The Raptors played a very hard fought game against the Jazz tonight and won 111-106 in double overtime to beat the 10-6 Jazz for the first time in 12 games and won two road games in two very tough environments for them but they lost Andrea Bargnani who started having a tough night as he was 6 of 19 and then went 4 of 7 the rest of the way and left the game @ 1:12 left in the first overtime.
Andrea left limping and he has hurt the calf muscle that kept him off the court for 6 games and will be flown to Denver tomorrow for X-rays as the team heads to Denver to face the Nuggets. The sad part of this situation is that he did not have to play overtime because the Raptors D tried their best in the late fourth quarter to give the offense a chance to win the game in regulation as the Raptors @ the 4:50 mark of the fourth quarter with DeRozan hitting a jumper to cut the lead to one point @ 84-83. The Raps only made two free throws til the the 37 second mark where Bargnani hit a jumper to cut it to one again as they missed 7 straight shots and most long distance and if the Raps go to the back one time and hit a shot or get two more free throws they win in regulation and then Calderon hits a big three with 13 seconds left and sends it to overtime after he allow his player Devin Harris to get behind him to put the Jazz up 90-87 after Bargnani had played amazing low post D to prevent the Jazz from getting easy points. Devin Harris who did have 24 points in the game and 6 assists did miss 3 of 4 free throws in the last minute of double overtime which if he had all of them the game would of been tied @ 109 and it wold be tougher for the Raps to get a basket like Barbosa's dunk with 11.9 seconds left to make the final two points of the Raptors' 111 points and just for good measure the Raps allowed the Jazz to get a early 18 point lead 30-12 with less than 4 minutes left in the first quarter but tied it up @ 50 @ half.
With that all said Demar after playing a season low 22 and a half minutes Tuesday night in Phoenix played 44 minutes and played D and went to the basket and got hammered and still went for it and had 17 points with 8 boards while Amir Johnson played 23 and a half minutes but got the wake up call when Bargnani went out as he was as tough as nails in the second overtime. James Johnson must love being in the starting lineup as he had 6 of the Raptors 10 block shots and had 5 boards to go with 2 points while Rasual Butler only saw 27 seconds of court time while Barbosa had 10 points the Raptors big first quarter into the second quarter comeback. While the Jazz got performance out of Paul Millsap with 31 points as their leader Al Jefferson did not suit up for the Jazz tonight.
Will see about Bargnani tomorrow
Tom Mehegan
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