02.29
I’ve been getting a lot of puzzled e-mails lately about the Toronto Raptors, who are fourth in this morning’s Hollinger Power Rankings despite having the league’s 13th-best record.
The Raptors didn’t have a big reputation coming into the season, have only one household name in the lineup, and haven’t been past the first round of the playoffs in half a decade. So what gives?
Here’s the deal: They’re a lot better than their record. As I keep saying, victory margin is a better indicator of future success than win-loss record, and the Raptors’ average margin of plus-4.64 is better than that of the Mavs, Magic, Rockets, Warriors and Nuggets — all of whom have better win-loss records.
Additionally, that number has ballooned of late. The Raptors haven’t put together an impressive win streak, so they have slipped past everyone’s attention — the Raptors are a solid but hardly awe-inspiring 10-6 in their past 16 games.
But look closer and you’ll see what an impressive stretch it’s been. Five of the six losses were by five points or less, while eight of the 10 wins were by 17 or more; one of the two that wasn’t was a 114-112 win in Boston that was the best shooting display a team has put on all season.
Let’s put it more simply: The Raps aren’t beating people, they’re killing them. Toronto topped Milwaukee by 31, Washington by 39, Miami by 32, Minnesota by 23 and 22, New Jersey by 18, Orlando by 17, and New York by 23. In a 16-game stretch, half their games were blowout wins.
Sum it up and you’ll see in that modest-looking 16-game stretch the Raptors are outscoring opponents by an impressive 10 points per game.
And although the Raps may seem short on star power, you might want to revisit that assumption. Check out what Chris Bosh has done lately — he’s risen to fifth in the league in player efficiency rating thanks to a huge two-month stretch. Since New Year’s Day he’s averaging 25.7 points per game and shooting 56.9 percent from the field.
Not much further down the list is Jose Calderon, who ranks 16th in PER thanks to his insanely high efficiency. I’ve already expounded on his unique combination of high assists, low turnovers and high-percentage shooting so I won’t repeat myself here; suffice it to say that he’s been far superior to several players with much greater reputations.
And although their supporting cast lacks stars, it also lacks duds. Everybody can shoot — the Raps lead the league at 42.2 percent on 3-pointers — and they have the second-lowest turnover rate in the league. So even though the Raptors attack doesn’t seem that awe-inspiring, they’re actually fourth in the league in offensive efficiency and first in the Eastern Conference.
And it gets better. With T.J. Ford back from injury, Toronto has a third dynamic offensive player to plug into the equation.
Yet despite their weapons, I don’t see anybody taking this team seriously as a contender in the East. So I must report that they are, most definitely, a contender in the East. I still like Boston and Detroit’s odds better, but if you’re looking for a dark horse and thinking Cleveland, I’d suggest shifting your gaze further north.
An article in yesterday’s L.A. Times asked the question, are the Lakers reserves the best second unit in the west?
Lead by point guard Jordan Farmar, three-point shooter Sasha Vujacic, and the tireless Ronny Turiaf, the article made the point that no other second unit in the west had that kind of three-headed monster coming off it’s bench. The closest the article came to a rival for those three was the splendid duo the Phoenix Suns boast off their bench in Leandro Barbosa and Boris Diaw.
The Raptors would put the trio of Ford, Jason Kapono and Carlos Delfino up against the Lakers threesome. Throw in an experienced centre with the soft hands of a Rasho Nesterovich and one can easily make the argument that, accepting the Lakers subs are indeed the class of the west, the Raptors have to be considered a strong possibility as the best in the NBA.
Ford certainly thinks highly of what that group has accomplished and what it is capable of accomplishing.
“I think the key right now is for everybody to be a threat every night,” Ford said. “I think if everybody is a threat it makes it easier for all of us. I think right now with our second unit everyone is a threat. How do you scout everybody? What do you do? You have to worry about me penetrating. You have to worry about Carlos shooting the ball and penetrating, you have to worry about Jason’s shooting, Rasho, Primoz (Brezec), (Kris) Humphries, whoever is in the game. Everyone is a weapon and everyone is a threat at all times.”
He still is using his crutches at his doctor’s insistence, but forward Jorge Garbajosa is starting to put up some shots.
At the conclusion of practice yesterday, Garbajosa and assistant coach Jay Triano took over one of the two baseline baskets.
Garbajosa, who hopped to the foul line on his good leg, then went through a series of flat-footed shooting. When he changed shooting position, he did not put any weight on the injured leg he had surgery on 11 weeks ago in Baltimore.
Garbajosa admitted afterwards while it wasn’t a big step on the road to recovery, it just felt good to be doing something basketball-related again.
“The days are going by and I’m feeling better,” Garbajosa said, adding this was actually the second day in a row he had been out shooting. “It’s not a big difference from how I was two days ago (before taking his first shots) and today but mentally it’s important for me.”
