Linkage - March 05
The Raptors have won before without Chris Bosh in the lineup, but two games into his absence with a sore right knee, the question is quickly becoming how?
"We just couldn’t score enough," head coach Sam Mitchell said. "The fourth quarter they kept getting dunks and (Hedo) Turkoglu kept hitting big shots. We got some good shots but we just couldn’t get enough points."
Even Ford’s 20-point night was a bit misleading. He got 13 of those points in the fourth quarter but needed nine shots to get them.
That was nine of the 17 shots the Raptors took in the final 12 minutes as the Magic put the game away with 31 points in the final frame.
Ford pointed out that Bosh’s absence is being felt up and down the Raptor lineup.
"For the most part, the second unit is trying to find a flow and our chemistry again," Ford said.
"We have lost that consistency since (Bosh) went down, because everybody’s role changed. We need to find a balance right now."
The fact that the NBA’s best three-point shooting team only made good on 2-of-14 attempts from beyond the arc did not help matters.
"(Magic assistant coach) Patrick (Ewing) talked with me during the game," Howard said. "We had a game earlier in the season where I was really frustrated and it took me out of the whole game and he told me he didn’t want to see that again.
"I didn’t want to end up with a one-point night," Howard said. "I was very upset, not at my team, just myself. I got a little frustrated in the first half and in the second, I played as hard as I could."
Toronto’s starting front line of Rasho Nesterovic, Andrea Bargnani and Jamario Moon combined for a 5-for-25 debacle from the field. Even the resident marksman, Jason Kapono, who went 1-for-4 from the field and didn’t make a three-pointer for the 12th straight game, chucked an unlikely attempt off the padding on the side of the backboard from close range.
T.J. Ford, apparently of the belief that it fell to him and him alone to ignite the comeback in the fourth quarter, ended up with 20 points but turned the ball over seven times in the single-minded flurry.
"We need him to score, especially with Chris out, but he’s also got to keep the other guys involved," coach Sam Mitchell said of Ford. "Seven turnovers is too many. He’s got to find that happy medium between scoring and passing."
Said Ford, one of the few regulars who remained in the locker room to address the media: "At some points of the game, I think I got too aggressive and made some bad decisions."
If you were looking for positives, you might have cited the team-wide heeding of the coaching staff’s pre-game emphasis on rebounding. The Raptors, who limited the Magic to three second-chance points, out-boarded Orlando 47-41.
Alas, if only their defence had been as impressive.
Bargnani is, in some ways, emblematic of this Raptors season. He’s filled with promise, yet struggling to make a much-anticipated progression. He hasn’t been good enough to get zanily excited about, but he’s shown enough at age 22 to suggest he’s worthy of patience. Still, you can understand why there are those dismissing him as a bust. When it’s going poorly for the No. 1 pick in the 2006 draft, when his shot’s not falling and he falls into a funk that manifests itself in sullen body language and all-around ineffectiveness, he rarely brings it around. Witness last night’s 102-87 loss to the Magic, wherein Bargnani’s 2-for-11 shooting line spoke to his invisibility.
Still, Sam Mitchell, the Raptors coach, continues to have very little patience with the Roman’s doubters. Call it an apologist’s spin, but Mitchell has argued that Bargnani’s versatility – or at least the theoretical idea that he’ll one day be a player who’s effective everywhere from the three-point line to the low block – is to blame for his stalled evolution.
"What I’m trying to get y’all to understand is Andrea has to learn to do a lot of things," said Mitchell the other day. "Andrea has to learn post-up moves. He has to learn face-up moves. And then he also has to work on his game at the three-point line because he can shoot threes. … There’s a lot more that Andrea’s got to get than the average centre. And that takes more time."
"If you take a player with minimum talent and he works, he’s got a chance. If you take a player with good talent, like Andrea has, he really has a chance," said Mitchell. "Andrea is fine. The only problem with Andrea is (the media). … We all want (him to become) the best player in the NBA, now. It would make my life a whole lot easier. Right? If I could touch him with my magic wand – best centre in the NBA. …
"But the reality of it is, none of us have a magic wand."
Fourth quarter, game’s getting out of hand, Howard’s going off and Sam leaves an absolutely over-matched Andrea Bargnani out there to guard him? That was a bad, bad gamble. It wasn’t like Bargnani was lighting it up at the other end or anything. And, early in the third quarter when Bargnani pump-faked and tried to draw the foul? That might have been the ugliest basketball move I’ve ever seen in an NBA game and I’ve watched this franchise of all 13 of its seasons, making me one of the world’s foremost experts on ugly basketball moves.
