Built Ford Tough

My guess would be he is struggling to adjust to the athleticism of the NBA. Nobody questioned his passing ability or whether he would be able to run an offense or not, but a lot of people are forgetting that there were some serious questions about whether he was actually a legitimate NBA prospect or not. He is pretty unathletic and to compound that issue, he isn't very long either. This hurts him a lot on the defensive end of the floor as even in college he struggled containing his man, but luckily for him he had two good defensive bigs in Zeller and Henson covering for him so it wasn't as much of an issue. Gortat can do some of those things, but not nearly as well as having two very good defensive bigs back there. Also the fact that there is no defensive 3 second in college makes the paint a lot more congested so blow bys aren't usually as much of a big deal. Then on offense he doesn't have much breakdown ability himself, so he is usually forced to rely on screens to get into the paint. Problem with that is teams are just going to go under everything because of his lack of a jumper. He doesn't have NBA range and even his college 3 pointer was inconsistent (although he did start hitting towards the end of the year last year). If he isn't getting into the lane and probing the defense, he isn't able to find shooters or cutters. Simply put, Marshall isn't NBA ready at this point and Telfair is a better option to backup Dragic. I'd expect his minutes to go up as the season goes and Phoenix falls further and further out of the playoff race, but he just isn't an NBA player at this point in his development.

Marcus Smart is a stud. A lot of the talk when it comes to the freshman class this year is about Muhammad, Kentucky's 3 (Noel, Poythress and Goodwin), Anderson and the 3 Wolfpack (Warren, Lewis and Purvis) but Smart can ball. I think he has the potential to have just as big of an impact as any freshman this season. In this game he has been money with his jumper and nobody should be surprised with his athleticism. That finish he had on the ally-oop was nasty and he had an awesome chase down block as well. He really is dominating this game and not only on offense, but completely taking Lorenzo Brown out of the game defensively as well. Also need to give credit to the Cowboys' defense as well. I mentioned Smart really bothering Brown, but they are doing a great job on CJ Leslie as well. Purvis has gotten some looks and they need to do a better job on him, but if given the choice between having Leslie and Brown go a combined 1-8 and have more turnovers than points and have Purvis put up 12 points on 9 shots, I'd take the latter every time. Pretty much the perfect 1st half for OK State. The lead is only 10 so they'll need to keep it up if they want to pull off the upset because this Wolfpack team has the talent to go off at any moment.

The evolution of the game, man. The game is changing to where no defense, 35% shooting power forwards are at a premium. If he can't grab more than 5 boards in 36 minutes? Give him the max!

Forgot to mention this, but Calderon has been awesome in this 4th quarter. 9 assists in the 4th quarter and they aren't the hollow assists he usually gets. He has done an excellent job of moving the ball around and getting guys great looks.

I loved the crowds reaction to that. They see him launch and there is a collective groan, they see the shot go in and the groans to a cheer as Amir gives a little wave.

I'm just pissed at the epic tank fail that was last season. Can you imagine Harrison Barnes at the 3 with this team? Drool worthy, especially with how awesome Barnes has looked on both ends of the floor his last two games. A core of Lowry/DeRozan/Barnes/Valanciunas is something I could get excited about. He was just such a damn perfect fit with this team, but of course they found a way to [expletive] that up as well. The other scenario I would've loved was them taking Drummond and using either him or Valanciunas as trade bait. Valanciunas and Calderon for Harden? I'd do that if they drafted Drummond and I'm about 99% sure that OKC does that over the Houston package as well. Oh yeah, looks like we just witnessed the typical quarter melt down. This team always has one quarter where they completely fall apart and lose the game. Maybe they'll be able to overcome it because of how bad Orlando is (sort of like them scoring 5 points in the 4th against Indy and still winning because the Pacers suck) but this taking an entire quarter off is getting really annoying.

It's the Dominic McGuire vs. Dequan Jones show.

I really like Ross' defensive potential. He has a great understanding of where to be on the floor at all times, moves his feet well and has deceptive quickness and athleticism. He has really improved from the start of the season on that end of the floor. When he gets more experience and bulks up a bit, I think he is going to be a really good perimeter defender.

I love how Bargnani makes a few shots early so he has the green light to chuck. Starts the game 2-2. He is now 3-9.

Yeah, I can agree with that. The small forward spot is a grand canyon sized hole for this team. If it were up to me I'd probably start Kleiza simply because he can space the floor to allow DeRozan more room to post up. With Fields or McGuire out there teams are sending 2nd defenders at DeRozan as they have no concern about getting beat from deep by Fields or McGuire. Kleiza can be a chucker at times, but at least he can knock down shots. People may mention the defense but, really, it's not like Fields was doing much on that end of the floor (like I posted above) and McGuire is a good man defender, but his off ball defense is a train wreck. So are the Raps really losing anything on that end of the floor by starting Kleiza?