“We need everybody,” coach Sam Mitchell said yesterday. “We’ve got a lot of games coming up, every other day with some back-to-backs, and we need all 12 guys each night in uniform to be ready to play.
“It’s not about how many minutes you play, it’s going out there and being productive with the time you get.”
One thing that’s easing Mitchell’s mind is the way his team has been performing of late. Stringing together three straight victories and five wins in their last six has everyone thinking they’ll win each game, a mindset that’s a huge advantage when the outings start piling up.
“The more you can win, the more success you have, the more you’re driven, the harder you work, the more attention to detail you pay, to every little thing,” Mitchell said earlier this week. “Hopefully we can get to that point where we can win enough that … if you go on the road and … play the Lakers or one of those teams like that and you’ve won six, seven games in a row … then you’re tough to beat.
“There’s a difference between losing a game and making a team go beat you. What you want to do in professional sports is make someone beat you.”
There is no timetable for any increased activity – the 30-year-old still needs crutches to get around.
“We had a report from the doctor that said we have to be extra cautious, but that things are going like we desire and it’s a moment to start to do really small things,” he said. “I can stand, I can put the same pressure on both legs but it’s not time to start work – yet. It will come.”
It was Madsen who collided with Ford during a game in February 2004 that caused the first – and most serious – injury to Ford’s spinal column. He ended up missing almost a season and a half after that collision and had surgery to fuse two vertebrae.
Ford and Madsen didn’t know each other before that incident but have become friends.
“He’s a good dude. He calls, he contacts me, we always just talk friendly,” said Ford. “We never talk about the incident, ever.”
The friendship that’s developed runs deep.
“He’s a genuine, caring person,” said Ford. “He’s been good to me since I’ve been in the NBA. I think whatever he needs, whatever I need, we make sure our word is good if we say we’re going to do something.”
“It happens with people who learn Spanish here, and then they go to Spain,” Calderon says. “And they catch nothing when we talk Spanish.”
The reverse was true in Canada for Calderon. And so every day after practice in his rookie season he went to school for two hours of intensive, one-on-one English lessons. Now he chirps easily and endearingly in his new tongue, using expressions – though much less than he once did – such as “friends” when describing his “teammates.”
“If you are not playing point guard, I think all you need is the basketball stuff – like pick and rolls – and you are all right,” he says. “But as a point guard I need to talk with the coach a lot, and I need to communicate with my teammates about what I want them to do.
“So for my position, the language is really important. But if you are a big guy, sometimes, you don’t need that.”
Witness Exhibit A: Andrea Bargnani. The big Italian, like Calderon, attended English class for most of his rookie campaign. But he was not quite as diligent a student as the Spaniard was, and in his sophomore season the son of a high school English teacher from Rome has stopped studying, and is a linguistic seedling compared to Calderon.
“I never studied with my mother,” Bargnani admits. “From the end of last season to now, I’m not getting any better in English.”
Primoz Brezec, the newest big man in town, studied English in his native Slovenia before landing in the NBA with Indiana. His classroom was the locker room, and his current speech can best be described as: Euro-boy-in-the-hood.
“I didn’t know the slang and all the bad words when I came, you know what I am saying,” says Brezec. “But I was pretty good, man, you know what I’m saying?”
Calderon has avoided adopting any slang – or any Canadianism – such as punctuating his sentences with the time-honoured “eh.” He says that as a rookie he would think about his answers in Spanish during interviews and then translate in his head before saying what he had to say.
But now it is all English all the time, at least at work and, occasionally, even at home with his Spanish-speaking wife.
“Sometimes, I speak English to my wife, and I feel stupid about it,” Calderon says. “I think: Why am I talking English to my wife?”
They’re second in the Atlantic Division behind mighty Boston and fourth overall in the Eastern Conference, and the wins just keep piling up for the Toronto Raptors.
The Raptors have been relatively quiet this season despite their 32-24 record, which is better than LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers (32-26). They will most likely punch a ticket to the playoffs for a second consecutive year with three straight wins and a 15-7 record over the last 22 contests. Head coach Sam Mitchell, who is signed through the 2010-11 season, has to be pleased with what his less-publicized players have done so far in 2007-08.
It would take a monumental breakdown for this squad to miss out on a playoff berth, and one player who is trying to make sure that will not happen is All-Star forward Chris Bosh. Bosh is averaging 28 points a game over Toronto’s last four contests at the Air Canada Centre — all wins. Bosh, who had 28 points in Wednesday’s 107-85 home victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, is shooting .621 (41-of-66) over that stretch.
Toronto Raptors point guard Jose Calderon is from Villanueva de la Serena, a small town outside of Madrid, Spain, and began his career with a team called Tao in the Northern Basque region of Spain as a 13-year-old.
