Built Ford Tough

78. I'm actually pretty dissapointed that I forgot one player considering that he was an All-Star very recently and the other ones that I missed I just drew blanks on. I knew that they were All-Stars but I couldn't think of them at the time of writing the quiz.

The Raptors are a terrible defensive team but they aren't nearly as bad defensively at home as they are on the road. Anybody who expects the Hawks to have another offensive outburst is kidding theirselves. They can definitely score in the 100's maybe even 110 or so, but they are not going to be dropping 120 plus tonight. Looks like Hedo decided to show up. He was playing like a broken down old man over the last few games and gave us Raptor fans a glimpse into the future when we full on loathe his contract, instead of just have a general dislike for it. This is how he should play all of the time though. They don't necissarily need him to score 20 points a game, but fill the stat sheet with assists, rebounds and things like that. A 15/6/6 statline from Turkoglu would be much more valuable than a 25/2/2 statline from him, as far as I am concerned. Good to see Calderon and Bargnani back. I am harder on them than any other fan on here, but the Raptors need them on the floor to have a chance against a team like the Hawks.

http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/Strikeforce-Lands-Lashley-Jan-30-Debut-Booked-21466 I still think that he needs one or two more fights against some lesser talent to work out some things in his game before he steps into the cage with fighters like Fabricio Werdum, Brett Rogers and Antonio Silva let alone Fedor Emeilanenko, but it is good to see him signing with a name promotion. This will definitely help Strikeforce pull some more fans considering the following that he has from his days with the WWE. He is an interesting prospect as well, and he is taking MMA very seriously, which is good to see. I'm looking forward to seeing him make his Strikeforce debut on January 30th. I hope that Strikeforce doesn't rush him and throw him to the wolves right away as he still needs some developing.

Yeah, he is a member over there that just got suspended for 3 days. The IP Address, Internet Provider and all of those things match his info. He was probably just trying to turn OTR and BTA against each other because he was pissed off that he was banned over at BTA. Its really sad that somebody would do this.

So if you aren't from the United States then you don't know [expletive] all about basketball? Give me a break.

Very nice move from Walker to free himself up for the jumper. He did a fantastic job of using fakes to create space for himself to get off the jumper over Wall. Clutch jumper from him to put UCONN up by 1 with 50 seconds left or so. The Walker/Wall matchup has been fantastic to watch so far. These two have been going at each other all 2nd half matching each other play for play. EDIT: And John Wall makes another huge play for Kentucky. Very nice And 1 from Wall right there to put UK up by 2 points with 26 seconds left. Like I said, Wall and Walker have been matching each other all 2nd half. This has been a terrific matchup.

I missed the first half but I have been watching since the 2nd half started.

Nah, just stupidity on Triano's/Colangelo's behalf. And screw this game. When Roko Ukic is dropping And 1's on you and like 15 points, you know the game is over. I'm going to go watch Kentucky vs. UCONN and see the Raptors future starting point guard, John Wall. :glasses:

Sadly, yes. Well, its not like he is not "allowed" to play more than that, but it seems like every game this season, regardless of whether or not he is playing poorly or great, he will only play the first 10 minutes or so of each half and nothing more. It is really frusturating considering the fact that it is usually Antoine "Don't call me Kobe Bryant" Wright that gets the minutes.

He is only allowed to play the first 10 minutes of the game and the first 8 minutes of the 3rd.... Oh and MB, told you. It was only a matter of time before the Bucks got hot again, especially considering all of these looks are wide open.

Don't worry, its only a matter of time before the Bucks start getting wide open look after wide open look. It is the Raptors we are talking about after all.

Huge 3 to cut the lead down to 9 at the end of the 3rd be Belinelli. Not that I am going to get my hopes up because knowing this team they will come out to start the 4th and let the Bucks go on a 10-0 run or something. Oh yeah, Jennings hobbled off the floor very gingerly there. Looks like an ankle injury, or maybe a knee. Not sure which, but something on his leg was definitely bothering him.

