Built Ford Tough

Ok, John Lucas hitting that 3 is probably just as surprising to me as Jefferson hitting that one at the end of regulation. What a complete shock. Still fully expecting Utah to hit a game winner, though.

If only the Raptors had Lowry. He really is the only guy on this team I want taking a potential game tying three. This loss hurts, though. That is for sure.

About time DeRozan gets a call. Probably too little, too late, though. He should've been there at least 10 times prior to that one with how aggressive he has played all game long. Such a shame.

Nobody else is as high. Calderon is around 42-45 and I think Bargs is probably around 40. But yeah, DeRozan does look a bit gassed. That open jumper he had looked flat which is usually a sign of a guys legs going. Then again, he looked pretty damn good on that post move.

After seeing the replay it wasn't a bad shot. He did manage to create space to get a fairly decent look. I would've liked to see him try and get a little deeper before attempting the shot, though. Especially with the Milsap on him, although you gotta give credit to Milsap as that was very good defense.

DeMar DeRozan! Overpaid? [expletive] no! Man, I can't get over how awesome he has been in this game. The only thing missing from that dunk was him teabagging all three refs in the process.

I can't even get mad anymore. I come into games fully expecting the refs to [expletive] the Raptors in the ass.

Don't worry, they will. This team just finds way to lose games, which is pretty ironic since last season when they should've been losing games like this they would find some garbage way to win.

See what happens when you don't go to Bargnani late in the game, Casey? He gives the ball to DeRozan in the post, which he should've done last time, and even though he missed the shot, he forced the defense to help which opened up the easy putback for Amir. I don't understand why they have been going away from DeRozan down the stretch. It isn't a coincidence that the lead started to disappear when they stopped going to DeRozan and focused more on the Jose/Bargnani two man game. Lmao, that pretty much sums things up perfectly. Al [expletive]ing Jefferson hits a game tying 3 with 2 seconds left. Give me a break. Dude's hit what, one 3 his entire career prior to that?

About time Calderon drives with the intent to score instead of looking for a foul. Prior to that one, he has had at least 3 drives this game where he slowed up in order to try and draw contact instead of just concentrating on finishing.

Raptors are doing their best to blow this game just like the Indiana one. Of course, the refs allowing the Jazz to absolutely maul Calderon and DeRozan on traps isn't helping, but still.

DeRozan with his 3rd 20/5/5 game of the season. As far as I can remember, he had 3 of those all of last year and only had 5 in his career. Loving the development of his all-around game. His vision out of the post has been a huge surprise for me. I always knew that if he committed himself he could be a solid rebounder from the guard spot, but I never envisioned him making some of these passes he has made to start the season.

Huge 6 point swing on that Calderon no-call. Calderon probably should've been at the line for two but instead the ball goes the other way, Foye knocks down a 3 and then to add insult to injury, Calderon gets T'd up. To be fair, Calderon did initiate contact, but I still felt that was a foul. Really though, this whole game has been poorly officiated. Nobody on either team knows what is going to be called a foul and what will be let go. You can see frustruation growing on both benches. That was two awesome possessions from DeMar. A beautiful eurostep to finish off a very nice drive and then a nice job of posting up, drawing the second defender and finding an open Kleiza for the corner 3.

And whattya know, Kleiza is having himself a very solid game so far. Does this mean I was right and he should've started or I'm an idiot for thinking he should've started? EDIT: And Kleiza drains a 3. 14 points for him already in only 8 minutes. He's also got 2 or 3 offensive boards.

I really don't understand why Casey is starting McGuire instead of Kleiza. Sure, McGuire is a much better defender than Kleiza is, but the Jazz are an inside/out team anyways. Hayward is good, don't get me wrong, but I think Kleiza's ability to spread the floor and hit perimeter shots is more valuable against this team than McGuire's better defense. The spacing on offense to start the game is going to be awful.

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/gametracker/recap/NBA_20121111_ATL@LAC

Nice to see Thornton is alright after that hard fall (or at least appears to be). That looked like it could've been really bad with his head bouncing off the court like that.

He was pissed off at an opposing teams commentator for saying this: He then came out of the locker room to confront Elliott about the comments after waiting for him to finish his post game show. Are you seriously going to tell me that was a mature thing to do, especially considering that what Elliott said was hardly even bad? I'll be the first one to admit that Sean Elliott is a total hack and a brutal guy to listen to. He is the definition of a homer and says absolutely ludicrous things throught the course of every game he is calling, but getting into a heated confrontation with a guy and getting yourself suspended for 2 games as a result of it is just a ridiculous thing to do. What good was going to come out of it? I'm a Cousins fan but this is a classic example of what is holding him back from becoming a great player. He needs to grow some thicker skin, stop with all of this extracurricular shit and focus on playing basketball. EDIT: I should also say that I don't agree with the suspension. Unless he said or did something completely out of line I believe a fine would be more than an adequate punishment but it doesn't change the fact that Cousins was an idiot for even going back onto the court in the first place and putting himself in this position.

