"We’re feeling good. We understood what happened," point guard T.J. Ford said. "They came out and they were very aggressive. I think everyone understands what their game plan against us is and from the second quarter on … well, without that first quarter, I think we win the game."
"We’ve played the same way all season," Ford said. "A guy drives and (if a Raptors defender) needs help, then he needs help. They exploited that. Sometimes we just committed ourselves a little too soon."
Ford quickly pointed out that once the Raptors’ initial defenders were able to stay in front of their driving opponents, help was no longer necessary and were the Magic three-point game dried up.
He says the difference was all in the intensity that the Magic started the game with and which the Raptors finally caught up to in the second quarter.
"I think they just came out and set the tempo," Ford said. "To me, they came out aggressive and we weren’t ready for it."
"I need to be better," Bosh said. "It’s little things with me. I can do a better job of staying aggressive and looking for my shots and doing small things to get the ball closer to the basket."
"(Sunday) they changed the schemes and I couldn’t see where they were coming from all the time. They would double me sometimes and sometime they wouldn’t. I know I get a lot of attention so I have to be smart and focused on what they are trying to do to me."
Mitchell, who spoke of Bargnani’s "experience" – all three playoff starts of it – pointed out yesterday he was concerned with Orlando’s penchant for punishing small Toronto lineups during the regular season. And no, the coach said, he does not plan on switching tacks for tonight’s Game 2.
Maybe it’s gutsy, maybe it’s insane. It certainly is not backed by air-tight logic: "Getting down 20 (points) so quickly, we don’t have a clue if (the lineup tweak) was a failure or not because we didn’t get a chance to really see it," Mitchell said.
The Raptors, faced with ceaseless penetration from Nelson and others, often over-helped, collapsing in numbers on the dribbler while leaving good shooters unwatched. Those fundamental lapses, repeated all season, speak either to poor teaching or inept study. But perhaps the synapses fire correctly tonight.
Another question: What the heck happened to the old T.J. Ford-Chris Bosh Texas-twosome chemistry? It has appeared thin for a while now. And witness the final 45-some seconds of Game 1′s first half, wherein the Raptors, down 13 points, had a chance for two possessions to Orlando’s one, a chance to cut their deficit to single digits for the break. This was hardly a moment the game turned on.
But it was telling that Ford failed to feed Bosh who, after hard slogging, eventually had Rashard Lewis on his hip and real estate baseline.
Most important, where’s the leadership on this club? Bosh’s post-Game 1 hanging of the coach’s approach was, doubtless, born of sincere frustration. But on a squad that passes the buck as well as it passes the ball – they’re all-world at both – it set the wrong tone. Is the goal to win the series or to get Mitchell fired? Bosh might only have the latter in his power.
Yesterday, Mitchell spent a long while urging patience, both to his players who played in a panic Sunday, and to his detractors.
"The devil is more forgiving," he said, and he laughed. "We may have never been in heaven (in the eyes of the critics), but before you put us back in hell, give us more than one game."
And to defend better, they have to try harder and play smarter and not get caught up in mind games where they paralyze themselves by analyzing things too much.
They have to get in front of the man they are covering on the perimeter, look him in the eye, get up in his chest and simply deny him the chance to take one step and find a clear path to the basket.
It’s not "tweaking" anything or designing "schemes."
It’s playing Basketball 101.
"Yeah, I think so," Chris Bosh said, responding to a suggestion the Raptors may have outsmarted themselves in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Orlando Magic, losing 114-100. "I think the players got caught up in it, definitely, especially on defence.
"We started giving them lanes instead of just playing them straight up … that’s how they got all those wide-open threes. I think (tonight in Game 2) we just need to play straight up and play a classic style of basketball."
"We just have to do a better job of moving our feet and trying to keep the guy in front of us so we don’t have to help as much," said Raptors coach Sam Mitchell.
Mitchell bristled at the suggestion that inserting Bargnani in the starting lineup was behind Orlando’s blistering start. The coach said there was more than enough blame to go around.
"I’m amazed how y’all get a rush for certain people," he said. "Did Andrea get beat a couple times? Yeah. Did T.J. get beat a couple times? Yeah. Did Jose get beat a couple times? Yeah. Did Anthony Parker get beat a couple times? Yeah.
"Everybody who played got beat. So when you call out names, I would prefer that you put the `T’ in front of the names for team because all of our guys got beat."
