Tristan Thompson makes his NBA debut against hometown Raptors

Tristan Thompson who was born in the Greater Toronto Area and went down to Saint Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey as a teenager to go to school and play basketball as a High School sophomore and then headed to the University of Texas where he played a year with the longhorns and put up 13 points with 7.8 rebounds and 2.4 blocks a game in his 36 regular season games. So Tristan Thompson will be hitting the boards hard against Ed Davis and Reggie Evans which will be a huge test for the 20-year-old Thompson but if he gets one-on-one with Andrea Bargnani he will take apart him and put up huge numbers.

Also Kyrie Irving the No.1 pick in the 2012 draft will be coming off the bench and putting up points and to think that Demar DeRozan is the one who will likely be the one that needs to contest most of those shoots is scary as hell as DeRozan on the Raptors a team who has not shown a quince of defense is probably one of the weaker defenders and would like to just go shot for shot with Irving which would not be a great formula for a win for the raptors.

For the Raptors to be able to go into Cleveland and take game one of 66 it will take a good defensive effort because if the Raptors play hard defensively against Cleveland than the offense will come in easy baskets going the other way so Reggie and Ed can set the tone for the Raptors effort but the big question in the game will be if the rest of the team will follow their lead. Going into the game the Raptors with opponents shooting .482 from the floor and putting up 105.4 points a game which is embarrassing and if the Raptors want to win games they will need to hold as many opponents under 100 points and most likely under 95 points in a game along with opponents shooting% under 42% and closer to 40%. So it will come down to can Bargnani guard anyone and can DeRozan make life tougher for opposing shooting guards and will Jose Calderon be able to stay health one and two stay infront of opposing points and get his hands in the air to make the passes more difficult to complete or if Jerryd Bayless can come off the bench and show Calderon how its done.

The bench will be very important going forward with ANTHONY CARTER, JAMAAL MAGLIORE, RASUL BUTLER, AARON GRAY, and GARY FORBES having a lot of opportunities to show what they are made of in the 66 game season where the Raptors will be playing 3 in four nights and 4 in five nights and thats going to be the norm this season so when they are given an opportunity to eat up minutes they will need to work hard on the defense and create plays offensively to allow the starters the chance to take a breather.

First game on Boxing day Go Raps Go

Tom Mehegan