The AltRaps Blog

I’ve come to one inescapable conclusion over the past month or two: Basketball journalists in Canada, by and large, do not have a clue.

Toronto have sputtered and floundered their way to a record 3 games above .500 as of Sunday afternoon, with some terrible losses, some convincing wins, and some squeakers. As you would expect from a middle-of-the-pack playoff team (oh how great it feels to call them that, given the dismal performances pre-Colangelo!), they have almost always had a glaring inefficiency in their losses, and quite often in their wins. No team is perfect, and no team hits everything on the head any time they hit the court, for every minute of the game. It’s called being human.

Not according to Raptors basketball “journalists”.

Pre-season, as in before a jump ball had been contested, the team was derided for a lack of defensive ability, and not doing anything with their signings to correct this issue. Nostradamus, allegedly, cloned himself, cryogenically froze himself, and then thawed himself out to write for the Globe and Mail, cbcsports.ca, tsn.ca, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and so on. Granted, the team’s defence the previous two seasons had been more cellar than stellar, but teams do this thing in the off-season called “practice”, unless of course they are made up exclusively of Allen Iverson. The signing of Jason Kapono was allegedly a step back from the defence of Morris Peterson, who should never have been allowed to leave, came the cry. And this Delfino guy couldn’t hang on in Detroit, a defence-oriented system! And reupping Humphries? What has he ever done? He’s no defensive powerhouse! When Milwaukee mercilessly obliterated the Raptors on the strength of Desmond Mason’s perfect shooting game, the cries to blow up the team began. Never mind that half of Mason’s shots were a turnaround, one-handed jump hook from the baseline that had no right going in and was taken with a hand in the face each time. Toronto defense bad! Here proof! Ug! 30-odd games later, and Toronto is in the top 10 for points allowed per game, the top 15 for turnovers forced per game, and has 5 players averaging around a steal a game, and 2 players in the top 30 for blocks per game. Nostradamus now resembles Nostradumbass. Of course, nobody really predicted the stratospheric emergence of Jamario Moon…but isn’t that what these “journalists” are meant to do? I mean, heaven forbid you should do some research and actually postulate that a player might be successful! Rasho Nesterovic played a stretch of inspired defensive basketball having been inserted in the starting lineup, and his teammates seemed to follow suit. Jamario Moon has more than compensated for Peterson’s defensive prowess, and an argument could be made the Delfino has done the same. Oh, and as a team? 7^th in the league in opponent’s points against. We suck.

But wait! If the defence is that, well, average, and we’re still not winning games, something must be wrong! It’s the shooting! Toronto did collectively go through something of a shooting slump, winning games only because they managed to hold their opponents to a lower percentage in some games, and because they just plain shot more in other games. At various times, Bosh, Kapono, Bargnani, Delfino, Parker and Ford all went through bad patches. The media, again, pounced. After all, this is the idiot franchise that let shooting guru Dave Hopla go, and paid Kapono stupid amounts of money to hit threes, which he wasn’t doing. Delfino was a bust, Parker was a one-season wonder. Trade talk started. Fast forward to the last month of action…oh look! Magically, Toronto is one of the best 3-pt shooting teams in the league! Imagine that. Kapono the Overpaid and Parker the Fluke are both in the top 10 for 3-pt %. Carlos Delfino has proved to be the spark that the bench needs in terms of scoring and energy. For a while, Kris Humphries, who was derided all through pre-season and glued to the bench for much of the season proper, picked up the slack for Bargnani and even some of Bosh’s drop-off in production. Chris Bosh’s feet stopped hurting so much, and he went back to the quick-footed monster down low that he was most of last season. All without a trade. See, what these media “experts” failed to realise was that good shooters go through slumps. Injuries might not be bad enough to stop you from playing, but they can affect your performance. And, some teams actually, you know, watch tape of their opponents and learn to stop some of the opponent’s moves, forcing them to adapt. Toronto now appear to have done that. Even Bargnani has largely emerged from his shooting woes; it’s now other things keeping him on the bench.

OK, OK, the shooting is getting better, but we’re still not winning every game. This team HAS to have a glaring fault. We have to find some reason to call for someone’s head or demand a trade, because that’s just the way it is, right? I know! Despite being one of the best free-throw-shooting teams in the league, the Raptors never get to the line! They’re soft! Afraid of contact! Bring in someone tougher! Bring in a slasher! Bosh is turning into a jump shooter! Well for a while, this was an issue, just as all the other issues were. There is a world of difference, though, between “This team can’t…” and “This team isn’t…”. The volume of free throws on this team was almost totally due to Chris Bosh and TJ Ford. With Bosh’s off-season injury not fully healed, his mobility was decreased and he likely did not feel he could manoeuvre in the paint to the degree he usually could. Ford, of course, has missed 20 games. With everyone else on the team basically being a shooter or a non-threat offensively, where were the free throws going to come from? Jason Kapono did his best, faking his deadly 3-pt shot only to drive the lane. Problem was, nobody expected it, so nobody contested, meaning he didn’t get fouled. Carlos Delfino and Jamario Moon were both guilty of relying on their shot too much, and Moon at least has since gone some way to correcting this. Bosh is tearing up the scoring sheets, dropping 30s and 40s everywhere, and getting to the line with regularity. Naturally, with more attempts, the free throw percentage has dropped somewhat. That will be the next crisis to address, I’m sure.

Really, the only legitimate concern expressed by our supposedly knowledgeable media is that of rebounding. Toronto is 23^rd in the league for rebounding and rebound differential, and 20^th for rebounds against. Now I could go on for pages about the type of shots the team takes and the people taking them, and how it’s probably not conducive to good rebounding numbers, but I’m not here to make excuses. I’ll give you this one, Toronto media: the rebounding must improve. Again, though, personnel is not the problem: motivation is. Bosh is a decent rebounder, but if he’s the one taking the 18-foot jump shots, who’s going to board? Watching the Detroit game tonight, I saw Carlos Delfino on several occasions run from the perimeter to try and get the offensive board, while Joey Graham or occasionally Jamario Moon just watched him. I feel bad singling out Moon because the man puts in effort and is still learning the finer nuances of being an NBA rebounder, but crashing the boards is an elementary skill. Don’t even get me started on Bargnani. We’ve had that discussion before, and I am still prepared to believe in the man. After all, he can shoot. I forgive him his offensive rebounding. But dude, you’re 7 feet tall!

What’s the real problem with the team? What problem can we really solve with a trade?

Consistency. And for more on that, join us next week.

Lansdellicious – Out.