Scott’s last blog post..Raptors Roll Call April 2 vs Hawks

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 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 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

Raps Fan’s last blog post..Raptors vs Hawks – April 2, 2008