Jamario Moon’s done a pretty good job as a rookie in the NBA but it’s time for him to watch a bit. Like the start of every game. I’ve been suggesting for a while that he’s become a liability on offence and not a huge difference-maker on defence to justify starting. So turn it over to Delfino now, give him a few weeks to see if he can stay up on shooters because the guy out there now can’t, or won’t.
Sam told us before the season that he thought it’d take Moon half a year or more to make a significant contribution. Think he might have had it backwards. They got the best out of the kid in the first three-quarters of the season, he’s leveled off incredibly.
I don’t want to pick on Primoz Brezec because his Raptor career is over the day after the season ends but if he tries to leak out on the break one more time instead of staying on the glass, Sam should put a rope around his waist and the backboard for an hour at practice and make him stay at home. And I’m pretty sure him hugging every Bobcat in sight while the rest of his Toronto teammates slunk to the dressing room will go over well. Memo to Primoz: Say hi before the game.
The screamers are out about going small and how stupid it is and how Sam should be fired and Bryan should draft six giants and why the heck doesn’t he play Rasho, Primoz and Andrea at the same time because when they go small, they get killed on the boards.
Jared Dudley is, what? 6-7? Jason Richardson’s what? 6-6. How about Matt Carroll and Ray Felton? Maybe 13 feet between them? Not even.
Okay, those guys combined for 28 rebounds playing, mainly, guys their same size, if not smaller. They out-rebounded Calderon, Parker, Moon and Delfino 28-16.
And the reason to go big is to pound the ball inside, right? Which of Nesterovic, Brezec or Bargnani, and toss in Hump if you want, presents a low-post threat that would demand a double-team? Now about none. How about their defensive deficiencies against smaller, quicker, more athletic fours and fives would far out-weigh any possible minute advantage they’d have at the other end.
Raptors centre Rasho Nesterovic, starting for the first time since Dec. 21, picked up a season-high 13 points in the first quarter last night, shooting 6-for-7.
Nesterovic admitted after the game that their rebounding needs to improve, and in a hurry.
"Next game we’re going to have to control the offensive boards better, Nesterovic said after the Raptors were outrebounded on the offensive glass 18-6. "Orlando is an even better (rebounding) team.
"We’re going to have to work on it. All teams have strengths and weaknesses and this is one of our weaknesses," Nesterovic said.
Ex-Bobcat Primoz Brezec, looking to exact a little revenge on his former team, picked up four fouls in 11 minutes in a disappointing return to Charlotte.
"I think we were soft tonight, very soft," Brezec said. "We’ve got to man up a little bit. Our focus was not there."
An MRI revealed that there is no structural damage to the knee — which bothered Bosh in the pre-season — but there is some swelling and reportedly some scar tissue.
Bosh is expected to miss games in Orlando tomorrow and in Miami on Wednesday. He is listed as day to day, but could be out for a week.
Bosh said walking up steps and moving laterally is painful.
The newest Raptor, centre Primoz Brezec, said that Toronto will be his last stop in the NBA, whether he plays with the Raptors for a long time or not. The colourful Brezec said his next stop after Toronto will be Europe, and not another team in the NBA .
"We were patient with him and we never at any time said anything negative about Primoz Brezec," Vincent said after the Bobcats beat Brezec’s Raptors 110-98. "So it’s a little disappointing that Primoz Brezec would take the position he’s taking, when this team and this organization did nothing but support him through some of his difficulties."
Brezec did thank Vincent and part-owner Michael Jordan for allowing him to miss much of the pre-season to deal with an undisclosed family issue.
"Not every team would do what they did for me. I’m thankful to Sam and Michael," Brezec said. "They were there for me. But what they did to me after that was not right."
They should send a thank-you card to the softer-than-cashmere Raptors, of course, who were out-rebounded as though they were 10-year-old kids playing against their merciless dads. While the Bobcats shot only 42.6 per cent from the field, their aggression turned 18 offensive rebounds into 32 second-chance points.
The Raptors, for their part, turned six offensive boards into exactly zero garbage buckets. The 32-0 differential was the biggest margin since the NBA started keeping track of second-chance points in 1996.
