Linkage - March 13
Just 51/2 minutes into last night’s game, the Raps were down by 14 and, while they recovered to eventually take a lead midway through the fourth quarter, their early lapses came back to haunt them in a 117-106 loss to the Golden State Warriors.
A night after a strong, but ultimately losing, effort in Los Angeles against the Lakers, the Raptors came out looking like a team that was on the tail end of five games in seven days on a Western Conference swing.
Problem is, they are just two games into this trip.
Offensively in that first quarter the Raptors were stunningly stagnant. Defensively they looked slow and listless.
"They missed some shots and we were able to get back into the game," coach Sam Mitchell said. "But that first quarter killed us. We played hard and we gave ourselves a chance, but in that first quarter, we came out flat."
Were it not for an energized second unit, led by T.J. Ford and Kris Humphries, and the predictable defensive indifference of the Warriors, this one would not have been close.
T.J. Ford knows how it goes. You lose your spot, you fight your way back.
Ford began the season as the starting point guard on this Raptors. Injuries and the stellar play of Jose Calderon in his absence combined to take it away from him.
Ford says he is not bitter about this but, at the same time, it’s not in his competitive nature to accept it, either.
This is not a knock on Calderon or Ford. Calderon is the starter on merit. But if Ford can change that, he will. Would anyone expect anything less of a top-level athlete who got to where he is primarily on his competitiveness?
At every level, at every stop in his basketball career, Ford either has been or become the starting point guard in short order.
Staying behind in L.A. to take in the Pac 10 Conference tournament were president and GM Bryan Colangelo, assistant GM Maurizio Gherardini and Masai Ujiri, the team’s director of global scouting. The Pac 10 tournament is practically one-stop shopping this year for NBA management types looking to nail down their pecking order for the upcoming draft.
No fewer than seven and potentially as many as nine of the Pac 10 stars are forecasted to be first-round picks in the draft. The list is lead by UCLA freshman centre Kevin Love and includes USC freshman guard O.J. Mayo, whose stock initially dropped this year before a strong finish put him back in the picture.
From Los Angeles, the Raptors’ scouting tour will move to Kansas for the Big 12 tournament where they’ll get an up-close look at expected first overall pick Michael Beasley of Kansas State.
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John Lucas, who is with the Raptors as a consultant, said it’s apparent to him that teams have decided they will let Ford and fellow point guard Jose Calderon be scorers, but not scorers and facilitators. "Now teams are saying you’re either going to score or you’re going to get assists, but not both."
And once again, T.J, Ford was front and centre in the Raptors’ rally, trying – again – to single-handedly bring the Raptors back.
While he led the team with 22 points, Ford spent huge chunks of the fourth quarter going one-on-five. He took eight of Toronto’s first 14 shots in the fourth quarter, some in the flow of play but many forced, as the other four Raptors were forced to stand around and watch.
Anthony Parker scored 20 points through the first three quarters but got only one shot in the final 12 minutes as Ford once again dominated the ball.
The concern Raptors coach Sam Mitchell had before the game was that his team would try to outscore the Warriors, or play at their tempo and that was never going to work.
"Once you have to try to play the way they play, it’s going to be hard to beat them," Mitchell said before the game. "Those guys are used to playing that way. We have to come out and our big guys are matched up against smaller guys. We have to score on the inside and rebound the basketball."
"They’ve got a lot of good basketball players, a lot of good one-on-one basketball players," said Mitchell. "Any time you’ve got three guys in the starting lineup that are averaging 20 (points per game, Davis 22.0, Jackson 20.9 and Ellis, 19.3) it’s pretty tough."
Especially when the Raptors simply don’t have enough firepower most games to offset the loss of Chris Bosh’s 22 points a night.
"We have to spread the ball, we have to pass the ball and we have to throw the ball to who’s open," Mitchell said.
"There are nights when Chris (Bosh) can just carry you, he can score over guys, but we have to put teams in tough situations and we have to beat teams by moving the basketball.
