Linkage - Feb 5
The standard has been set. The bar has been raised to a new level.
From here on out, the Raptors will measure all their efforts against last night’s 114-82 thumping of the Miami Heat.
"As a team it’s hard for us to play much better than we did (last night)," Raps head coach Sam Mitchell said. "Our defence was good, we rebounded the ball for the most part. We moved the ball. We made shots but we got great looks. We will be hard pressed to play much better than we did (last night)." Mitchell didn’t care that the opponent was an undermanned Miami Heat squad.
Mitchell saw Andrea Bargnani and Chris Bosh turn down open looks of their own for better looks for their teammates.
He saw Jamario Moon going after rebounds. He saw tenacious team defence. He saw Anthony Parker and Bargnani, two reformed reluctant drivers going hard to the basket. Bargnani’s baseline drive and reverse dunk in the first quarter had Mitchell airborne and pumping his fist.
And if anyone thinks Mitchell was seeing more than was there, it’s exactly what Heat coach Pat Riley saw as well.
"Too quick, too efficient, too ready: That was Toronto in the first quarter," Riley said. "It was just an absolute basketball clinic. They had us back on our heals before we even knew what was going on. It was just right from the get-go. It was a very, very impressive performance on their part."
There were many points on the stat sheet for a Raptors fan to get excited about, but none bigger than the 31 assists they finished with, led by 10 from Jose Calderon.
When this team is rolling offensively it is the kind of rapid and continuous ball movement it showed last night that starts it all.
"No one is looking for assists but if you pass the ball once the next play is going to be for you. That’s our team rule and we just tried to play and find the open guy," Calderon said.
Ford, who missed 24 games with a left-arm stinger, scored four points, had four assists and played 16 minutes 45 seconds.
He said he did not anticipate coming back to play this soon after working out for three weeks in Houston with former NBA coach and player John Lucas. Lucas also helped Ford come back after neck surgery forced him to miss all the 2004-05 season with the Milwaukee Bucks.
But Ford felt that good about Sunday’s practice that he wanted to dress for the game and, if the team co-operated by piling on the points early to create an opportunity, for head coach Sam Mitchell to give him playing time.
With the Raptors up by 27 points heading into the final frame, Ford was able to get a solid block of minutes in with his teammates. In all, he wound up with four assists and just one turnover in 17 minutes.
"It felt good. I think my overall play felt good," Ford told Raptors NBA TV after the game. "I was excited. I was able to create for guys and guys were able to get shots."
The Raptors obviously wanted Ford to return to the floor in as relaxed of a setting as possible. Against the floundering Heat (9-37) that was easily possible.
Toronto drilled 11 of its first 14 shots, while Miami missed 14 of its first 17, as the Raptors leaped out to 28-6 lead just nine minutes into the game.
Nathan Jawai is a 6-foot-10, 270 pound centre who is eligible for this year’s NBA draft. With the Australian league schedule winding down the Raptors sent Jim Kelly, their director of player personnel, over to Australia to see him recently.
Jawai is considered on some draft boards to be a late first round or early second-round pick. Kelly did not want to pigeon-hole the young man calling him an "emerging" player.
"He’s only played for a couple of years so he really hasn’t competed at the highest levels of the game," Kelly said.
While Jawai is putting up numbers in Australia, Kelly says he’s a bit of a "novelty" over there where big men are few and far between.
Out the past eight weeks following a scary night in Atlanta when he had to be taken off the court on a stretcher, Ford’s return to the court was delayed a little as Jose Calderon felt it was necessary to mark the moment with a little more than a slap of hands.
He stopped Ford on his way out and embraced him, catching the Raptors’ returning point guard off-guard a little.
"My mind was probably floating," Ford said. "I didn’t recognize the hug, but we respect one another, we care about one another and we support one another. We’ve never made it about one of us (over the other)."
Ford came in for five minutes in that stint and then played the entire fourth quarter.
He finished the game with four points and four assists in just under 17 minutes in a game he didn’t even expect to be playing in.
"I think the performance speaks for itself," Ford said. "I don’t think people expected me to be able to come in and still do the things I normally do. I don’t think people anticipated that."