So no, Toronto’s perfectly respectable 51.4 per cent shooting from the field wasn’t nearly enough to mask the gross indecency.
"I said before the game, I told all our players, `The number one thing we’ve got to do tonight: rebound the basketball.’ We say that every night," said Sam Mitchell, the Toronto coach. "If we rebound the ball we win the basketball game. But we could say that about five, six, seven games this year."
Three members of the home team, Emeka Okafor (15), Jared Dudley (10) and Jason Richardson (7), had more rebounds than the Raptors’ leading board men, Anthony Parker and Kris Humphries, who each collected six caroms.
When you consider that their most likely playoff opponent, the Cleveland Cavaliers, are the league’s third-best offensive rebounding team – and that the Cavs arguably got better on the glass with their trade-deadline acquisition of Ben Wallace – it’s easy to imagine the Raptors finding themselves as overwhelmed as they looked last night, only worse.
Is it in this team to improve such a weakness?
"For our sake, I sure hope so," said coach Sam Mitchell. "I think so. I’ve seen it before. But we don’t do it consistently. We’ve done it before, but we’ve got to get more consistent at rebounding the basketball. If you’re not going to rebound … in this league, you can’t win. We understand that’s an issue we have as a basketball team. … Sometimes we win and it’s masked."
It was easy to point fingers at various culprits who stood and watched the Bobcats vacuum up so many leftovers. The starting frontline of Rasho Nesterovic, Andrea Bargnani and Jamario Moon had five boards apiece – their 15 only equalling the 15 hauled down by Charlotte’s Emeka Okafor, who had four of those on the offensive glass. And it defied explanation how, say, Joey Graham, a spectacular physical specimen who racked up a respectable nine points, could spend 14 minutes on the floor without stumbling upon a single falling rock.
Graham had zero rebounds, and not one Raptor had more than a single offensive board, which, to be fair, might speak as much to their spread-the-perimeter philosophy as it does to their lack of oomph.
Indeed, nobody in Raptorland is going to be vying for a rebounding title anytime soon. But if this team wants to succeed in ways it has yet to, it’ll have to turn the boards from an albatross to an area of adequacy.
Said Mitchell, chalking it up to motivation: "Something inside of you has got to want to go do it."
Said Anthony Parker: "Hopefully (against Orlando) we all realize we have to rebound or it’s going to be a very long night."
Far from stepping up, most of Bosh’s teammates seemed to take a step back. The loss, the Raptors’ second in a row, dropped Toronto to 32-26 as Charlotte won for just the second time in 14 games.
"Do I need to state the obvious? Thirty-two points on the offensive glass, man," Mitchell said. "We didn’t box out. We didn’t do the tough things. They just beat us up on the glass. Our defence [was all right], but when it came to doing the tough things, getting in the paint, we didn’t do it."
the Raptors’ big men rotating to help and opened up rebounding lanes for the Bobcats’ bigs.
"Maybe we weren’t paying attention to that," offered Rasho Nesterovic, who got the start in place of Bosh, pushing Andrea Bargnani to the power forward slot and had a season-best 16 points and five rebounds. "We were paying attention to the screens and not getting back in time. Once the big guy gets position inside, it’s really tough to take him out and get the rebound."
Not sure what’s wrong with Calderon but he dribbled it off his foot twice for turnovers, which just never happens. His other turnover was Moon’s fault as he simply couldn’t handle a fairly straightforward pass. But after dribbling it off his foot a second time Calderon came back and blocked Okafor on his way for a dunk. Pretty cool. And then Calderon stared strutted all tough in front on the Raptors bench. Kind of funny.
Brezec is a bit of a cartoon, with his Indiana-learned hip-hop stylings, and his Bizarro-world commitment to speaking exactly what’s on his mind, but you know what? He’s got the right idea. He checked in the game and drew a foul on his first touch. He hit an ill-advised but welcome fallaway jumper. Defensively he knocked a cutting Matt Carroll five feet one moment and switched on to Earl Boykins and chased him until he stepped out of bounds and he just kind of generally raised the temperature of the contest as he kind of got into it with Nazr Mohammed a little bit. Yes he picked up four fouls in four minutes. But the guy is a firecracker, if a little bit light weight.