For confronting Spurs announcer Sean Elliot after the Spurs/Kings game after Elliot said some things about Cousins he didn't like. I love this guy. Such a headcase.

For sure. I actually had a post written up in the game thread that mentioned how it might actually be a good thing that he had to leave the game because he was playing so poorly, but I figured that would be in poor taste considering he was just injured and I had a feeling it was fairly significant, but I can definitely agree with you here. That Minnesota game seemed to be the worst thing to happen for Anderson. He had a nice shooting game and hit some huge 3's at important times, but ever since then he has played awful. There is no reason why Anderson should ever take a shot with more than 14 seconds left on the shot clock (other than transition, of course) and he has started to make a habit out of taking early shots, driving recklessly into traffic and just playing way out of control. These things are all the exact opposite of what earned him the rest of the season contract after his 10 day last year and are also what earned him a spot on the roster after training camp. He is turning into another Antoine Wright. The thing that sucks about him missing time, even if his play has been mediocore, or downright awful is probably more appropriate, is that at least defenses had to respect him as a 3 point shooting threat. Take away his minutes and give them to somebody like McGuire and defenses are going to pack the paint even more, especially with Lowry out of the lineup.

UNC looked better in the 2nd half, but I still question how much offense they are going to get outside of McAdoo when games slow down and they can't get out in transition. They are going to really need Bullock, Hairston and Paige to be consistent knock down shooters because otherwise teams are just going to clog the paint in order to limit McAdoo. They did play a lot better in the 2nd half, though. I liked what I saw from Joel James. I think he will be a nice presence down low for them in the future, although I'm not sure if that will be late in this season or if we will have to wait until next year. I like the core that they have in place with Paige, James, Johnson and Tokoto. I don't see any of them leaving until at least their junior seasons and will grow together to form the nucleus of this team for the next few years.

He was alright. I wouldn't say he played all that well, but I can't say he played poorly. The only thing he did great was rebounding, which as you know, he always does great. He is just an awesome rebounder from the guard spot. I think he finished with 12 boards. Other than that, he played fairly good defense on DeRozan whenever they were matched up together but from memory, I don't recall them actually being matched up a lot. For some reason I remember Wright and Young on DeRozan more than Turner but I could be wrong. Offensively, he really didn't do all that much. HIs jumper was off and he wasn't being aggressive on his drives. To be perfectly honest, I don't really remember him doing much of anything on the offensive end of the floor, but that may be a good thing because guys like Young, Hawes, Holiday and Wright were playing well on that end of the floor so Turner just took a back seat and focused on defense and cleaning up the glass.

He is on crutches and has his left foot in a walking boot. You could tell when the injury happened that it was likely something fairly serious. Usually the innocent looking plays like that one result in fairly substantial injuries. On another note, how sad is it that losing Alan freaking Anderson is actually a serious blow to this team? Just goes to show how utterly pathetic the Raptors wings are outside of DeRozan (who isn't anything special in his own right).

UNC didn't look very good in the first half against Florida Atlantic. If it wasn't for all the turnovers which led to run out opportunities and 2nd chance points, the Heels would probably be down going into the half instead of up 8th. Their half court offense does not look good at all and their free throw shooting has been absolutely abysmal (4-13 or smething like that). If McAdoo doesn't get a touch, this team really labours on offense in the half court. Defensively they've done a nice job letting Greg Gantt get his (13 points on 5-9 shooting) while limiting the rest of the team (10 points on 2-18 shooting). Tokoto lost track of Gantt on a couple of occasions which resulted in wide open 3's, but other than that I like what I've seen from them defensively. Then again, it is Florida Atlantic, far from an offensive juggernaut. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions based on one half of the 2nd game of the season, but this team has a lot of work to do if they want to be a factor come March. Of Course, that was expected as it is widely known that this is more of a rebuilding year for UNC anyways.

About time DeRozan attacked. These post fades have been working for him for most of the season, but they clearly aren't falling tonight. He needs to post up with the intention of getting into the paint or just turn and face his man and look to take him off the bounce. Really though, it doesn't matter all that much since it is pretty damn obvious that the Raptors aren't going to actually make a comeback anyways.