For a supposed defensive specialist, McGuire has absolutely terrible defensive awareness. He is always losing his man off the ball and giving up wide open looks. It happened numerous times against the Jazz, I counted 2 or 3 times yesterday against Boston and he has already lost Afflalo twice in the first quarter in this game.

No Redick or Turkoglu for the Magic. I still fully expect the Raptors to find a way to lose this game. If they do lose this game they are going to get off to an absolutely abysmal start. I knew they would come out of the gates slow considering their schedule and the injuries (well, the Lowry injury at least) just magnified that, but I wasn't expecting something like 3-11, which is very likely if they drop this game.

"BUT WE NEED BARGNANI'S 35% SHOOTING OUT THERE" - Casey and Co. Or the last 2 minutes of the 3rd. That escalated quickly. Lead went from 2 to 15 in a blink of an eye.

It is amazing how Ross is strictly a spot up shooter, yet still has a TOV% of 13%. It must be a confidence thing or else he is even more limited skill wise than I thought because it seems like he can barely even make a pass or take a dribble without turning the ball over.

It must be really frusturating to be Valanciunas. He gets some of the most ridiculous "rookie calls" against him that I've ever seen. Then because he almost always gets two fouls early in the game (most of the time BS ones) he gets glued to the bench for the entire half. I don't understand why Casey wasn't trying to exploit the DeRozan/Terry matchup. DeMar has scored about 70% of his points in the post this season and he has the much smaller Terry on him, yet Toronto didn't post DeMar on him once. I realize that if they did post up DeRozan that Boston would send a 2nd defender on the first bounce, but that is where you need to trust DeRozan to make the right read and find the open man. But no, instead they have to force feed Bargnani and watch him make reckless drives into the paint and take contested jumpers.

He definitely should. He is putting up 15.4/7.8 and shooting nearly 60%. He has a PER of 23. He is 3rd on the Warriors in scoring (just 0.1 points behind Thompson) despite only taking 10 shots a game (which is almost 5.5 less than both Curry and Thompson and 4 less than lee, who he is still outscoring). Oh yeah, he is doing this in just 26 minutes a game. Honestly, he is by far the biggest reason why the Warriors are a game above .500 to start the season, especially with Bogut basically not playing (even when he did play, he was limited to >20 minutes a night), Curry and Thompson struggling a lot with their shot and Lee being pretty mediocore. They are probably sitting at 2-7 without Landry. Given the importance to his team and how damn efficient he has been, I'd argue that he should not only be a poll option, but that he should be winning the poll. I can understand why Smith and Crawford are getting the most recognition, but Landry should be right up there with them.

Barnes almost puts up his 2nd double double in a row with 18/9 tonight. He looks to be really settling in and it seems like the Warriors finally running some plays for him. Of course, I missed this game as well as I was watching the UNC game. Maybe I should just stop watching Barnes play all together? Aside from the 40 point game against Clemson in the ACC tournament during his freshman year, I've missed almost every single one of Barnes' big games.

It is about damn time Rogers opened up their cheque books. There is no reason why they have been operating the Blue Jays like a small market team when they are the 2nd or 3rd (right?) richest owners in baseball. Sure it is easy for me to say, but it really is about time that Rogers started flexing their multi-billion dollar muscles around. I'm loving the offseason so far. A lineup of: SS Reyes LF Cabrera RF Bautista DH Encarnacion 3B Lawrie CF Rasmus C Arencibia 1B Lind 2B Bonafacio/Izturis looks very nice. If they can upgrade Lind (or he regains his form from a few years ago, but like that will ever happen) this team is going to be awesome to watch. I'm still expecting one more big move. They've got a log jam at C (JPA, D'Arunad and Buck) as well as the OF (Bautista and Cabrera are locks, but they've also got Rasmus, Gose, Sierra, Davis and even Bonafacio). I can't see a scenario where AA doesn't do something and just sits on his hands.