Talk about ‘stepping up’ in Bosh’s absence? Bargnani: 45 minutes, 4-19 from the field, 0-5 from three point range, 10 rebounds, no impact.
a spy sitting courtside tells me during one timeout the Magaic mascot, a not particularly fearsome looking dragon, was goofing around near the Raptor bench.
Seems Primoz Brezec, for some reason known only to Primoz Brezec, took great umbrage at a stuffed animal having fun and slugged the thing. Then he tells him, ‘bleep you, I’ll bleep you up.’
Yeah, that’s ‘manning up’ like the best of ‘em, smacking a mascot
Bush league, if you ask me.
here’s my list of guys he can, and should, go after. It’s not in any particular order.
Andres Nocioni, Mike Dunleavy, Mike Miller, Richard Jefferson, Boris Diaw, Andrei Kirilenko, Al Harrington, Jason Richardson, Jamal Crawford, Josh Smith, Michael Redd.
What he’s got to do is find a team facing possible tax problems in a year or two – a team with a lot of young guys who’ll need to be paid at the same time – or a team that doesn’t quite work as it’s constructed.
Four situations jump out at me: Nocioni, Miller, Jefferson and Kirilenko.
Personally, of that group, I rank ‘em Nocioni, Kirilenko, Jefferson Miller.
He can’t sell it as a purely present day basketball but if he tosses in a draft pick or two it might make it more palatable.
"You can’t give him dunks, especially in transition," Raptors coach Sam Mitchell said. "It’s easy for me to say that. But for the guys who are guarding him, it’s a load."
"They gave him some room finally and played him 1-on-1," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. "There are just not very many guys that are going to be able to play him 1-on-1."
"We just didn’t shoot the ball well for whatever reason," Parker said. "I just don’t think we had a rhythm throughout the game as a team. I think we got some good looks, we shot 2-for-14 from the three, 40 per cent from the field total. … That hurt us. I thought we did a good job in the first half against Dwight. I think we did a decent job until late in the second half.
"He’s just so physical. He just bumps into you and you come with the double team and hopefully it’s early enough and in the early parts of the game we were better at it than later on."
If there’s one reason why Kris Humphries gets extended minutes some nights and doesn’t others, it’s that he doesn’t always roll hard to the basket after setting the high screen. He has a tendency, if he doesn’t think he’s getting the ball, to kind of drift, like a wide-receiver jogging his pattern when he knows it’s a hand-off. When he rolls hard like he did drawing the foul on his nice little sequence at the end of the third he is sometimes open and gets the ball at the rim, which is good. But if he’s not that means that the defence has either backed off the ball early to help, making life easier for the point guard, or the person playing the shooter in the corner has edge over, leaving someone open there. Roll hard and good things happen is Mitchell’s mantra to Hump, and he’s right.
Jamario Moon told me once he doesn’t like to read scouting reports because he’d prefer to play his man straight up and with a fresh eye. His point was that guys are so good that if you are expecting them to do one thing, they’ll promptly do the other. My take would be the scouting report is there to help you force guys into tendencies they’re less comfortable with. Sometimes they even capture the way smart players make their weaknesses strengths. So my bet is the scouting report on Hedo Turkoglu is that even though he’s right-handed, he’ s more likely to drive left and finish left. Moon doesn’t seem clear on this in the early going, as Turkoglu burns him left a couple of times.
All in all, Toronto had a fairly strong outing, despite the score. It was almost as if the Raptors were trying to shake off the notion that they were soft, which is how their newly acquired reserve centre Primoz Brezec categorized their performance in Charlotte.
Toronto obviously learned from its horrendous night on Sunday. The Raptors competed for every rebound, a game after giving up 18 offensive rebounds. Accordingly, Orlando managed just one in each half.
"We just couldn’t sustain it," Mitchell said. "We couldn’t score enough. It’s hard to win on the road when you’re shooting 40%."
Schooled repeatedly by point guard Jose Calderon in the loss in Toronto, the Magic played better pick-and-roll defense. And their "Big Three" — Howard, Hedo Turkoglu (24 points) and Rashard Lewis (22) — made 17 of 19 shots in the second half after the club struggled in the first. Orlando wound up shooting 52.6 percent.