"We don’t have that one guy without Chris who can just go out, and just hold the basketball, square a guy up and just beat him."
But Morey is the first NBA GM to be heralded as a disciple of what’s been termed the "Moneyball" approach to sports management. He’s a self-professed stats geek who has studied the work of both Bill James, the baseball-versed pioneer of sports statistical analysis, and Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s GM who famously (and successfully) applied some of James’s principles to his team architecture.
Now that the Rockets have become one of the great stories of the season – tying the Milwaukee Bucks for the second-longest win streak in NBA history at 20 games with an 83-75 victory over Atlanta last night – Morey’s approach is likely to get a lot more attention.
It’s far too early to tell not only how serious a championship threat the Rockets can be, but how influential Morey’s stat-engrossed approach can become. He has said the Rockets have invested millions in everything from the massive computer servers required to store the hours and hours of digital video from which statistical trends are mined, to the analysts who do the prospecting. And if Morey has hit on something revolutionary, nobody is expecting him to share the wealth of proprietary data.
The Raptors, like a lot of NBA clubs, dabble in video cataloguing and statistical analysis, although perhaps not to Morey’s career-defining extent. Bryan Colangelo, the Toronto GM, has likened statistical analysis to one tool in the toolbox of a successful executive.
Bargnani’s in the low post, has the smaller Mickael Pietrus on him, backs him down patiently and then calmly hits a fadeaway jumper. That’s a big man post move and shows that maybe all that work in practice with Alex English is going to pay off.
Quietly, the kid’s been pretty good lately, hasn’t he?
"T.J. Ford seemed to make every shot, I mean, that guy was incredible for a long period of time," Warriors head coach Don Nelson said. "But in the fourth quarter Monta [Ellis] made all his shots and Ford didn’t. We did a better job on him."
Parker has been over 20 points heading into each of the last two fourth quarters.
"If we win, it doesn’t matter to me," he said. "When the ball moves around, I think it is better. You get better looks, people feel more involved, and from a defensive standpoint, it keeps you on your heels instead of being able to attack because you know what is coming.
"We just have to find the balance between T.J. being able to do what he does. He did some good things. He did a lot of good things. He got to the basket and got to the free-throw line, but I think we can make it a little bit easier for him."
The only clear advantage the Raptors had in this game was in the size department as Rasho Nesterovic and Andrea Bargnani, twins 7-footers, were going to be counted on to do some scoring inside.
Both were scoreless at the half, and their first field goal didn’t come until five minutes into the third quarter. Bargnani picked it up early in the fourth, and finished with 14 points.
Okay. Other teams don’t read scouting reports. I think that’s four straight games or something that the Raptors first play has been where Parker cuts from the left corner across the key off a screen by Nesterovic. He’s shooting 100 per cent in this situation.
Rasho is crafty and playing well of late, but this game is just too fast for him. He’s been blocked twice and committed three turnovers in eight minutes and Sam just sat him down. Parker has obviously been reading From Deep and is determined to shut my yap: He’s four-of-five in the quarter.
I have a lot of time for Kris Humphries, but this is a good example of why his playing time can be so erratic: Early in the fourth he hustles and draws a foul on a loose ball situation; hustles again and forces Golden State to lose the ball out of bounds after an offensive rebound on the same trip. So far so good. Then he takes a fading 18-footer with 20 seconds on the shot clock, which would be a bad shot for Bosh, and is unthinkable for the Hump, but he’s not always thinking.
The defeat brought the fifth-place Raptors closer to the pack that is chasing them in the Eastern Conference standings. Washington is now 2 1/2 games back of Toronto, while seventh-place Philadelphia is only three games behind.
The Raptors, however, can only hope that the momentum of their comeback attempt carries over to the final three games of their Western road swing.
For the second night in a row, Jose Calderon also failed to leave an imprint on the game. His low-risk game proved to be the perfect complement to the offence when Chris Bosh was in the lineup. But with the all-star out, Calderon has failed to increase his aggressiveness.