Early in the game, Andrea Bargnani drove baseline and tossed down a reverse dunk, looking as gazelle-like as he ever has. Bargnani finished with 22 points in 33 minutes. Bosh led the visitors with 24 points in 34 minutes. But the effort was collective, with 31 Toronto assists on 44 field goals.
"Our guys were rested. We had a couple of days off, got a little sunshine, got a little warmth," said Mitchell.
"It seemed like we had a little more pep in our step. … We would be hard-pressed to play much better."
They drag their tired selves out of bed and wander through a breakfast room and on to a bus. Headphones on, some with sleep still in their eyes, they arrive at an arena in late morning, where they are expected to process intricate information about that night’s opponents. All a lot of them want to do is get back to the comfort of the hotel.
They walk through some plays, perhaps even paying attention every now and then, before they pack up, check emails and text messages sitting courtside and saunter back to the bus for the ride back to the hotel.
It’s a scenario played out in so many cities on so many sleepy mornings, a scenario known as an NBA morning shootaround.
It’s tradition. And, truth be told, that’s about the only reason it exists most times.
For the Raptors, most of the time each morning is spent re-affirming what they want to do consistently on defence rather than making wholesale changes to react to what that night’s opponent might do. There is some "tweaking" of defensive principles, Mitchell said, depending on the personnel they’ll face, but the basics remain the same.
"You’ve got your ways that you play things, like screen and rolls (and) are you going to trap on the post," said Mitchell. "We practice our defensive principles, we don’t practice against other teams’ plays because if three guys remember the play and the other two don’t, what good is that?
"It’s different when you get to the playoffs. Then it’s a lot easier to lock in on what they do."
Shootarounds are of such little consequence to some coaches they’ve done away with them.
The San Antonio Spurs don’t have them, but, as Mitchell pointed out one day in Texas, it’s easy to thumb your nose at convention when you’ve got championship banners hanging from the rafters.
"If you haven’t won any championships, you’ve got to do it because if you don’t, they think you don’t work," said Mitchell. "It’s all perception."
"I would look at that court and I would think, even though I could retire if I wanted to, I still would play basketball," said Ford. "I’m at the same risk playing in my backyard that I am playing on this court, I feel. So that helped me understand it.
"I’m still young. It doesn’t make sense to quit something I’ve worked so hard at to get to this level. To come back down and play at somebody else’s level?"
In other words, if Ford wasn’t at American Airlines Arena last night, playing in his first NBA game since he was taken off the floor on a stretcher on Dec. 11, he probably would have been looking for a game somewhere else.
Monday’s performance — or lack thereof — came on the heels of what Riley said was a spirited Sunday practice, where the team had just eight healthy players. But Riley said they embraced his demand for a defensive attitude change “wholly and willingly, joyfully, lovingly - without rolling their eyes.”
Apparently, it didn’t last long.
The Raptors scored 33 of the game’s first 43 points, made 13 of their first 19 shots and led 33-12 after the first quarter. The Heat missed 16 of its first 22 shots to start a night when the only consistency came in turnovers, defensive lapses, poor shooting and boos from the crowd.
”You can hear the boos, you can hear the things that they say,” said Wade, who played just 28 minutes and was rested for most of the second half. “You can’t fault them for anything they say or do. Our fans have been great when we were winning and now we’re losing and not playing hard. All they want is to see us play hard and be competitive. And when you’re not, they’ve got that right.”
And it’s all left Riley at a loss.
”I’m just waiting for our guys to get tired of taking this (losing),” he said. “If you hate losing, get back on defense harder. If you hate losing, block out. If you hate losing, dive on the floor. If you hate losing, take a hard foul. If you losing, do something other than what you’re doing - resigning to the fact that something bad is happening to you.”
Utterly defenseless.
And a lesson, courtesy of the Raptors, about the value of outside shooting.
It’s the one thing Toronto General Manager Bryan Colangelo insists from each of his players.
Somewhere, James Posey and Eddie Jones are snickering. To his credit, Jason Kapono wasn’t on Monday, perhaps that’s because he was too busy shooting 6 of 10.
Kapono, who joined the Raptors as a free agent during the off-season, said he didn’t want to leave Miami. He signed a four-year, $24 million contract that the Heat couldn’t afford to match.
"It was a great time here," Kapono said. "I was glad I got a chance to play last year. It’s definitely a special team to play for. I really liked they guys and stuff. But it’s a business and unfortunately, or fortunately for myself, I had to move on."