Now in his third year in the NBA, Calderon has taken advantage of increased playing time this season and shown himself to be not just capable, but outstanding at running an NBA team.
Calderon ranks fifth in the league in assists with 8.7 per evening, trailing only Steve Nash, Chris Paul, Jason Kidd and Deron Williams, and leads the league in assist-to-turnover ratio. He also averages 12.7 points on 53.9 percent shooting, and makes 92 percent of his free throws, a true model of efficiency.
In continuing our series on international basketball, we spoke to Calderon about what it’s like growing up with a basketball in Spain.
We have heard the debate on if Vince Carter’s #15 would hang in the rafters of the ACC. But I am here to tell you Chris Bosh will have #4 get there long before Vince and if ever for Vince. Bosh to his credit has made himself the face of the franchise and he represents it well on and off the floor. Becoming a fixture in the community helping with many charities mostly to do with children. While on the floor he has become the BEST LEADER this team has EVER had. High praise for such a young guy. He still has many chapters to write in his story. But I can not see any scenario that does not leave him being the Best Raptor ever.
So to recap, over the past 6 years, Vince has had at least a +7.4 net adjusted +/-, leading his team during 4 seasons with a high of +15.5, when he was second in the league. So why wouldn’t players want to play with him? Clearly teams are much better when Vince is on the court. Could anyone even argue against that? The goal of each basketball game is to outscore your opponents and when Vince is on the court, he has given his team a MUCH better chance to win. The only downpoint is the 20 game stretch of horrible basketball to start the 04-05 season.
Now I am not saying that Carter is an angel or that he didn’t mail it in in those 20 games for the Raptors. But for the hate this guy gets you would think that it was him, not Kidd, who beat his wife. How many DUIs does Carter have? How many strip club shootings? Hell, was it him or Chauncey Billups that raped* that woman back in 1999? (*Allegedly).
#4 Toronto Raptors vs. #5 Cleveland Cavaliers
Aw crap. This is a matchup I dread for my Raptors. These teams have met 3 times in the regular season with Cleveland having a 2-1 advantage, however, both losses for the Raptors were close, 111-108, and 93-90. The lone win came in Toronto with both teams stars out nursing injuries. However, James was dominant in both wins, and in that 93-90 Toronto loss, James went off for 24 points in the 4th quarter alone. James is one of those talents that most teams just can’t defend, and Toronto has the tendency to really let guys like him shine. When playing top tier talent and showmen, the Raptors often tend to become spectators just like the fans. Players like Lebron and Kobe just seem to have their way with Toront’s defense and it doesn’t bode well for this matchup. Furthermore, the way Lebron elevates his game in the playoffs makes me even more nervous. At every other position Toronto matches up fairly well. Toronto has the better PGs with Calderon and Ford, and I like their SGs over Clevelands (Parker and Delfino over Devin Brown, Daniel Gibson, and Sasha Pavlovic). Cleveland has been playing Ben Wallace at PF, and he’ll defend Chris Bosh but I think that because Wallace has lost a step, Chris will do well against him on offense and having an inept scorer like Wallace to guard allows Bosh to provide help D against Lebron and Zydrunas. Joe Smith though will maybe have an easy time working Kris Humphries because of his higher basketball IQ, and Humphries knack for recently taking ill-advised long, and I mean long 2’s. Centre is interesting. Andrea Bargnani is really hit or miss, if he starts hot in a game he plays well, if he starts cold he may as well sit for the rest of the game. Nesterovic and Brezec are pretty good backups, Nesterovic being silent and simple, but he tends to play fairly mistake free ball. Brezec is more of a crowd pleaser and if he can play healthy, he can put up decent numbers. Behind Ilgauskas, Cleveland features Anderson Varejao, who has strong, tenacious D, but like Ben Wallace doesn’t have much of an offensive game. Toront’s team and depth gives them a good chance in this series. However the fact that it’s Lebron scares me. I just don’t know if the Raps can stop him and Bosh will have to try and take over the game the way Lebron will. Bosh is capable of doing that (he scored 41 against Cleveland earlier this year), but sometimes he settles too much for outside shots instead of driving against slower defenders. I must admit though, he has a pretty sick stroke when he’s on and his jab step is just nasty. The intangibles will be huge in this series. Right now Toronto has home court advantage which is indispensable. Toronto elevates their game at home and can even manage to just crush opponents on home court. Cleveland though has more playoff experience which also bodes well for their nerves in tight games. Toronto takes the team game, but Cleveland has possibly the best player in the league on their side. I hate to say it, but I’ll take Cleveland in 6.
The Hollinger article really puts things into perspective. I am sure he doesn’t watch nearly the same amount of games we all do, but looking at what he said, and trying to analyze the stats objectively…he might have a point. That being said, I don’t think they are third in the east, but i think we can all agree if the rebounding and 3 position get addressed, they are right there.