It is the time of the season when the playing time goes to those who are producing. The time for trying different things is over, unless it is out of necessity, and that wouldn’t be a good thing.
It is time to go with what is working.
"That’s the only thing you can do at this time of year," head coach Sam Mitchell said. "You give guys the opportunity early, but if they’re not producing, you’ve got to go back to the guys who are. At this time of year, you can’t be experimenting."
The Raptors worked out yesterday afternoon at the Hawks practice court at the Philips Arena. The big-minute players, such as Chris Bosh, just did some shooting.
There is no magic preparation for the final two-week push of the season, Mitchell said. "You’ve just got to try to be ready to play, to play well," he said. "If we’re experimenting now, we’re in trouble."
"Right now, every game is really important," point guard Jose Calderon said, "and we’ve got to keep our focus and not make mistakes. Now when the playoffs arrive, you’ve got no time for mistakes."
As for the playoff seedings, he said, "You’ve got to fight for as high as you can go."
With eight games left in the regular season, the Raptors have to find ways to be more consistent on defence, especially when matched up against athletic wing players, which will be the case tonight against an emerging Atlanta team.
Having seen the results of talking more, Bosh’s intent is to do more talking.
"It just makes guys more aware,” he said "Just by calling a cross screen, the guy won’t be stood up by a screen and won’t be beat back-door.
"If anything, all the talking makes the offence hesitate."
"Atlanta is a good test for us," Ford said. "We’re coming off a road win (in Charlotte) and we want to keep this rolling."
One gets the feeling that Ford can get off his shot any time he wants, but he seems to be making a conscious effort to get his teammates involved.
On Monday, Ford took only 12 shots, draining six, in posting 16 points. He recorded a team-high seven assists, including a couple of alley-oop passes Jamario Moon flushed home.
In Ford’s past five games, he is shooting 56.5% from the field.
Officials from the NBA players’ union might have been whipped into a grievance-filing outrage if they’d witnessed the scene in the lead-up to a recent Raptors game. The hoopsters were made to run on the spot with their hands folded over their heads as if prisoners to the exercise, sweat pouring from their brows, frowns turning forcefully downward.
But no, it wasn’t millionaire abuse. It was the brainchild of John Lucas, the Raptors basketball development consultant, who, in bringing his boot camp-style drills to the workaday NBA, has injected some stimulating challenges into Toronto’s pre-game workouts.
"When I first came into the league, everybody just kind of moseyed out and took shots, and it was (chaos). You had 12 or 13 guys out there. You couldn’t really get done what you needed to get done. You’d just get random shots up," said Sam Mitchell, the Toronto coach. "The way we do it now is a lot more organized. Certain groups have to be on the court at a certain time. They can get more shots up."
"When you’ve got young players, every time you get a chance to get ‘em on the court, they’ve got to work and learn how to work seriously," said Mitchell.
Said Darrick Martin, the recent transfer to the coaching staff: "You play how you prepare. If you come out there lazy, you start in the game lazy. We take shots we’re going to take in the game, at the pace we’re going to take ‘em."
Don’t be surprised if Graham, most recently a healthy resident of the inactive list, gets some run tonight against the Hawks. He’s put together a mass of great pre-game workouts and practices that, whispers say, are impressive.
Workouts don’t forecast success, but they can preface it. They also warm and teach, and, in Raptorland lately, leave various denizens of the bench breathing heavily.
Said Lucas the other night, consoling the grimacing players in their post-pre-game pain: "Hey, don’t ever let the workout think the workout’s kicking your ass."
The Bobcats also got theirs on offense. If we had just gotten a couple more 3’s to drop (8-of-24 overall)—and believe me, we were open enough—this would have been a different story. In fact, I’m not feeling great if I’m a Raptors fan right now. On the outer bubble of the playoffs and playing a road-weary team with absolutely nothing going for it (certainly not a crowd advantage), they could barely squeak out a 4-point win.
Time to give Jamario some love. Dude’s slowly getting the hang of things. He’s cutting to the net with regularity, which is why we’re seeing an increase in putback dunks, alley oops, and offensive rebounds. He is getting to the free throw line more consistently (now all he has to do is hit them). He’s playing smarter defense. And he’s taking fewer jump shots (and hitting more bad ones). If he gets into the weight room and plays on our new summer league team, I’m willing to give him another shot next season. He brings skills to the table that we just don’t get from anyone else…who’s with me?
After the Cavaliers we have three teams – Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards, and Philadelphia 76ers – with very similar won-loss records (and positive efficiency differentials). Of these three, though, the Raptors – with a differential of 3.1 – are the top team. Such a mark is consistent with a team that wins 43 or 44 of its first 73 games. The Raptors, though, only had 37 victories entering Monday night’s game against the Bobcats. In sum, the Raptors appear to be a bit better than their record suggests.
