In the week where professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, at 56 years old, announced he was returning to wrestling, the hopes of Raptors fans everywhere did exactly what his old entrance music said: they came crashing down, and it hurt inside. Some of the less pragmatic fans, who had crowned this team as the next NBA champion on the back of their performance against a tired Cavaliers team who were on the road, are experiencing a serious crash this morning. Even the more cynical of Raptors fans could not have expected this result. So how does it break down?

The Good

Well, this shouldn’t take long.

The one bright spot that shines out is the performance of our “franchise player”, Chris Bosh. CB4 was everywhere in the first half and ended up with 37, 12 boards, 4 assists, 2 blocks and a steal. Like I said, everywhere. One of the things a franchise player needs to do is pick the team up and put them on his back when they aren’t clicking, and Bosh tried. He scored whenever he wanted, from wherever he wanted, and in the first half especially he looked unstoppable. The combination of Gasol and Randolph looked bush league against him, and frankly I’m surprised that Gay didn’t play him more often. Regardless, this kind of performance from Bosh is exactly what I need to see in order to buy him as a team leader.

This is going to confuse some people, but I think the result of this game is a good thing. The Raptors needed a loss to bring them down to earth, but more importantly I think the fans did. One win over the Cavs does not make this team a title contender any more than a loss to the Grizzlies makes us a lottery team. I keep bringing it up, but the 72-win Bulls lost to the considerably-fewer-win Raptors and still won the championship. If the Raptors had managed to pull out a win here, it would have been ill-deserved and would have papered over too many of the cracks that showed against Cleveland and re-emerged against Memphis. These need repairing and fast if the team has any designs on the playoffs.

OK let’s see…umm…OK, Bargnani had 6 rebounds to follow up his 5 in the first. His detractors have often said that if he could just average 5 boards a game, they’d be happy. We’ll he’s at 5.5 now. Despite a slow start last night he played very well in the third quarter and was instrumental in the Raptors making a comeback in that period.

And…uhhh…hmm. Rasho had 8 with 6 boards and 2 blocks in 8 minutes and tried really hard to make a difference. And that’s about it. Can I go to the bad now? Please?

The Bad

Yay!

There was regression here. Once again the guys in red shirts seemed to be allergic to the painted area of the floor, especially on the defensive end. Almost half the Grizzlies’ points came in the paint, and the Raptors were badly out-rebounded. It’s not like the Grizzlies have league-best rebounders on their team, or the likes of Dwight Howard to bang down low. Frankly put, nobody but Bosh competed down low. They got bullied, they got pushed around, and Memphis basically scored at will and got what they wanted to get. The Memphis bigs just wanted this more, and it showed. Zach Randolph is a good player, personality issues notwithstanding, and his play should not come as a surprise. Marc Gasol is due to break out, so that shouldn’t surprise either. What DID come as a shock was the play of unheralded rookie Demarre Carroll, and I think he was effectively the difference.

So how did the Raptors respond to this? By shying away from physicality. Bargnani fouled out and Bosh had 4 fouls because they were the only two people stepping in front of penetrating Grizzlies. Well, Bargnani may have made some bad decisions but the fact remains that Turkoglu, Calderon, Jack and DeRozan all picked up their FIRST foul in the last 3 minutes of the game. This tells me that they made no effort to body up on the Grizzlies to keep them out of the paint or off the boards. Need more proof? Both OJ Mayo and Mike Conley had 6 rebounds. DeRozan and Calderon had 4 COMBINED.

The seeds for this loss were planted very early. Although the Raptors stayed fairly even throughout the first 20 minutes, they were trying too hard for that extra pass and ended up taking too many shots with 5 seconds left on the shot clock. One more pass is good, but 3 more passes is too much. Most of the passing was around the perimeter, with little to no effort on the part of Calderon, DeRozan or Turkoglu to penetrate and break down the Memphis defence. Once they figured out that they were doing this, Memphis had gained back the confidence that they lost after being humiliated by Detroit.

And to top it all off, the coaching. I cannot for the life of me figure out why, when you’re trailing and in need of points AND stops, your lineup is Calderon/Jack/Wright/Turkoglu/Bosh. No Belinelli, no DeRozan. At the very least I would have expected some offence/defence switching on dead balls, especially to get Belinelli’s shooting touch in the game. As it happened the Raptors had great difficulty scoring down the stretch, and not because of great defence.

The Ugly

I can’t choose between the two top contenders, so we’ll call it a tie today. First, Calderon brings up the ball with about 5 minutes left, Raptors stuck 5. Bosh comes out 3 feet beyond the 3-point arc to set a pick and Calderon goes left. Bosh drops and sets another screen…and Jose pulls up for 20-foot jumper that misses BADLY. With your only genuine rebounder having just set a screen for you, there is nobody to rebound that Jose. Horrible decision, horrible shot and it cost Toronto the momentum they were trying to build.

Contender number 2 is another late-fourth play that again cut the legs out from under the Raptors in their comeback attempt. Turkoglu runs off a screen and turns to pass…across the key and 3 players. No trouble to guess what happened there. For a guy who was touted as having excellent basketball IQ and as being a point forward, this was a terrible decision.

Take heart Raptor fans. This was one game out of 82. A real test now awaits on Sunday as we have to bounce back and face possibly the best team in the East. See you then.

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3. Raps maul Grizzlies
4. A horrible game from our “stars” ends up in an ugly home loss punctuated by a defensive breakdown and Sam not calling a timeout to setup a final play « Arsenalist
5. Raptors thump Grizzlies without Bosh