"I keep saying this from the start, we’re one shot away from the series being 2-2. We’re disappointed we lost at home but six out of eight quarters down here we played pretty good basketball," coach Sam Mitchell said yesterday. "So we feel pretty confident we can come in here and win a basketball game. We’ve got to."
"You guys are going to talk about it but the last time I checked, anything that you guys have said — you may be right in your predictions or whatever they may be — but nothing that you’ve said has stopped one jump shot from going in, made one defensive stop or got one rebound," Mitchell said. "Until you all prove to me that what you write and your words changed the outcome of a game … When you all start doing that, I will hire you as my first assistant. But until that comes, you have to stay positive and play."
"Just play," is what Bosh has come up with. "You take one game at a time. You can’t win three games at a time, you have to take it one-by-one.
"We can’t worry about Game 6 or Game 7."
Mitchell said they worked on dribble penetration again yesterday and will take another look at it during shootaround this morning, but there’s no answer for the Magic making big shots.
"It’s like I told the players, Jameer Nelson hit a tough, step-back three and Turkoglu hit a tough shot, a step-back, push-off three. It’s a one point game until those two shots," Mitchell said. "Coaches don’t draw up plays for guys to shoot fadeaway three-point shots. No coach. Someone would think I’d lost my mind if I draw up a play for Anthony Parker to shoot a step-back, fadeaway three. They made two tough shots."
Apollo 33 will not be grounded.
Jamario Moon left Saturday’s Game 4 loss midway through the third quarter when he suffered a right groin strain and did not return. Head coach Sam Mitchell confirmed yesterday, Moon is not done yet.
"He said he was a little sore but I would expect him to play," Mitchell said. "We need that energy and we need the intangibles Jamario gives us."
"He gives us that extra body on the boards, that extra energy and hustle," Bosh said. "And he can block shots and alter shots, too. He does a lot of things that don’t show up in the stat sheet very much."
Asked if he found Howard intimidating, Calderon replied: "Personally, no.
"In this league everybody can block shots you know that. If he comes to block shots, somebody has to be open. He cannot be in two places at the same time."
The only way to get Howard off his game in any way may be by grabbing a big early lead.
And Jason Kapono may just be the guy for the job.
Why not give him a start? Sure, his defence isn’t great. But the Raptors are giving up 104.5 points per game to the Magic in the series, so, obviously, other people aren’t defending particularly well either.
Perhaps Kapono can add some life to this fading team.
The other thing … it’s time to sit Andrea Bargnani. Whatever justification Mitchell and general manager Bryan Colangelo have for continuing to start the second-year NBAer just isn’t washing any more.
The Raptors started the series by going big in Games 1 and 2 (starting both Bargnani and Rasho Nesterovic) and that didn’t work. They went small for Games 3 and 4, which seemed to work better, but Bargnani wasn’t part of the solution in either game.
Mitchell has to think outside of the box.
You can toss aside that kind of talk as outlandish and cruel, and if you cite a single number – $9.5 million, the approximate price tag of firing Mitchell – you buttress your case soundly. That financial reality could mean the Raptors, if they were to can the man and hire an established replacement, would be committing something like $13 million to coach a .500 team, a number that might just test the limits of Bryan Colangelo’s autonomy as team president.
Mind you, typical coaching contracts are equipped with an offset clause that drops the buyout price should the released party secure another gig. Given Mitchell’s four years experience, his Red Auerbach Trophy and his gift for gab, he’s obviously recyclable.
So there’s that. But the crux of the buzz, really, is this: If you asked Colangelo, in a fantasy-league hypothetical, who he’d pick to coach his dream team, Mike D’Antoni would be in the conversation, and probably at the top of it.
And for the first time since Colangelo arrived in Toronto more than two years ago, D’Antoni, the Phoenix Suns coach, may well be available this off-season. That’s not to say it’s going to happen; D’Antoni has two years left on his deal. But as one courtside soothsayer noted the other day, "someone has to pay" if Phoenix succumbs in round one to the Spurs.
The truth is, speculation of Mitchell’s imminent exit will always be a loss or three away because he and Colangelo have always been a hard-to-fathom match. A year ago almost nobody close to the team, a coach named Sam included, could be sure Colangelo was going to ink the coach to an extension. The new-wave Euro-finesse GM tying himself to the old-school, defence-and-rebounding-rule coach – it didn’t add up. And maybe it still doesn’t.
A good opening 12 minutes may not win a must-win game for the Raptors but a terrible first 12 minutes could very well kill them by allowing the Magic and their rabid fans to build the kind of momentum that could carry them to a series victory.