One lineup change will not beget another. Andrea Bargnani made a surprise start for Jamario Moon at small forward in Game 1 and coach Sam Mitchell said yesterday that switch will stay in place – for now. And because the team got good production out of Jason Kapono – 18 points – it may be harder for Moon to get back in the rotation for anything other than spot duty. "I still like the combinations we had on the court," Mitchell said yesterday. "It was hard to get Jamario back in the game considering the way Jason Kapono played." Bargnani finished with five points, missing six of eight shots. His defence on Hedo Turkoglu wasn’t anything worse than any other Raptor. "Hedo’s really a guard, so we’re asking a lot of (Bargnani), it’s really tough," Chris Bosh said. "If we keep them in front of us, it’s an entirely different story. If Hedo wants to shoot over a 7-footer all night, he’s more than welcome."
"It’s always good to have something extra to fall back on. We’re just trying to add things to complement our offence (that) we have now," Bosh said yesterday. "I know in saying some things they’re going to be twisted and turned some ways. I meant to say that we need to continue to stick with our things, the things we do well and even if we do put something new in, we can still run our old stuff."
"He didn’t necessarily push me out, he just fronted me from the get-go," said Bosh. "I have to do a better job of walking him up and making those guys pay for fronting.
"Usually, you front against good teams, they already know what to do. I think we got a couple of lobs out of possessions and we didn’t even run any plays. I think tomorrow (tonight) we have to make them pay for fronting us."
One way would be to run the team’s bread-and-butter play – the high screen-and-roll – more often with Bosh and one of the point guards.
That play usually either gets an open jumper for the guard or gives Bosh a chance to take a 17-foot jumper, but it all but disappeared from the offence Sunday.
"We installed a couple of new plays and I guess we were trying to run those plays instead of running our normal plays," said Bosh. "It’s like when you put something in fresh, it’s like ‘Okay, we have to run this.’ We didn’t necessarily have to do that early on."
One thing Kapono did in Game 1 was, for the most part, stay outside the arc on offence and that’s where he has to operate to be successful for a couple of reasons.
All season long, we’ve seen him drive the ball after those little shot fakes and try to hit those little runners or mid-range jumpers. That’s all well and good, if he’s making them. But he’s a three-point shooter and he should stay outside and shoot them.
What his driving also does is create more congestion in the paint and that’s the last thing these guys want, what with Dwight Howard back there and all.
On one side of the floor at the Amway Arena, head coach Sam Mitchell was sitting at centre court with former point guard turned personal confidant Darrick Martin, cracking wise.
In the far corner on the opposite side of the floor was the Raptors’ intelligentsia: club president Bryan Colangelo and the various members of his inner cabinet.
There were no smiles in that group, for they have little to smile about. Their club is trailing – badly, if there is such a thing after one game – in their first-round best-of-seven NBA playoff series against the Orlando Magic, with a near must-win awaiting them tonight; Andrea Bargnani, the No.1 overall pick from two years ago is floundering; and Mitchell has three years and $9-million (U.S.) left on the contract he signed a year ago.
“Guys didn’t know where to go,” Bosh said. “If we just come out early [Tuesday] and do our regular signals we’ll know where to go and know where to be. … We got away from running for our normal spots and we’re better when we do that.”
That the Toronto players didn’t know where to go in the opening minutes of the most important game of the season might not have been Mitchell’s fault, but it’s his responsibility.
Mitchell argued the real culprit were endless defensive breakdowns in the face of the Magic’s expert drive-and-kick attack.
“They just beat us off the dribble with one dribble,” the coach said. “And we have to do a better job keeping guys in front of us.”
Mitchell is tough-minded and thick-skinned, and an intuitive communicator who can make his points in a roar or at a whisper, depending on the situation. He’s not afraid and could very well be a successful NBA head coach when he leaves the Raptors.
But that day is looming closer, it’s hard not to conclude.
He’s now been the head coach for four playoff road games in his four-year Raptors career. Twice against the New Jersey Nets, his team was blown out in the first quarter – they trailed 31-19 in the third game and 32-15 in the fourth before they rallied to take the Nets to the wire in the sixth game. The first game of the second year was the worst yet.
Is it all on the coach? No.