"They shot 43%. We didn’t turn the ball over 10 times. We shoot 51%," Raptors coach Sam Mitchell said afterward, assessing the positives from the game. "Thirty-two second-chance points. And it’s not the first time it happened. It has happened to us before. And it has happened to us too much."
"I think we just got to man up. Hit somebody," Brezec said. He had four points and a pair of rebounds. "We didn’t deserve a win tonight, I’ve got to be honest. [We need to] look ourselves in the mirror and say we didn’t deserve it. We played too soft tonight."
"I think Andrea is the biggest factor who is obviously going to have to be a threat every night while C.B. [Bosh] is out," Ford said. "He’ll definitely have to mix it up, shooting outside and inside."
Especially the latter. Bargnani has all but abandoned his post offence recently, setting up from the inside no more than a handful of times. With Bosh and his 8.4 free-throw attempts per game out of the lineup, the Raptors will need Bargnani to try to draw fouls more often. That means going to the paint.
Do not expect him to be a Bosh clone, however.
"I think our offence is our offence, no matter who is playing," Ford said.
———-
"I think it’s a different option for the team," Calderon said. "I think sometimes when the teams are so focused on either him or me, one of us is going to be on a worse defender."
"He’s a good shooter," Ford added. "How do you stop two people handling the basketball? I enjoy it.
"Plus it helps me get more minutes. I definitely like that."
True, the Raptors (32-26) were playing without star Chris Bosh (sore knee), but the Bobcats (20-39) were without Gerald Wallace, who missed his fourth straight game after a concussion. Wallace must have another series of neural tests before he’s cleared, and then Vincent wants him to go through two practices before playing.
I wonder if people understand how remarkable it is for an NBA team to go an entire game without an extra-chance point? (That’s scoring, resulting from an offensive rebound.) The Raptors were blanked in that category. They had six offensive boards to the Bobcats’ 18 (resulting in 32 Charlotte points.)
That 32-point margin is the greatest differential in an NBA game since second-chance points were first kept as a statistic, starting in 1996.
The Magic will go with Arroyo and Turk on Tuesday night against the Toronto Raptors at Amway Arena if the regulars are not able to play, although Nelson is expected back. Dooling is day-to-day.
Sadly, this is a lottery team without Bosh. After leading 32-22 at the end of the first, Smitch decided to go small-ball, and it all fell apart. What a disgusting game. How do you lose to a team that is 19-39? Give them 18 offensive rebounds, open jumpers, play small ball, basically do everything wrong. Two games in a row, and Smitch is exposed as having no strategy other than ride Bosh into the ground. How else do you explain him playing Bosh 40 minutes in a blowout win over the Wolves? That was probably the catalyst for losing Bosh for 4 games.
Think about the offense for a second. High-pick and rolls. Feeding the post. Kicking out of the double team. Almost all of our offensive sets somehow involve CB4. The team also relies heavily on his rebounding. Now with him out is it surprising that the offense looks disjointed and the team is getting dominated on the glass? I don’t find it surprising at all.
Basketball is a game of stars and without its lone star the Raps are going to struggle. You can call out Moon, Delfino and others for not playing at a higher level but the harsh reality is that they are complimentary players who in many ways rely on CB4 for their open looks and their offensive opportunities. The game just gets harder when Bosh is not on the floor. I am not try to make-up excuses here, the rebounding really was atrocious tonight and I am a firm believer that rebounding is all about effort, but CB4′s presence is felt in almost all facets of the game. Again, not an excuse, just reality.
Toronto Raptors: They allowed Mike Dunleavy Jr. to match his career-high with 36 points, and the Basketbawful manifesto clearly states that all teams that surrender a career game to Dunleavy Jr. get an automatic mention in Worst of the Weekend.
Toronto Raptors: Here’s how the Associated Press put it: "In a listless performance against one of the NBA’s worst teams, the Bosh-less Raptors gave up 30 points to Charlotte’s Jason Richardson, and allowed the Bobcats to dominate the glass in a 110-98 win on Sunday." When the always-bland AP describes your performance as "listless," chances are it was even worse than that.
Nice effort by the Raptors as a 4 point favourite yesterday. This team has got to show more consistency down the stretch or they will be one round and out of the playoffs. They can look like world beaters one night and a lottery team the next. That won’t get it done.