"You definitely don’t want the crowd in it early because you don’t want to dig a hole and we do that by executing, getting second-chance points, maybe a dunk or two and Jamario is good at all that stuff," Chris Bosh said here yesterday.
"Most of the times … I’m the only guy who’s going to go to the offensive boards unless Rasho (Nesterovic) is in the game but he (Moon) gives us that extra body on the boards that extra energy and that hustle," said Bosh. "And he can block shots and alter shots, too. He does a lot of things that don’t show up in the stat sheet very much."
"What are they running? High screen and roll, angle screen and roll and a zipper to an iso and a post-up; they’re running four plays," said Mitchell. "It’s not that we don’t know what’s coming. We know what’s coming, we just have to do a better job of stopping it and staying true to our principles, locking in and making sure we do what we’re supposed to do."
The Raptors have to keep the Magic guards from getting in the paint and kicking the ball to open three-point shooters, a feat they accomplished with some success in Game 3 and the second half of Game 2. In Game 4? They regressed and Orlando point guard Jameer Nelson killed them.
"We have a certain way that we play dribble penetration and we just did a bad job of stopping it. We walked through it (yesterday), we had a nice workout. … We’ll go over it again (this morning) and I expect we’ll do a better job."
Okay, so I don’t know Peter Vescey that well, maybe met him twice in my life and he’s become entirely irrelevant around the NBA, but what he did Sunday was absolutely unconscionable.
The drive-by on Sam Mitchell, you can read it here, was shocking not only because it’s wrong but because a purported responsible journalist cannot fabricate direct quotes and get away with it.
And that’s just what that was, an entire fabrication of a scene that never, ever took place. I spoke to half a dozen people yesterday who would have been in that room and it simply didn’t happen.
It’s funny to me, big shot columnist, who should know better, writes fiction and doesn’t seem to care. If I’m quoting somebody, I know they said the words. If I’m making an assertion like that – as bogus as it was – I’m checking first.
And I think we all know now that Mr. Vescey deals in fantasy rather than fact. And this one instance entirely diminishes every other single word he writes.
If there is a Game 6, it’s going to start at either 6 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, depending on what happens in the Phoenix-San Antonio and New Orleans-Dallas series.
The Magic were no one’s idea of an NBA heavyweight before the series began, but the Raptors have made them look every inch a contender, while exposing their own dreams of a 50-win season and a long playoff run as a fable.
Just as the gloss of the stock Disney characters, the Tooth Fairy and, yes, Santa Claus, is rubbed off over time, the Raptors’ image as a young team rising fast is proving a rapidly thinning veneer.
Three convincing losses in four playoff games will do that, even more than an indifferent regular season.
The Raptors went into their series with the Magic healthy and rested. In Orlando, they even drew their most preferred opponent – a 52-win team, sure, but one without significant playoff experience or individual matchups for which Toronto had no reply.
But Orlando’s steady and determined effort on Saturday not only gave it a stranglehold on the series, it also poked the final holes in the belief that Raptors president Bryan Colangelo has the franchise on the cusp of the elite.
The Magic look to be already there, and the contrast with the Raptors is stark.
"It took me a minute to think about it. Initially, I was salty and I was upset with the loss," Bosh said in Orlando Sunday, reflecting on the previous day. "But after a while, I said ‘Hey, we’ve got another game,’ so this series still goes on."
"There’s a little percentage that says teams will win three in a row," said Jose Calderon, ever the optimist. "Let’s do it."
But the Raptors have not won three games in a row since lat February. And the franchise has not won a playoff game on the road in seven years. They need to win twice in Orlando – and once in Toronto – if they hope to move on.
that is one reason why in the last two seasons, the Raptors have not been able to escape the first round, barring one hell of a comeback in this series. Toronto has one superstar, one project with unrealized talent, and a pile of players who range from useful to very good. With enough experience and cohesion, that could be enough. The Raptors, however, don’t have enough of either.
Even if they did, in the NBA, talent is the currency of record. Look around the league – or just to the other bench – and you see that to be a contender in this league, you need a hefty pile of properly applied talent. Howard is a former No. 1 pick whose could become one of the great centres of all time; Lewis and Turkoglu are 6-foot-10 packages of versatile, hard-to-guard skills. Orlando put some decent pieces around them, and won 52 games.
The Raptors, meanwhile, fall off pretty dramatically after Bosh, who delivered a superstar-worthy 39 points and 15 rebounds Saturday. The next highest scorers, three of them, had 12. For the past two seasons, Toronto have been searching for a secondary scorer behind its lone all-star, and Toronto hasn’t found one.