Although the Raptors are better, they are still not on par with the Celtics, Pistons, or Magic. And they have three questions that we can think about in evaluating where this team is at and what steps it needs to take to close the gap.
1. Who is responsible for this team’s success?
2. Should the team have selected Andrea Bargnani?
3. Who is going to be the team’s point guard of the future?
On a decidedly Euro Raptors team that has plenty of shooters, Moon is their only true defensive stopper and their best pure athlete. He shows great defensive instincts, the ability to get above the rim in a heartbeat, and tenacity around the ball. He’s not a complete liability on offense either, shooting 48.2% FGs and 74.0% FGs while only turning it over 0.7 times a night.
The Raptors seemed to have started winning the games they should win again here lately, so hopefully that trend will continue as they really only have one game the rest of the season that I wouldn’t consider them the favorite, and that is at Detroit on the 13th. After visiting Atlanta for the first time on Wednesday night since Al Horford clubbed Ford across the face back in December, the Raptors will play the Bobcats once more, the Nets twice, the Bucks, Heat, and Bulls to close out the season. Time to finish strong.
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good dig on the the wages of wins article, that was a good one to read!
Raps Fan’s last blog post..Raptors vs Hawks – April 2, 2008
I’m gonna pat my beer gut and say that any stat that doesn’t have LaMarcus Aldridge as “above average” is a puzzling stat indeed.
True… Aldridge is weak defensively now, but few very young posts are physically strong enough to be anything but a defensive liability. In hindsight, so many other players have turned out far better than Bargs, and although I am often a Bargnani apologist, there’s no doubt that better players were available. However, I feel like things like heart/desire/work ethic are often tough to judge prior to a player’s arrival to the NBA. At the time, I heard the raps were torn between Bargs and Rudy Gay. Wish we had chosen the latter, needless to say. Ironic that nobody talks about Gay’s supposed softness now, while Bargs doesn’t need anyone talking his apathy for it to shine through.
If the Raptors are going to finish the regular season on a high note (e.g. 8-2), then they SHOULD be able to defeat the Atlanta Hawks tonight.
If they can’t, however, the Raptors will be looking at a mediocre Last 10 games mark of 5-5 … 1-1 to this point, with an L vs Noh, followed by a W @ Cha … and then 8 remaining results, as follows:
4 L’s @ Atl (tonight), @ NJ, @ Det, and @ Chi
plus
4 W’s vs Cha, vs NJ, vs Mil & vs Mia
which would leave their W-L record at 42-40.
khandor’s last blog post..Raising the NBA’s Titanic
Not sure about Detroit, Khandor, only because I think the Pistons will be resting their main guys. The only reason they might not is that the game is on national TV.
I said it before to Arsenalist…I, as a team fight for position, would be more nervous playing sub .500 teams that are still playing their starters solid minutes (and in the case of NJ and ATL still fighting for playoffs themselves). I’d prefer to be playing the Detroits and the Bostons assuming that their guys will be on the bench. You just have to look back to the year we won 12 of 13 at the end to make the playoffs. A lot of those games featured teams resting their guys. True story from that year, I saw Byron Scott physically tap his forehead as a salute to our bench and then he yanked all 5 starters….4 minutes into the game.
Scott’s last blog post..Linkage – April 2
If you didn’t see the highlights, look on YouTube for Rudy Gay’s circus shot and-1 yesterday. I’m sure someone’s already put it up there with the obligatory 50 Cent background music.
I’m *still* reticent about comparing the first few picks from that draft. I didn’t mean to compare LMA to Bargnani, just that I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he’s probably already an above average NBA player right now, and a stat which considers him below average is silly. I absolutely agree about his defense — you’re talking to a guy whose idea of a good game is one that ends with each team scoring in the 80 point range — and I’d even say his rebounding is weak as well, but his strengths more than make up for it. For a career trajectory, I still think Larry Nance is a good comparison for LMA — nobody that will vault a bad team into the playoffs but a solid, even essential, player.
As I said in a post in the forum earlier this year, if I had to rank, I’d go Rudy Gay, Brandon Roy, LMA, and everyone else trailing pretty far behind them at this point. I’d put Millsap in the grey area between those three and the early picks that have been disappointments so far. Gay might be the exception, but I don’t see any of the others as perennial all-stars, despite Brandon Roy’s selection this year (which was positively hilarious — he’d be the first guard off the bench in Golden State, behind two players that weren’t selected).
I still believe Millsap to be the long-range dark horse. I think he has some good talent and the mindset to make it great talent. I think with the right coach/mentor, he could sneak up on people.
Scott’s last blog post..Raptors Roll Call April 2 vs Hawks