Accordingly, the occasionally out-of-control-but-never-shy Ford got the heavy minutes at the point, as he did a night earlier in Los Angeles.
However, Calderon and Bargnani both woke up a bit in the third quarter, as the Raptors managed to continue to hang around, no thanks to their sieve-like defence. Ellis and Stephen Jackson hit from the perimeter repeatedly in the quarter, but the Raptors managed to match shots with the Warriors.
It was an impossible pace to keep up, however.
T.J. Ford did his best to bring the Raptors back with 13 points in the fourth quarter, but all that offense meant nothing without any stops, and Golden State scored almost at will in the final six minutes. That stretch began with the Warriors down 96-95 after a pair of free throws from Ford.
The Raptors have earned a reputation as another team trying to push the tempo in the manner of the Warriors. Then again, the Warriors rank second in pace of play, just behind Denver, while Toronto is 26th out of 30 teams.
But with Bosh’s rangy 6-foot-10 frame on the bench, Toronto had little choice but to play into the Warriors’ hands, at least at the outset. As the Raptors missed eight of their first 10 shots, Toronto coach Sam Mitchell responded by going small, eventually utilizing 6-9 Kris Humphries in the middle with four perimeter players.
That didn’t stem the Warriors’ tide in the least, and Golden State led 18-4 after 51/2 minutes when Pietrus drove around Jamario Moon and then split Andrea Bargnani and Rasho Nesterovic for a vicious two-handed dunk.
With Raptors All-Star forward Chris Bosh out because of a sore right knee, it seemed Golden State would have an easy time of it against a Toronto team left thin in the paint. But as Nelson pointed out before tipoff, "A lot of it depends on us. We have to be able to play our game."
The Warriors were able to do that, leading 18-4 after 5 1/2 minutes when Pietrus drove around Jamario Moon and then split Andrea Bargnani and Rasho Nesterovic for a two-handed dunk. But the Raptors settled down and stayed roughly 10 points back until an 11-2 run to open the fourth quarter tied the score at 90.
We can talk about the Dubs blowing an incredible start and a 20 point lead. We can talk about the excessively poor shot selection that practically invited the Raptors back into the game. We can talk about how we let the Raptors come back to actually take the lead in the fourth quarter, practically giving all of Warriors Nation a simultaneous heart attack…
But we don’t have to. Thank god the Warriors won this game. The last thing we needed tonight was to slow down our current tempo with a loss to a Bosh-less Raptors in our own damn house. Sure, there were a few things that went wrong. But in the wake of a victory, what would have been major issues became minor concerns.
Don Nelson’s teams, and this Warrior team in particular, are isolation teams. The Raptors, with or without Chris Bosh in the lineup, are a ball-movement team that spaces the floor and tries to make the extra pass. Ford’s scoring is putting points on the board, but it’s making Toronto less dangerous overall.
Ford dominating the ball is fine when the tough shots are going in, but two of his long misses started Warrior breaks that broke the game open, and his teammates (who haven’t so much as touched the ball in one or two minutes of game action) are out of sync once Ford actually gives up the rock. These guys are cold, they’re expected to bail Ford out, and you can expect what eventually happens.
The start was a cinch: Golden State doubled up Toronto 35-17 in the first quarter behind a mix of hot-shooting from Monta Ellis and Stephen Jackson, pinpoint passing from Baron Davis and stellar defense from center Andris Biedrins.
But in a pattern that undoubtedly will be tougher to overcome against the West’s best, the Warriors had trouble putting two halves together. In games they start poorly, they finish strong. And in games they open well, they fade.
So the Raptors, down by as many as 12 points in the third quarter, carved away in the fourth behind T.J. Ford’s slashing and shooting. The speedy guard scored 12 of his 23 points in the final quarter and put the Raptors ahead 94-93 on a jumper with 6:39 to go.
Davis hit three straight teammates in stride for back-to-back-to-back layups to build a five-point cushion with 5:02 left. The Warriors were in control the rest of the way.
Ellis scored a game-high 33 points, hitting 14 of 19 field-goal attempts.
