To start there is a report out there that one of the school board members who represent the group apart of owning the Raptors is the only one that is holden back the extension for Brain which is scary if your someone like me who feels that he has changed a lot of the pieces but a lot of them have not stuck and the Raptors may be better off letting him go somewhere else.
To the game the Raptors came out sluggish (maybe they still had their hang over from partying last night) with James Johnson leading the way with the first 2 turnovers of the game and took a 17-10 lead with no defense pressure at all until Reggie Evans entered the game. The Raptors responded with Reggie on the floor with a 16-5 run including a huge 13-2 run to take their first lead of the game 26-24 but then the Bobcats went on a quick 8-0 run to take a 32-26 lead and they traded buckets until the Raptors got their own quick run of 10-0 to take the lead at 44-42. The Bobcats got the last bucket of the half with Gerald Henderson jumper to give the Bobcats a 50-47 lead and lead the Bobcats with 10 points but the scary part of the second quarter was the Bobcats shooting which was 12 for 16 from the floor with some quick thats 75%. The Raptors were lead by Reggie Evans with his 9 boards in his 12 minutes in the first half but nobody really taken charge of scoring the baskets but there are 2 scary things about the first half which are that the Raptors are given the ball to Reggie and that they have missed 8 first half free throws which cost them badly.
The Bobcats took control of the game in the third quarter with a 7-0 run that they were not able to fight back until the end of the third quarter with a 6-0 run to get it to 5 as the Bobcats lead going into the fourth quarter 76-71 and then in the fourth quarter were it came down to the last 90 seconds of the game where the Raptors could not chip away at the lead with their chances. The Raptors needed to get someone to carry the team down the stretch and nobody step it up with Andrea Bargnani only having 17 points and DeMar DeRozan (4 for 13 from the floor) with his 11 points and these are suppose to be your go to guys while Barbosa put it up the most again with 18 attempts in 23 minutes but this time he went 6 for 18 which slowed the offense with his 15 points. Reggie Evans had 17 boards and helped lead to a major advantage of second chance points of 20-7 with a 39-33 board advantage especially a 16-8 offensive boards but the point guards were off with Calderon and his 13 points but his 7 assists to 3 turnovers was a little off and Jerryd Bayless was better with 5 assists to only 1 turnover.
There were so many subplots in the game starting with Haywoode Workman a former NBA player decided to try to get himself into the spotlight as he was making bad calls from out of position and he was doing it against both teams so he had both furious at him. Reggie Evans and Charles Oakley had a running dialog throughout the game while Andrea and Jose both gave Jay a ear full when they were taking out of the game late for offense for defense and then defense for offense which is an interesting development when Jay trying to win getting lesser defensive players for better defensive players and then switch on offensive again.
In the end Reggie was boss and I do not know if he wants to stay in Toronto or if he wants to go and if he does leave I think that the Bobcats would be the place he would go as Oakley would really appreciate his effort and Michael would listen to Oakley. If he does want to stay then at what cost do you keep an often injured rebounding machine that even though he does not need to have a shot it does not help him that he has to alway pass out the ball to be effective and having the team going 20 for 31 from the line is dishearting to see as you can always work on free throws during practice and of course no defensive should be fixed in practice too.
Practice practice yes I am talking about practice
Tom Mehegan
No comments:
Post a Comment