For a team that runs the pick ‘n roll on every offensive set, we sure can’t defend it to save our lives. To put it in Layman’s terms, you have two options: switch or don’t switch. Whatever you decide to do make sure it’s based on the matchup at hand, just like the Indiana game, we get caught on switches that are completely to our disadvantage. Felton on Bargnani, Richardson on Brezec, Dudley on Calderon and so on. It makes no bloody sense, you have to make the effort, fight through the screen and force the offense into resetting. We got exposed the first time Raymond Felton or Jason Richardson ever tried to use a screen. On the other end Charlotte was smart, whenever they switched they also backed off tempting TJ to shoot or ended up crowded the big who got the ball (Bargnani, Hump) and forced them into a shot they didn’t want to take. Calderon was denied the lane he so loves to use after coming off a screen forcing him to give it up.
On Friday they gave up 122 points to the Pacers, tonight 110 to a Bobcats team that is near the bottom of the NBA in scoring.
It was the same old story. Nobody can rebound or even box out. It was painful to watch second chance points kill the Raps all night.
Another factor I am starting to fully accept is Sam is lost in what he is doing. His rotations and who is playing at certain points is really messed up. I know Bargnani has his down moments but the team needed scoring. Put the dude in who is at least capable of putting some points up.
T.J. was forcing it, Jose has finally hit a wall and Moon I don’t think should even be starting. What does he bring to the game honestly if he is not rebounding??
If it were not for Rasho and Parker this game could of been really bad. When you get 16 points out of the Rasho-saurus and you lose like that, the team has issues.
Delfino and Kapono were non-factors just like most of the team tonight.
What a stinker.
One final bright spot came in the form of Primoz Brezec. Entering the game in the third quarter, it was Brezec’s energy that looked to help the Raptors gain some traction. As he entered the game in the second half, he was able to get some rebounds, get the team to play with a sense of urgency and exert himself on the floor. Brezec’s fight was obvious as he was playing one of his two former teams of the year. His zealousness was obvious as he picked up four personals in about nine minutes, but there’s no denying that he managed to change the pace of the game. His presence as the Slovenian Junk Yard Dog cannot be denied as that change of pace is precisely what the Raptors continue to need from the bench play down the stretch.
There’s enough blame from both this loss and the Indiana loss to go around. However, at the end of the day, the excuse that “Chris Bosh was unavailable” is inadequate. The Bobcats were without their most prolific inside presence and rebounder in Gerald Wallace and yet, the Raptors still could not pull out a win with their supposedly deep lineup.
Related posts:
Doesn’t hurt to at least try to go big. Rasho plays better than his number suggests. It’s just a matter of how he’s utilized. + Bargs is STILL plays like a 3.
I know size doesn’t = skill, but basketball is still a game of inches, and when was the last time a small ball team won an NBA championship? If I’m not mistaken, teams ADD size.
What’s your take on the West and who’d you think ends up in the Western finals?
What’s funny is we have size, we just don’t use it, as you say. Even given the insane contract, I’d bet Maceo is passable. All you need from your bigs is some fire. As you saw last night,sometimes it’s too much fire (Primoz), but at least it’s something. It’s getting frustrating watching players look like they are mired in mud.
Assuming Bynum doesn’t come back and become a detriment, I have to think the Lakers have the firepower to come out of the West. The Phoenix test seems to be failing, I don’t think Kidd is enough of an upgrade for Dallas. Depending on how the seeds fall, seeing a Spurs/Lakers Western final could be breathtaking.
Spurs/Lakers would be good. I am NOT a Spurs fan, and I HATE the way they play (I don’t know why, it’s weird), but I have a lot of respect for them, and It is effective. They remind me of the 80′s Pistons, and I wouldn’t want to bet against them.
I’m really excited to see how 3 mobile bigs are going to play together w/ probably the best bball player today.
LOL @ Primoz. I think (hope) that if he gets more PT, he’ll settle a bit. I wonder if they aren’t playing him so that they can pay him cheaper (if we wanted to keep him).
It’s real frustrating watching the Raps because it’s so easy for us to second guess Smitch, or, watch players that seem to play away from from their strenghts.