I joined in on a live blog for the Raptors/Golden State game last night and while the Warriors were strong in the fourth and came out looking good, I really was not impressed as they let the Raptors hang around for far too long, taking a lead in the fourth behind the play of TJ Ford off of the bench. If the boys want to make the playoffs then they’d better step their game up. Especially when facing a Toronto team without Chris Bosh.
this is a great blog post about how MLSE is screwing Raptors fans. It’s a shame that the owners of 2/3 of Toronto’s professional sports teams don’t actually care about the team or the fans…
But as the Raptors currently sit fifth in the Eastern Conference, struggling to keep that spot in Chris Bosh’s absence and facing the gloomy fate of an unfavorable first round match-up, Toronto fans have begun to ponder this team’s long term potential under Colangelo. It seems blasphemous, but despite being a complete and utter genius, The Mastermind’s franchise plans have consistently had one fatal flaw – rebounding.
I don’t have to tell Raptors fans that the team is 21st in the league in rebounding rate and fifth last in offensive rebounding rate. And those are rates – in aggregate totals, the team falls to 27th in rebounds and 20th in rebounding differential. They are not awful, but any Raptor fan will tell you that those numbers are misleading, and the team just cannot grab rebounds on either end of the floor when the opposition’s best bigs are on the court.
This isn’t new to Colangelo teams, either. Last year the Raps grabbed just 48.1% of possible rebounds. In his last three years there, the Suns grabbed just 47.7%, 48.9%, and 48.1% of rebounds. You’d have to look back to the 2000-01 season to find the last time a Colangelo-built team had a positive rebounding differential, and that year the Suns only grabbed nine extra boards more than the opposition.
If I could pick any person to build my favorite basketball team into a championship contender, I would not hesitate to select Bryan Colangelo. I wouldn’t even interview other candidates, he’s that good. And I’ll moderate this entire article by pointing out that Colangelo has never once been permitted to cross the luxury tax threshold (which is probably why we didn’t solve a huge need by signing hometown boy Jamaal Magloire when he became available last month), so Colangelo has sometimes had his hands tied.
That said, if he hopes to ever wear a championship ring and cement his status as one of the greatest executives in sports, he has to get this rebounding thing figured out. Unless Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment opens their wallets for a player like Elton Brand this offseason, it’s a problem he’ll have to figure out internally or via the draft and limited free agent money, and it may require a change in his overarching basketball philosophy.
You can’t really complain after this one, GS is leaner, meaner, more athletic, more talented and have a game plan, however crazy it is. They want you play an up and down game where the shot-clock is only 16 seconds long and any shot as long as it’s open is a good one. We got suckered into playing their game and although we competed, the chance of us winning in such a high-wire affair was always low. The alternate would’ve been to slow things down and force half-court execution but I’m not sure we would’ve fared much better. This was Sam’s type of game, no plays, just do whatever the hell you want but make sure you rebound. Simply put, the better talent one.
The Raptors seem to have developed a new duo to combat the loss of Bosh. Ford and Parker were good in L.A and good through 1 half in Oakland. Could they lead the Raps back to a improbable victory. We would have to wait and see as Jose Calderon would return to start the second half along with Parker. He would start to take a page from T.J Ford’s book taking and making his shoot with some regularity. A Parker three point shot and Raps got to within 6 points. But the Warriors would sense the game slipping away and extend the lead back to 11 with in about 20 seconds. The track meet was back on and the Raps now had on some track shoes as well. Defense in this game was a myth or some kind of urban legend cause you were not seeing it. It looked more like a video game at times than a NBA contest. In an attempt to continue the mad pace Sam Mitchell would add Ford and Calderon would remain on the floor. When the smoke from the burning nets would clear the Raptors were still behind by 9 points 88-79. Both teams were shooting above 50% and were having no trouble finding the basket.
Another entertaining game on the west coast for Raptors fans but another loss. I never thought it would be as close as it was but in the end it was all Baron Davis. The Beard took over when he had to and put the Raps to rest late in the final quarter. Toronto did a lot of things right but it was the same old problems that did them in again.