Fate smiles on Toronto this week with an extremely manageable three-game run that it should use to climb seven games above .500 for the first time all season. After visiting the depleted Heat on Monday, the Raptors will have the rest of the week to practice and rest up for weekend games against the Clippers and Timberwolves. That’s not exactly a murderer’s row.
For Toronto, this game was a suitable warm-up, as the Raptors managed to accomplish a lot of goals. They put the Heat away early, managed to get more productive minutes from Bargnani, worked TJ back into the lineup without many ill effects, increased the production off the bench, and got another win under their belt. It can’t be expected that this team will continue to shoot over 50% from the field and 3-point land, but the Raptors came in and did their job and didn’t leave things to any last minute heroics. It’s the kind of effort and game you expect from a top tier team and that’s comforting.
You never like to see a player lose a job to injury, but this might be one of those situations that it’s simply warranted. Yes, it took Ford’s misfortune for Calderon to get the chance, but that doesn’t the fact that Calderon has played better than Ford ever did, putting himself in rare company among elite NBA point guards. Putting him back on the bench would be a disservice to the Raptors.
5. Toronto Raptors
Name: 4; The Raptor
Head: 7; Intimidating head with lots of big teeth.
Clothing: 4; He should have raptor feet with claws instead of tennis shoes.
Color Scheme: 7; The red is very attractive and I’m glad they cut out the purple.
Other: 9; The Raptor also has an Ollie-like form, which you can see dancing here.
With a record of 26-21, one would be reluctant to classify the Toronto Raptors as an elite basketball club.
Then again, perhaps one shouldn’t be so hasty.
Yes, the club is a mere five games above .500, the bar that typically measures success. And, yes, they’ve even dipped below it on a number of occasions.
And yes, all-stars Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani were very ordinary for the first 35 games, leaving bench players and point guards to pick up much of their slack.
But something has changed recently. The Raptors have found their identity.
There’s no point celebrating a win over a depleted and sun-tanned Miami team too much. Let’s leave it at this: The Raptors didn’t play down to the level of their opposition, played with a high level of enthusiasm and intensity and never allowed Miami to gain any momentum. Offensively, we were brilliant, we moved the ball end-to-end, when they played zone, we broke it in half by driving the ball after quick passes and never game Miami a chance.
Despite Miami being PERFECT from the free-throw line (17-17) it wasn’t what they needed. they were 3-16 from the 3-point line (18%). But the Raptors (with Jason Kapono) were 10-19 (52%) much better than the HEAT’s stat. I bet Kapono is thinking in his head, oh my god, i’m so glad i left this team. they have nobody besides Wade at this moment. and even wade is not getting it done. Kapono finished with 13 points. (wish we had him).
The question now is, what do we talk about for four days until the Raps play the Clippers? If only there was some kind of story to debate and talk about. If only……wait……oh yes…..the whole debate on who should run the team as a starter once T.J. is back in the groove?
The Toronto media and all the bloggers will be talking about this one for the rest of the season and to be honest is there really a right answer? All that matters at the end of the day is that the team is winning.
50 wins and another division title would be nice but they are unlikely. What I want is the team to be healthy and rolling with steam into the playoffs and not caught up in the moment of just getting there.
Boston and Detroit are the head of the class in the East but I don’t think in a seven game series that the Raps are that far behind them.
If BC could add a rebounding machine before the deadline that would be ideal.
A classic Raptor win: 60% from the field, 53% from behind the arc and 84% from the line. The Raptors ran into a horrible Miami Heat team, and dropped the hammer on their weak asses. This game was more a testament to how bad the Heat are, than how good the Raptors are. I mean, they still shot 60% from the field, but not because of anything other than weak defense by a team full of players I have never heard of.
Feb 5th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I think I saw enough of Ford to tell me that he’s physically sound and hasn’t lost a step mentally. I think whatever Lucas did in his little camp is paying dividends, usually players come back and are pretty sloppy in their first few games, TJ looked sharp as a knife.
Feb 5th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
i was nervous about his head until that dunk. he wasn’t driving, but then goes ahead and takes it to hard to rack for a dunk. i guess he was like “f*ck it, i’m going in”. i’m putting up a video of it shortly.