Built Ford Tough

I watched the 1st half and thought he played well. Not great but well. He still has a lot of kinks to work out in his game and he has struggled this season. Part of it can be attributed to his teammates, but a lot of it is on himself as well. It is foolish to write him off just yet, though. He has great athleticism and physical tools. He just needs his basketball skills and awareness to catch up to his awesome tools. His body seems to be playing at one speed but his mind is a speed slower and that is as big of a problem as anything for him. If he puts it all together he is going to be great but I also don't think he is a sure thing to do that.

Barbosa adds to the airball count with an airball from about 10 feet. 5 now.

DeRozan with another airball. Airball tracker: 4

And by leading the way, I mean leading the tank. http://distilleryimage4.instagram.com/d0232d44407211e180c9123138016265_7.jpg

Barbosa dribbled the ball off of his foot while standing still and not even attempting any sort of move. Pretty much sums up the Raptors.

Does any team put up more airballs than the Raptors? Between Butler, DeRozan, Kleiza and Magloire you are guaranteed at least 6 airballs a game from the Raptors. Fortunately for Raptor fans, Johnson is out after he sprained his ankle against the Bulls so we will get a heavy dose of Butler and Kleiza at the 3. We may be in for a treat and the airball tracker may crack double digits today. So far we are at 2, both of which are courtesy of the Raptors "3 point specialist" Rasual Butler.

The Grizzlies starters have absolutely dominated the Bulls starters. They've outscored them 86-42 or something like that.

Bulls go on a run and cut the lead from 23 to just 9 behind the excellent play of Taj Gibson and CJ Watson off of the bench. Gibson has 14 on 5-5 shooting and Watson has 17 on 5-8 shooting. Lets see if Memphis can retake controll of the game with Gay coming back into the game. Nice finish for the And 1 from him just right now after a very impressive block from Gibson. Good job of Gay sticking with the play, though. EDIT: And Conley takes control of the game by getting a steal, making a circus layup over Gibson and then setting up Gasol for an easy duece. Lead back up to 18 in a matter of about 2 minutes.

Bucks with a huge 7-0 run to close the half and get the game to just 4 points after a Leuer 3 (first of his career) and a Jennings floater with 2 seconds left. What was an 11 point lead with about 2:30 left in the half got quickly cut to 4. The funny thing is that the Bucks didn't really execute all that well offensively and the Sixers played very good defense. They just hit some really tough, desperation shots.

Sixers bench is just too good, even without a talent like Evan Turner. In basically ever game the Sixers bench will come in late 1st/ealy 2nd and completely blow open the game. In this one the Sixers were up by about 2-4 points for the majority of the time the two starting units were out there and then they bring in guys like Lou Williams and Thad Young (and usually Turner) and the game gets blown wide open as they overwhelm opposing teams 2nd units. By the time the midpoint of the 2nd quarter rolls around they always seem to have extended the lead to double digits and today was no exception as the lead was increased to 12.

Bulls getting blown out in this one. Gay with 17/4/3 Speights with 14/9 Conley with 14/5/5 They are also shooting a combined 21-30. The Bulls defense has been nowhere to be found in this one and without Rose to pick up the slack offensively, it really isn't a surprise that this game isn't even close.

Great start for Bogut on the offensive end. He is really establishing deep post position on Hawes and the Sixers aren't choosing to send a second defender when he gets that post position and Bogut has made them pay. 8 points on 4-5 shooting to start the game off. Leuer has been solid as well going 2-2 for 4 points. All 12 of the Bucks points have come from their big men, so the Sixers need to tighten up that interior defense. Kind of dissapointed that Turner isn't playing as he is one of my favourite Sixer players to watch, but they have plenty of exciting players so I guess I can deal with not being able to watch him for one game.

Monta getting whatever he wants and the Warriors extend the lead to 13. The Pistons really are great at giving up these big runs in limited time. Their ability to tank is very impressive.

Monroe is going to be a stud. I still can't believe he fell all the way to 7th in his draft year with his obvious top 3 talent and he has proven last year and this year that he should have gone no lower than 4th in that draft. I know the Warriors defense isn't anything special, especially without Kwame, but he has just torched them today. He has gotten whatever he wants and has 23 points and 7 boards with 3 minutes still to go in the 3rd. I absolutely love his game. He is without a doubt the best young center in the East and possibly the league. If Knight reaches his potential, the Pistons have a very bright future at the 1 and the 5.