If you take a look at the Toronto Raptors, there doesn’t seem to be much improvement from last year individually, or collectively as a team. Chris Bosh was an all - star again. Andrea Bargnani is still developing. The team is loaded with 3 point shooting finesse players. They should win 46 games (last year they won 47). So it stands to reason that unless the Raptors win a play-off series, they will not have shown a tangible improvement in 2008. That is unless they do so without Chris Bosh.
I suspect that the team will play it very cautiously with their all -star and his recent knee injury. The Raptors are all but assured a post season birth though it is unlikely that they would be able to advance past the likes of Boston, Detroit or Cleveland. So if the seedings align poorly for Toronto, and Bosh requires extra time to heal, I would not be surprised if he is effectively ’shut down’ for the remainder of the season. The team could take a mulligan on the season and give important play-off minutes to developing players such as Bargnani, Kris Humphries, and Jamario Moon.
Plus, MLSE gets 2 or 3 home dates (read: ticket/concession/merchandise sales) out of it. Only in Toronto is that win-win.
Parker is a veteran leader on a young team, a co-captain, and the most consistent player on a team of wildly inconsistent players. He has developed his game such that his three point shooting is feared (45.5%), his multiple approaches to scoring are respected (12 PPG), and he is considered the best individual defender on a team devoid of such players. Five years ago, Parker would not have received run on a bad Raptors team. Now, he is a key cog in their success and development, their most reliable player on and off the floor, and one of the most popular players on the team.
When people speak about Bryan Colangelo’s international vision for the Raptors, Parker’s name is almost always mentioned alongside Bargnani, Calderon, Garbajosa, Nesterovic, Delfino, Brezec, and Gheardini. Parker is American. People seem to forget that. One could argue that Parker’s time in Europe has limited what he can be in the NBA – he is considered an international player, compared and discussed as such, and will never truly be an elite player, possibly because he spent his prime winning continental championships somewhere other than North America.
I was actually hoping someone would throw the ball at TJ’s head.
That’s what happens at the local Y when someone’s hogging the ball…especially if that someone isn’t completely dominating offensively.
And considering it looked like TJ Ford was playing one on one with Baron Davis down at the local rec centre through a good chunk of the fourth quarter, a hard pass to the midsection or head probably wouldn’t have seemed out of place.
Look, I’ve discussed Ford ad nausea lately and looked at both sides of the coin. But last night’s fourth quarter play from about the last six minutes on was completely inexcusable.
And Sam Mitchell is just as much at fault here as Ford.
IBM Winning Strategies:
- Transition Defense
- No Guard Penetration
- Force GS to Defend
Good strategy, but not in this lifetime. All three winning strategies required the Raptors to do something they can’t, namely play a level of basketball that exceeds their ability. What are you going to do? I had ZERO expectations heading into this game, and if it wasn’t for that one guy out there who actually reads my notes, I would have been fast asleep by half time. These night games are killing me, I got nothing left after the PBP. The Raptors lulled the Warriors to sleep with some boring ass basketball, and clawed their way to a lead in the 4th. Alas, the sleeping lion woke up and sunk dagger after dagger to take the game.
Mar 13th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
that picture of delfino is hilarious. i wanted to do something with it, but i had no idea what.
Raps Fan’s last blog post..Sam Mitchell/Don Nelson/TJ Ford - Raps/Warriors - Mar. 12/08
Mar 13th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I’m thinking Carlos just received his season seat renewal.
Scott’s last blog post..Linkage - March 13
Mar 13th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
For someone who’s almost model-pretty, that guy takes some brutal photos.
Mar 13th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
It’s mating season and he’s picked up a bad scent (ie: Mrs. Doug Christie)?
He’s allergic to onions and every time Chuck uses his popular catch phrase he cringes?
Or maybe it’s just his reaction to the Bulls landing Larry Hughes
Spudz’s last blog post..Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov