette, but because he apparently “did nothing at all” during the 18-0 Clippers run over the last two minutes of the third quarter and first four of the fourth.
Checking the play-by-play, the coach made five substitutions in that time, had the quarter break to talk to them and called a timeout three minutes into the fourth.
That’s not nothing.
Never mind that they are the defending Atlantic Division champs and have the reigning coach of the year in Sam Mitchell and executive of the year Bryan Colangelo. Has anybody noticed the Raptors lost starting point guard T.J. Ford for 24 games to yet another frightening spinal injury and Jose Calderon stepped in seamlessly and deserved strong consideration by the coaches to join Bosh in New Orleans as an all-star? And what about Jamario Moon, a solid candidate for rookie of the year – a 27-year-old multi-skilled athlete plucked out of a career in the minor leagues and overseas by Colangelo to start 41 games already?
Could it possibly be because the Raptors play north of the border? It is no more preposterous to believe they get less attention because they are in Canada than the lack of attention the Jazz get because they’re buried in the Wasatch Mountains – or that the best players in Seattle and Portland rarely get noticed because the Pacific Northwest may as well be Alaska.
However, the obscurity in which the Raptors are succeeding is totally illogical considering how poor the rest of the Eastern Conference really is.
The Raptors are in a good position right now. They are playing well heading into the All-Star break, and the sun is shining on them as the second half of the season gets ready to begin.
"A lot of people have been getting on Isiah. He’s been through a whole lot," Stoudamire said last night before his Spurs beat the Knicks New York Knicks 
99-93 in OT.
"But you know what I say? You might as well see him get it back to where it’s supposed to be, because anybody else would’ve got the hell on out of here. He goes out there and coaches and gets beat up, takes his hits. A lot of people don’t do that.
"Even if I didn’t know him, have a relationship with him, for him to go out there and still coach these guys through all this turmoil and adversity, that shows me a lot."
Thomas, the Toronto Raptors’ VP, made Stoudamire the seventh overall pick in 1995, and the guard won Rookie of the Year while gaining respect for Thomas’ competitiveness – the same trait that is making the Knicks’ 14-36 mark torturous.
"It’s easy for him to just go up in there and take that money and run. At with the abuse he’s taking I don’t even know if the money was worth it," Stoudamire said. "I commend him for just sticking with that.
"I know his desire to win, so I can imagine what’s going on in his head. I played for him, so I know how bad he wants to win. I know this is killing him. He’s won on every level. He hasn’t been successful as a coach in New York. I know it’s beating him down. That’s what fuels him every day, so he comes back and tries to prove the naysayers wrong."
Calderon finished third after an impressive showing for Spain that helped them all the way to the finals. The 6-3 point guard was second on the team in scoring behind Pau Gasol and shot an impressive 50 percent from behind the three-point line. This season with the Toronto Raptors, Calderon is averaging 12.4 points per game and an 8.7 assists-to-turnover ratio.
Tony Parker of France and Ramunas Siskauskas of Lithuania rounded out the top five with Parker just edging out the CSKA Moscow star for fourth place.
RANKINGS:
1. Andrei Kirilenko, Russia
2. Dirk Nowitzki, Germany
3. Jose Calderon, Spain
4. Tony Parker, France
5. Ramunas Siskauskas, Lithuania
6. Dimitris Diamantidis, Greece
7. Pau Gasol, Spain
8. Andris Biedrins, Latvia
9. Matjaz Smodis, Slovenia
10 Luol Deng, Great Britain
11. J.R. Holden, Russia
I must ask, how does BC think this approach is going to work, in particular in the playoffs? This team clearly needs a player on the wing that can create his own shot and get to the rim. Objectively when you look at this team you would think that it would be Jamario Moon but for whatever reason he is hesitant to attack on a regular basis. I’m not sure if it’s because this Toronto team is a little soft, or whether it’s just a skill set this team is missing on the perimeter. Either way this needs to be addressed soon whether by trade or in the draft.
5. Toronto Raptors. OK, we all know this is a team on the rise. Question is, how long can you make book on that status? Eventually, you have to pay off on that promise and lay down some big cards. The Raptors are very talented and still very young. Some nights they get their feelings hurt. But you can see signs of emerging toughness. For example, through the first half of the season, they were allowing opponents only 95.7 points per game. Again, they play in the weak Eastern Conference, and the teams out West seem to enjoy beating up on them. But make no mistake, the Raptors are rapidly improving. Their status in the world is changing. Are they ready to do major playoff damage? Probably not yet. But their day is coming.
Along the pothole-filled road they’ve travelled, the Raptors have plumbed the depths of despair as a franchise, occasionally teasing their loyal fans with a handful of brilliant moments. Theirs is a relatively short history but one that is full of treachery, subterfuge, deception and gamesmanship. But enough about Isiah Thomas.
The Clippers had more than half their starting lineup out and even then we couldn’t defend them. All Sam had to do was draw up something which would slow down Maggette, after all, Bosh can handle Kaman which meant that the only coaching needed to be done today was to figure out a way to slow down Maggette, maybe a double here, a trap there, something other than straight-up man-defense. Maggette was licking his chops every time down the floor because he couldn’t believe how easy the Raptors were making it for him, he just did what a good NBA player does, he took advantage.
So much for the easy month of February. I have a headache.
Forget everything I said earlier today, this team does not know how to beat the teams they should. They will remain a two steps forward one step back team til BC brings in a new guy who can board and score at the small forward spot.
The 1000th game will go down as a stinker.
Sam Mitchell gets a Money Makeover and talks about investing.
To be a good team in the NBA (and win in the playoffs), you need to be good at:
- Defense
- Rebounding
- Interior Scoring
The Raptors are fucking horrible are fucking horrible (who am I kidding, that’s all I can muster) at all three:
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dude, you dug nicely for a couple of those links.
Thanks….trying to cast as wide a net as possible.
I still keep digging looking for your next video, though..