Jason Kapono, Toronto’s second-leading scorer in the series, is a complementary piece. T.J. Ford has talent, but it’s flawed, and never consistently applied. Jose Calderon is a secondary star waiting to happen, though perhaps not quite a top-tier point guard – not in a league where Utah’s Deron Williams can’t make an all-star team.
We’ve said it for two years: This team needs a swingman who can bust people off the dribble, attack the basket, and make plays when the games get tight. A Corey Maggette, a Jamal Crawford, a Jefferson – or for those who enjoy agonizing over botched Toronto drafts, a Danny Granger or an Andre Iguodala or a Josh Smith.
At some point in the NBA, matchups and coaching and luck can only take you so far. Talent is the tiebreaker. Orlando won Game 4 partly because the Raptors clanked jump shots, and because the Raptors suffered a breakdown or two on defence.
Look at the way champions, or near-champions, are constructed. The last three title-winning San Antonio Spurs teams were built around Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, transcendent talents all. The league’s best team this season, the Boston Celtics, have a similar iron triangle with Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen.
Binary stars can work, too, but only if they’re supernovas; Shaq and Kobe in L.A., Shaq and Dwyane Wade in Miami, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in Chicago. But Bosh isn’t at the Shaq, Kobe, Wade or Jordan level, and probably will never quite get there.
So he needs help, and that should be general manager Bryan Colangelo’s prime mission this summer. To become a contender, Bargnani will have to become the unguardable 20-plus-point scorer management still envisions, and Calderon will have to supplant Ford, and even after that, another leg of the table will be needed. It won’t arrive before Monday’s Game 5, of course. But after that, anytime.
We may have a little artistic fun with the Raptors wearing a toe tag. But we kid them because we love them.
Speaking of which, I foolishly predicted Orlando would take this series after Game 2. Then came Game 3. Fans politely informed me that I had jinxed the Magic and that if I ever want to see my dog alive again I’d take it back.
Note: My dog had placed herself in protective custody and was not really kidnapped.
So yes, the numbers look bleak for our friends from the north. But weren’t the odds against the Royal Canadian Dragoons in the Boer War?
A Game 5 defeat in Orlando begets a Game 6 loss in Toronto begets a very nervous Game 7 in O-Town.
And friends, the Magic don’t want to go there.
If the Magic have to play a Game 7, be afraid.
Be very afraid.
Not that they couldn’t win it and advance.
It’s just that a lot of kooky things can happen in one game for it all —- one bad call, one bad bounce, one bad decision, one bad shot.
The rule of thumb in the NBA, historically, has been this: You need to get your heart broken for a while before you find love (playoff success).
The Magic getting swept by the Pistons certainly qualifies as a big heartbreak along the way. There will be more before they romance their way into serious contention.
Coach Stan Van Gundy is more nervous than Britany Spears at a custody hearing because he knows his team has little, if any playoff experience, and much of this stuff is new to his guys. Nobody has a lot of playoff joy on their resume.
All the more reason to get this thing done tonight and not have to go back to Canada. Because they could easily get steamrolled again in Game 6, and then have to report for a Game 7. . . .with all the pressure on their shoulders. . . .the backlash of blowing a 3-1 series lead.
The Howard Era Magic have taken step No. 1: Winning a playoff game.
They have taken step No. 2: Winning a road playoff game.
Now this is step No. 3: Closing out a series.
The biggest step, the toughest step.
"It’s just not easy to close out good teams," Garrity said. "I just told everyone that [Tracy] McGrady had said [with the 3-1 lead] that, ‘It’s nice to be out of the first round, finally.’ The point is, nothing is ever guaranteed. You can’t just say, ‘If we don’t get this one, then we’ll get the next one.’ You never know what will happen if you let the first opportunity get away."
The only thing sure about a potential close-out game is that nothing is assured. The Magic are expecting an even more intense Raptors team than they have seen in the previous four games, hoping to raise their own level of intensity another notch.
It’s desperation time for the Raptors, who face possible playoff extinction. The Magic would like to get Howard going early and jump to a big lead to see how much fight is left in their Canadian visitors. The Magic handled the Raptors’ pick-and-roll better in Game 4, and hit more of their own 3-point shots. A loss would send Orlando back to Toronto for Game 6 — and make its fans nervous facing more of Bosh.
Tonight, Mitchell’s Raptors are on the verge of being bounced out in the first round by Orlando in five games. Speculation in Canada is GM Bryan Colangelo could have an itchy trigger finger. Colangelo has not hired his own coach in Toronto and could want to bring in Phoenix’s Mike D’Antoni if he loses his Suns’ job.
When it appeared Mitchell’s contract would not be renewed after last season, Indiana was poised to interview him. Mitchell played three seasons for Walsh’s Pacers in the 1990′s.