The Magic’s monster man, Dwight Howard, plays like a No.1 overall pick. Some of Bargnani’s draft peers – notably Brandon Roy (Portland Trail Blazers) and Rudy Gay (Memphis Grizzlies) – look like all-stars in waiting. The wait for Bargnani’s all-star debut is looking much, much longer, unless he heads back to the Italian league.
This is not a roster without holes, but at least Colangelo has left himself the salary-cap room to fill them in the not-so-distant future. He’s made mistakes in the past and has been able to correct them, and he got them from the draft lottery to the playoffs last season.
But Mitchell’s job is to coach the players he has and put them in the positions they’re most likely to succeed. The Raptors’ 41-41 record didn’t indicate that during the regular season, and Sunday didn’t help.
"He did a good job using the pick-and-roll," said Ford, although Nelson often did not need a pick to get around the Raptors. "With the way we were playing, he did a good job. I’m not going to take anything away from him. He had a great game."
Dooling, meanwhile, hit a pair of big three-pointers during the first-quarter onslaught. His pressure defence also caused some chaos in the Toronto backcourt, resulting in some unusual starting points for some of the Raptors’ possessions.
"It definitely surprised everybody with their intensity and their game plan of picking up [defensively]," Ford said of the increased pressure. "It wasn’t something that they did throughout the season."
But as the players and Mitchell pointed out, the offence was not the main concern. "I can count three or four layups that our point guards missed, that they normally make," Mitchell said. "And they missed some wide-open 17-foot jump shots. It happens. I’ll take those same shots [tonight.]"
"We can’t be talking about matchups," Calderon said, declining to talk about the position in specifics. "It’s the playoffs. It’s the Raptors against Magic. No names against other names."
More accurately, for at least one game, it was Orlando’s no-names prevailing over the Raptors’ known names.
"Sometimes it works, sometimes it won’t," said Mitchell Monday, over the course of a 30-minute sparring session with the media. "But you can’t sit around in the room and make decisions based on what someone might say.
"That’s my job, to take that. I knew that when I signed up for the job."
"We gave up 43 points in the first quarter. That was the basketball game," said Mitchell. "We missed layups, we missed 17-foot shots, we missed open three-point shots. I’m not getting ready to answer questions about the plays that we ran. We didn’t guard. We didn’t play good enough defence to win the basketball game. Period. We gave up 43 freaking points."
Fair points, all of them. When it comes to winning or losing the game, Bosh’s feelings about the offence are mostly a distraction – if you watch the tape, the Raptors made a defensive mistake on almost every play. And really, if you can’t execute a game plan at this stage, how far are you going in the NBA? As for Bargnani, he didn’t help, but he was far from the sole culprit at the defensive end.
"They got beat, guys," said Mitchell Monday, after wearing out the game tape. "You play man-to-man defence, and sometimes you get beat. Is that concept new or something? … [But] Andrea got beat one time on dribble penetration. The ones who got beat were other players that usually don’t get beat like that."
He’s right – too many Raptors panicked at Orlando’s intensity. By the time they settled down, the game was over.
But is that Mitchell’s fault, or the fault of the guys on the court? Are the players more flawed than the coach, or the coach more flawed than the players?
There is something to the idea that Mitchell and Colangelo are an unnatural fit – the unvarnished Mitchell loves sandpaper and grit and proclaims that defence and rebounding will set you free, while the sleek Colangelo is betting, as he puts it, "on the evolution of the game" towards offence. Will it fall apart? The only guy who knows for sure – the guy in the high collar – won’t even entertain the question.
It says here that most of the blame lies with Bargnani’s belly flop and T.J. Ford’s health and chemistry hostage drama. It says here this team’s architecture is flawed, and while Mitchell may not be Red Auerbach yet – his Red Auerbach coach of the year trophy notwithstanding – it’s too early to put his job at the end of the plank. But it really depends what Colangelo believes.
"I don’t think the wrinkles had anything to do with it," Ford said. "I think everybody can have their own opinion. But to me, they came out aggressive, and we weren’t ready for it."
That, of course, did not stop reporters from asking about other parts of the game, although questions about a poor possession to end the second quarter seemed to irritate Ford. With the Raptors trailing by 13 points at the end of the quarter, the team had a chance to get two possessions in the final 45 seconds. Instead, the Raptors, with Ford dribbling most of the time, opted for a long jumper with just a fraction more than 24 seconds remaining. Toronto did not get a second opportunity to score in the half.
"Hell yeah, that’s irrelevant," Ford said.