Eh, can't really agree with that. He was pretty mediocore defensively in the games he played in. He seemed to have a tendency to lose track of his man off the ball and gave up a lot of open looks from the perimeter. Maybe this can be attributed to him overhelping, I don't really know, but he hasn't done a particularly good job of guarding spot up shooters. Players are shooting 6-9 from three on the season against him. Small sample size, yeah, but still. Overall his defensive assignments are shooting 13-28 (46.4%) with Fields guarding them. Opposing players are also scoring on 46% of their offensive possessions against Fields. For a reference point, Jose Calderon, a notoriously poor defender, isn't getting scored on that much. His scored on % is only 37%. His 46% is even higher than Bargnani's 45%. I believe the only player on the roster who's defensive assignments score on them more frequently than Fields is Valanciunas. At this point in time the only thing the Raptors can do is hope that this surgery fixes his broken jumper because otherwise he is a complete dud out there. Even his running the floor, which I do agree with in that he does it well, isn't really providing much considering his abysmal finishing (shooting just 14.7% in transition).

The one Golden State game I don't watch just has to be the one where Barnes has a huge impact. Figures. I'll definitely have to remember to watch this sometime, just not sure when I'll get around to it.

Ruling was overturned. Muhammad has been immediately reinstated and is eligible to play in UCLA's next game.

I'm just waiting for DeRozan to go ape shit on a ref soon. Seriously, look at his shot chart and tell me that he really only should've been tot he line 7 times tonight. http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/shotchart?gameId=400277815 (Filter it so that it just shows DeRozan, obviously). On top of that, his shot chart doesn't even tell the whole story because 6 of his attempts outside of the paint were in the overtime periods where you could tell he was starting to gass and 3 of those 6 were in the final OT period when you could see that he had nothing left. In the 1st quarter all 3 of his attempts were outside the paint. Funnily enough, 2 of his 7 freebies came in this quarter. In the 2nd quarter 5 of his 6 shots were within 10 feet. He gets 0 free throws. In the 3rd quarter 5 of his 6 shots were in the paint. He gets 1 free throw. In the 4th quarter 4 of his 6 shots were in the paint. He gets 2 free throws. So of the 21 shots he took in regulation, 14 of them were in the paint yet he got 5 free throws. This doesn't even account for the plays where there was contact that resulted in a turnover (I can think of two plays, one where he was pushed out of bounds and another where he was hit and tried to make a pass that was picked off) or made it so that DeRozan didn't attempt a shot. The lack of respect he gets from the refs is ridiculous. I'd love to see a game where somebody like LeBron, Wade, Harden or Durant had this many attempts in the paint yet got to the line less than 10 times. Well, you could nail Andrea Bargnani's useless ass to the bench and never play Aaron Gray. That would be a nice start.

Tough to be able to continue to compete in a 3rd overtime when you are missing 3 players (one of which is your best player) before the game starts, lose two more to fouling out and on top of that, having to battle a team that constantly pounds the ball in the paint. It isn't a surprise at all to see the Raptors fade late. Playing 60 minutes like DeRozan did will probably do that to you. The refs kept the door open for Utah in the 3rd and 4th and the Raptors blew it wide open with their inability to execute down the stretch. Utah completely deserved the win based on the way the overtime periods went, but I still believe that if the game is called even remotely fairly in the 2nd half, this game never makes it to overtime nor do the Raptors have a chance to blow the lead late. It is a complete travesty that DeRozan only got to the line 7 times tonight. At one point he had like 15 attempts in the paint yet only had 5 freebies. It wasn't like he was shying away from contact, either. He was getting hit all game long, yet for some reason he just doesn't get calls. It has been like this all season long. Still, at the end of the day they were up 10 with 6-7 minutes out so even with the lopsided officiating, all the Raptors needed to do to win this game was execute for those final 6 minutes, but they didn't and that cost them the game more than anything. This team just can't hold onto leads late in games.

With the way McGuire has constantly left Milsap wide open, he shouldn't even be on the floor for defense. He has done a terrible job of keeping track of Milsap when he doesn't have the ball. There is no excuse for leaving him wide open so many times. As far as Gray goes, it is a joke that he is even in the game. Valanciunas may not be as big, but at least he doesn't force you to play 4-5 (3-5 with McGuire out there) on offense. Even then, Jefferson hasn't really burned the Raptors other than the two game tying shots anyways. It has been Milsap and Williams' penetration that has hurt them. Even if you don't want to put Valanciunas in, put Davis in. No reason for Gray to be out there. EDIT: And there you go, Jefferson gets a wide open jumper because Gray's fat ass can't move two feet to recover after moving a foot to help. I really wish this guy wasn't on the team so that Casey wouldn't even have a choice to nail him on the bench.

Replay showed McGuire getting all ball. There was a lot of contact on the body, but they've been ignoring that all game long on DeRozan's drives so they can't call it there. DeRozan ties his career high with a nice pull up in the lane.