Anyways, they lost because they couldn’t hit shots, gave the Magic more than enough open looks, played small ball…no Chris Bosh, no hope…bla bla bla…the lone bright light was the rebounding situation, which really didn’t matter as the offense was stagnant and didn’t go anywhere
At some point I think Ford needs to face the facts considering the type of player he now is. He is no longer the number one option at Texas who could score at will simply because he was faster and more explosive than anyone else. Likewise, he’s no longer the player who can careen into the paint looking to draw contact, he has to make adjustments to his game.
And considering his competitiveness and pride, I’m sure that will be no easy task.
But for the benefit of the Raptors going forward, I think Jose needs to be the starting point guard, the one who gets everyone involved early and sets the tone. And TJ needs to be the one off the bench, the one who comes in with speed and energy, who pushes the pace and lends his grit and scoring to a second unit of spot-up shooters.
He can still be extremely valuable to this team, but unless he starts playing to his current strengths, and not those of yesterday, I’m not sure he and Jose can effectively co-exist, and BC may have no other option than to look for a trade.
Once again though, it was Primoz Brezec who gave the Raptors some energy from the bench. While some will question his ability to play in a controlled style, his hustle and the constant chip on his shoulder seem to push the entire team when they hit small lulls. When Brezec commented on the previous game, he lamented about the lack of grit of the team and he is, without a doubt, one of the few that is ready and willing to address this fault. It’s just too bad that without Chris Bosh, the Raptors were clearly over matched against an Orlando team that was prepared to avenge a double digit loss in Toronto earlier this year. Some questions have to be posed though, about TJ Ford’s involvement in the fourth quarter. Forcing the issue, he attempted to attack the basket, but was routinely caught underneath against big men. The most glaring factor was the fact that TJ Ford took all the shots for the first seven minutes of the fourth quarter. It was this poor decision making that led to his uncharacteristically high seven turnovers which accounted for more than half of the team’s totals. The really questionable thing was, when Calderon re-entered the game, it was so Sam could put his “two point guard” scheme into play again, instead of yanking TJ for his ill advised work on the court.
It’s hard to look past the Ford fiasco but let’s move on. Rasho Nesterovic had a very good game, nothing spectacular but he held his position against Howard, hit the glass and got some contested rebounds, he was unfortunate to get called for some fouls and had a couple non-calls go against his way on the other end. However, in the fourth quarter with the game hanging in the balance, Rasho was nowhere to be found guarding Howard who found himself covered by Andrea Bargnani. Howard proceeded to torch Bargnani for 6 straight points where the defense was so bad that even a Grade 8 coach would’ve had a meltdown. The number one rule of defense is to stay between your man and the the basket which Bargnani forgot twice, on the other play Howard eluded him quite easily on the baseline for a hook shot which should’ve been sealed off. That little stretch combined with Ford’s theatrics was the TSN turning point.
I need to give credit to Anthony Parker for playing with his heart on his sleeve, you can tell that this guy wants to win and is looking to compete. 19 points and a team-leading 9 rebounds is no joke for a 2-guard who along with Calderon were the two people who really showed up to play. You never know what you’re going to get on offense with Delfino, today he laid an egg doing 1-7 FG for 4 points but you can look past that because he did manage to snatch 9 rebounds. That’s more than you can say about our starting small forward who on any other team would’ve been benched for his lack of production. No offense to Moon but bad perimeter shooters who struggle to defend and rarely slash to the rim are dime a dozen in the D-League. Perhaps Colangelo should take another peek in the cesspool of D-League talent and see if he can find himself a hungry SF who’s willing to fight it out in the NBA and doesn’t get too comfortable just because the coach seems to have blind faith in him.
There were some positives from the loss. The Raptors rebounded and did a great job of keep the Magic off the glass. I saw guys in red jerseys box out and put a body on guys when the ball came off the rim. Carlos Delfono in particular had a great game rebounding T.J. Ford had a decent game scoring although his out of control spell there was hard to watch. But I am not going to knock the guy when he is scoring and keeping Toronto close. Okay I lied, he needed to be a little more of a point guard and not try to bring the team back all by himself. I came up with a little song about Ford as we were watching the game.
Mar 5th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Rasho is the man… look at him take Howard head on. Name ONE other player on the Raptors that does that. Humphries only does so HALF the time (I have yet to see Brezec), but that’s it.
And on to Ford…
Ford is Mike James with more money to fly down to the Bahamas. Honestly, are people JUST figuring out this NOW?