Orlando sometimes comes out overconfident and not as energetic after wins, so the early stages will be critical. The Magic should expect the Raptors to be desperate to steal this game. Toronto figures to run more pick-and-rolls and be more tuned in defensively, perhaps being more physical with Howard. While their shooters were sizzling to begin Game 1, the Magic can’t count on another hot steak and might have to take the ball inside.
"It’s real different being on this team. I’m a very coachable player. I can do whatever you ask me to do to help us win the ballgame," Lewis said. "Obviously, I love to score the ball, but right now, we’re in the playoffs. . . . If we can contain Chris Bosh, we have a better chance to win the game instead of letting him get 30 or 40 points.
"I just try to make him a little frustrated."
"There is no disconnect [between him and Bosh]," Mitchell said. "When Chris made his comments about plays, . . . we were frustrated by losing a game. My frustrations are more on the defensive end, not on offense. There is no disconnect. We just didn’t play well."
“The problem was we didn’t play defense in the first quarter,” Mitchell said.
He’s convinced they can do better. As evidence, he mentioned the last six minutes of the first half, when the Magic scored only three points.
“I think any coach in the history of all sports would take that,” Mitchell said. “So we understand that we can play a lot better defense.”
“We’re asking a lot of (Bargnani) to go out there, step outside and be involved in pick and rolls—something he’s not used to,” Raptors forward Chris Bosh said. “We know its tough on him but we’re trying to take away their post-ups.”
Bosh, too, will be making adjustments. Blanketed by Rashard Lewis, he was 4-of-11 from the field but a perfect 13-of-13 from the free throw line for 21 points in Game 1. He said Toronto was trying too hard to adjust to the Magic, the playoff opponent it has known for weeks it would draw.
“I think the players got caught up in it, especially on defense,” Bosh said. “We’d start giving them lanes, trying to cut off their right or left hand instead of playing them straight up, and that’s how they got a lot of 3s. Tomorrow we just need to play straight up, play a classic style of basketball.”
Bosh said Lewis’ strong-arming surprised him, but he thinks he knows how to play it now.
“He sat on my left hand—took me awhile to figure that out,” said Bosh, a lefty. “I’ve seen that before and I’ve had success against it. Now I know the scheme and I can break it down and I know what I can get out of it. I’m going to definitely use everything early to set myself up for later in the game.”
The Toronto Raptors are rethinking their strategy for Game 2 about quickly fouling Dwight Howard after the Magic center went 9-for-11 at the free-throw line Sunday. "We’ll have to think twice now about fouling him like we did," Raptors forward Chris Bosh said. "He has worked on his free-throw shooting."
"If we can contain Chris Bosh, we have a better chance of winning the game," Lewis said Monday, a day after Bosh was held to four field goals in the Magic’s 114-100 victory. "If we let him get 30, 40 points and let him get to the free-throw line, it kind of opens it up for everybody."
Colangelo Interview
Uh, I think we saw it Sam. That’s WHY we were down so quickly. Bargnani can’t cover Hedo (or Rashard, or Dwight). Do you REALLY think he’s going to do a better job than Jamario? Since we’re not getting offense from Andrea anyway, he doesn’t stretch the defence the way you want.
Unfortunately for Chris Bosh, since he was drafted into the NBA by the Toronto Raptors he has yet to play for a GM or a coach who knows what his ACTUAL STRENGTHS are as a pro player, and as a person, in general … and has not yet been developed into the type of dominating ALL-PRO individual he is truly capable of eventually becoming in this League … similar to ‘the Great Bill Russell’.
But, for anyone to claim that Chris Bosh is not a franchise player … is just plain WRONG.
For Toronto to effect some type of fundamental change to the ‘Rebounding Differential’ numbers in Game 2 … they will need to address their Individual Player match-ups vs the key ‘board men’ for Orlando, who are D12 (22), Turkoglu (6), Bogans (5), Lewis (4), Evans (2) & Nelson (2) … for example, by going to a player rotation that I suggested on different web sites several weeks ago …
However, it’s important that we not lose perspective. Keyon Dooling put it best when he said "All we did was maintain home-court advantage." Brian Schmitz talks more about it in this blog entry A loss tonight makes the series pretty juicy. A win all but assures we’ll advance. That’s what’s at stake, and I hope Stan Van Gundy has our guys pumped up and ready to stomp the Raptors.
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