Bargnani misses a buzzer beater to open the season

The Raptors let a 10 point lead at home to a Indiana Pacers team without Danny Granger and allowed them to take home home with them a nice and warm 90-88 victory on the Raptors home court. It came down to Andrea Bargnani with a buzzer beater that he missed and the Pacers who were down three when Kyle Lowery hit two free throws with 2:15 left in the game and then the Pacers went on a 5-0 run to end the game as the Raptors went 0 for 4 after the free throws and missed their last 6 shots from the floor. The big question mark coming into the season was who was going to be the shutdown guy and the Raptor that would turn the lights out on the opponents and with their lowest points in a quarter being the fourth quarter with 17 that question is still a mystery and it did not help that the Pacers put up their biggest scoring quarter in the fourth with 27 behind David West who had 14 of the Pacers last 20 points and finished with 25 to lead everybody. The Raptors got 14 of their 17 fourth quarter points from the back court of Jose Calderon and Kyle Lowery as Bargnani who had 11 of his 16 points in the first quarter and started 3 for 3 from the floor ended the game going 1 for 12 from the floor. The point guards ended up with 36 of the Raptors 88 points and had 15 in the second quarter so to end the half/game they had 29 of their 36 points. DeMar DeRozan who was skipping to the bank collecting his 4/40 million dollar extension that came out of nowhere was almost nowhere as he started the game 0 for 5 and in the second/third quarter hit 5 straight shots and then finished 0 for 4 from the floor with 10 points and no free throe attempts. Rookie JONAS VALANCIUNAS did what very rookie does and he did it all in one game he was hot scoring 6 points and 4 boards in the first quarter and he also was a spark plug in the third quarter with 6 points to help the Raptors go on a 12-0 run in the early third quarter to erase a 1 point deficit at 53-52 and help give the Raptors a 64-53 lead with 7 minutes left in the quarter. At this point with 19 minutes left in the game he had 12 points and 10 rebounds and he did not do anything the rest of the game and at times he took frustration fouls because he did not get the calls but he did not foul out so all-in-all a pretty good first game except the end result. The highly credited bench without even stepping on the floor did not really back up the exception of them because u take away Calderon's night u are left with a 6 of 18 from the floor and 0 for 3 from beyond the arc and only had 14 total points and did not pull their weight as the Pacers bench had 21 points and players had to moved around because their # 1 player Granger was not in the lineup. Casey has some work to do Tom Mehegan