I completely agree with the fact that as a free agent he had the right to choose where he wanted to play. However, I think you can put some of the "blame" on him because him making the jump to Miami to team up with Wade and Bosh is the major reason for the attention that super teams have gotten over the past year. Yeah, they have always existed and anybody who says otherwise is delusional, but they were never such a hot topic until LeBron went to Miami. The way I see it, the Celtics Big Three brought the concept of a super team back into the minds of players after the trades for Allen and Garnett and then LeBron took the low key rumblings from fans, media, whatever and elevated it into a full blown frenzy when he paired up with Wade and Bosh.

It is actually "El Matador", thank you very much. Can't really use that as an excuse when the Raptors were playing their 7th game in 9 nights as well. The Bulls just looked disinterested out there. Some of it may have been due to fatigue, but most of it seemed like they thought that they could just coast to an easy win, esepcially after getting that early 21-8 lead or whatever it was. They saw a 4-8 team without their best player and backup point guard (who also happens to be the 2nd best player on the team at creating offense) coming into town and figured it would be an easy win, which it was. The Bulls really only showed up for about 10-12 minutes and it was still enough to get an easy win.

How awesome was this? The stats from half time. Raps 37 points Bulls 37 points Raps 26 rebounds Bulls 26 rebounds Raps 8 assists Bulls 8 assists Raps 1 3pt made Bulls 1 3pt made Raps 0-3 FT Bulls 0-3 FT Raps 3 turnovers Bulls 3 turnovers Raps 18-43 FG, 41.9% Bulls 18-43 FG, 41.9% Raps Leading Scorer at Half-10 pts Bulls Leading Scorer at Half-10 pts Sadly, this was about the only interesting thing of the entire game. What a painful game to watch.

What makes you think that? Williams may be a better all around player than Nash was back then, but he is not at the same level as a playmaker and a pure pick and roll operator. Nash is probably a top 3 pick and roll player of all-time. Then you add the more explosive and athletic Suns-Amare over the Knicks-Amare and I don't really see it. Don't get me wrong, it would be deadly and very, very difficult to stop, but I don't see why it would be more dangerous than the Nash/Amare one.

What the hell is LeBron doing here? http://gif.mocksession.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/LEBRON-TONGUE.gif I actually laughed out loud when I saw this.

I know, but it was pretty impressive how Irving was running back on D and Fisher looked like he was still standing in the same spot trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Irving is going to be lethal when he actually has some teammates around him to pass to. He is able to get into the heart of the defense seemingly at will but you can tell he doesn't really trust his teammates to stick open jumpers (can't say I blame him) and he forces things a bit. Once he gets some more experience under his belt and more confidence in his teammates he is going to rack up the assists with his ability to penetrate. He has already shown that he can score the ball very well. This is his 4th straight 20 point game (might actually be 3, not sure). He is going to be a damn good player for a long, long time. That move he had in the 2nd quarter where he crossed up Fisher, then went behind his back and drained the floater off the glass over Bynum was absolutely nasty. As for the Lakers, they did a really good job of answering all of the Cavs runs. Whenever they started to knock on the door they hit a big shot or got a huge stop to swing the momentum back in their favour. Kobe will get all the praise, and as well he should as he played a very good game, but I thought Pau was awesome tonight. His defense wasn't the best, but his all around game on the offensive board and on the glass was great. His ability to find the open man in the post is so special when you consider how much of a size advantage he has over most power forwards in the league. He can just look over his defender and see the whole court and he makes some very impressive passes as a result.

Ahh, no, he was fine. He actually got up about 2 seconds after Granger stood over him and started laughing at him for getting himself thrown out.

Which play are you talking about? I don't recall seeing Davis really wincing or anything like that and I know that he was out there to finish the game. I also haven't read, heard or seen anything that suggests he was hurt during the game, so I think he is fine.

Send him home and amnesty his ass next season. That is pretty much the only way you will be able to cut out the cancer he has invested the Wizards with. Well, that or pray that Isiah Thomas becomes a GM again.

I just can't watch the Wizards play. I love watching the Sixers play as I've missed one game of theirs all season long, and yet I couldn't manage to force myself to watch more than the first half of this game. I can handle bad basketball, believe me (how else would I be able to be a Raptors fan?), but watching the Wizards selfish, low IQ, chucking basketball is just too much for me. They have a decent amount of talent on their roster but the players that they have are just so stupid that they make the game so difficult to watch. I really do feel for fans of this team because this is absolutely terrible basketball that they are playing. They need to go nuclear on this team and blow it the [expletive] up. Fire the coaching staff, fire the GM, trade everybody other than John Wall and Jan Vesely and start from there.