If Jackson isn’t hired this week, Walsh is waiting for the first-round fallout that could include the firings of Dallas’ Avery Johnson and even George Karl in Denver. The Rocky Mountain News reported yesterday Karl appears safe.
Herb Williams will interview this week a second time and Walsh has intimated he may give courtesy interviews to assistants Tom Thibodeau and Chuck Person, both of whom have applied for the job.
TNT/MSG Network’s Kenny Smith said last night "it’s a good possibility" he will meet with Walsh this week, as he’s inquired about working in the Knicks’ front office and mentioned coaching.
Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy has never seen his locker room clear out faster than it did after Game 3 against the Toronto Raptors. It was the Magic’s lone loss in the playoffs so far, and at 14 points their worst defeat since February.
He gave his players a rare day off from practice to think about it, and Orlando responded with a 106-94 gut-check win Saturday at Toronto to take a 3-1 lead. It was a huge step for a franchise that hadn’t won a postseason road game since 2003, and hasn’t gotten past the first round since 1996.
First-round exits reportedly could cost some respected names their gigs, including the last two coaches of the year — the Toronto Raptors’ Sam Mitchell and the Dallas Mavericks’ Avery Johnson. Both are the lower seeds in their postseason matchups, meaning it’s possible they need to pull off upsets to keep their jobs.
"It all starts with me," Johnson told the Dallas Morning News. "Whenever something goes wrong, if we’re not making free throws, if we’re not making layups, it’s not the players. It’s me."
If someone had told you before the game that CB4 would outplay Dwight, surely you would have figured this series would head back to the land of Disney tied at two. After all, the Raptors were “the deeper team”, the Raptors had “the better supporting cast for their young superstar.”
Well it hasn’t seemed like that so far. Then again, that was supposed to be Toronto’s advantage over the rest of the East in the 82-game regular season too, and we all know how that worked out. Toronto may have found the kryptonite for Superman in their fans, but Superman appears to have “super” friends in Hedo Turkoglu, Jameer Nelson and Rashard Lewis, for which the rest of the Raptors appear to have no answer.
And now the reality is this, Toronto must win three playoff games in a row to avoid elimination, two of which will come on the road, where the team has not won a playoff game in a very long time. Eleven games in a row over seven years to be exact, have been lost on the road in the playoffs by the Raptors dating back to May 2001.
It has been an interesting series. Two games were extremely close while the other two left little to be decided in the final moments. Unfortunately the Raps have come out on the short end of the stick both times. It’s not inconceivable that a bounce or two go the Raps way and the steal one in Orlando. Don’t forget, it’s the NBA Playoffs, where amazing happens.
Mitchell and Walsh do have a history as Mitchell played for the Indiana Pacers while Walsh was with them; but assuming that Jackson isn’t hired by the Knicks this week, even more names could pop up as candidates – two that come to mind are Dallas’ Avery Johnson and perhaps even Denver’s George Karl, although according to the Rocky Mountain News. Karl’s job may appear safe. I still submit that Jackson will be the one hired by New York because in my opinion, save for his lack of coaching experience, Jackson has the good connection to the team, is wildly popular in New York and at least in my mind’s eye, would actually succeed coaching the Knicks.
The two keys to a Magic victory are as follows:
- Dwight Howard must stay active defensively. All 16 (!) of his blocked shots in this series have come in the Magic’s 3 victories. We were 7-1 in the regular season when Dwight had 5 blocks or more, a figure that’s ballooned to 9-1 in the playoffs. When he’s asserting himself on the defensive end, we’re damn tough to beat.
- Jameer Nelson must "get his" offensively while Keyon Dooling must prevent T.J. Ford and Jose Calderon from "getting theirs". In the Raptors’ Game Three win, Ford and Calderon eviscerated us to the tune of 39 points, 12 rebounds, and 16 assists. Getting them out of their comfort zones will force Chris Bosh and a tertiary player (Jason Kapono? Anthony Parker? Carlos Delfino?) to carry the Raptors’ load offensively.
Another example, my favorite basketball team is the Toronto Raptors. All because of Chris Bosh and his YouTube video. How can you not love that guy and thus, love his team? I admit, I might not have realized Chris Bosh played for the Raptors until I saw him in a post-playoff game press conference, but that does not mean I can’t be totally loyal to them now, right? Yeah, exactly right.
The most boring series is the Orlando Magic and the Toronto Raptors. The Magic have a 3-1 lead and the Raptors lost even after a monster game from Chris Bosh. The Raptors will soon be extinct.
Related posts:
I’m sure I speak for everyone at altraps when I wish Pat Garrity a happy 141st birthday.
Granville Waiters Ghosts last blog post..Raptors Roll Call – Game 5 vs Orlando