I don't care about the scoring, its the complete lack of effort and passion that this team plays with. They are on pace to score enough points to give them a shot at winning, assuming they actually gave a consistent effort on the defensive end, at least in my opinion. Sure they could definitely put up some more points, and that is where they are missing Calderon and Bargnani, but with two of their best offensive players out of the lineup, you would think that they would bring a much better effort defensively. Nobody, aside from Bosh, Johnson and DeRozan (sometimes Jack), plays with any sort of heart at all. I honestly couldn't care less if the team won, as long as they played hard and gave it their all every night. It sickens me to see how they can play like they did last night where even though their shots weren't falling, they played hard, yet 24 hours later they play like they don't give a damn whether they win or lose (again, with the exception of a few players). I hate this team.

Looks like the Raptors decided to revert back to their "give up 120 points a night" defensive mind set. I hate this team so much. Just when I figured that it might be worthwhile to start showing some confidence in this team, hence my post on the first page (in my defense though, I said if they did play defense like this that they would lose), they show just why I went into almost every single game expecting a loss since about the 2nd week of the season. I don't mean anything towards the Bucks, as they are a solid team (not nearly as good as some people make them out to be though), but the Raptors should not be down 18 points to them if they have any sort of playoff aspirations. Once again, I hate this team.

You're just jealous of Rasho's greatness. As much as I love to chirp and talk crap about Calderon, the Raptors offense needs him. They have looked out of sync and disorganized on offense since Calderon got hurt. Jack has done a good job but he simply isn't nearly the same offensive talent that Calderon is. The Raptors really do need Calderon more than I have given him credit for, offensively at least.

That just means that we will just see more of The Man, The Myth, The Legend, RASHO NESTEROVICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rasho will shut down Bogut who will tremble in fear of his greatness, and drop 20/20 in front of all 200 fans at the Bradley Center!

Lol, when did the Bucks become this great team that should domiante the Raptors and win by double digit points? If you think that there is no reason why the Bucks shouldn't win by double digits, you need to take off the rose colored glasses. Can they win by double digits? Of course. Is it a forgone conclusion that they will, like you are making it out to be? Give me a break. The Bucks hot start to the season is making people overrate them so much. I should hope that they got off to a hot start considering how easy their schedule was to start off the season. I can see either team winning this game and it should be a very good matchup. If the Raptors play defense like they have over the past couple of games and they manage to start hitting their shots, I predict a Raptors win. If the Raptors fall back into their matadoric defense or if they put up bricks like last night, then the Bucks will walk away with the win.

I actually love that they shot 2-21 (I think that is what it was, Wright made one late in the game) and 32% from the field, yet still managed to win the game. If the Raptors are going to actually become a good team they are going to have to win these kinds of games. So far this season if the Raptors weren't hitting their shots they would have absolutely no chance at winning games. I love the ugly wins more than the games that they win when they knock down 12 3's and shoot over 50% because you should win those games. Winning ugly is the next step that this team needs to make to actually become a good team in the East.

Lol, Marcus Banks is terrible. I don't understand how the hell Colangelo gave him that contract. The guy is flat out awful.

I hate having little men in the dunk contest as well. It is basically the exact same gimmick everytime. "Look at me, I am under 6 feet and can do basic dunks so give me a perfect score." Spudd Webb was amazing just because he was the pioner of the little man dunk contest participants but Nate Robinson has been absolutely terrible in both of the competitions in my opinion. If he was 6'3 nobody would even give a second look to any of the dunks that he had. I've been getting turned off from the dunk contest over the last couple of years though. It is getting way too gimmicky for my liking. The last dunker who actually wowed me was probably Andre Iguodala, who was absolutely robbed because of what I was talking about above in regards to Nate Robinson. In Dwights first contest he had some great dunks, the off the backboard one in particular. I am sure that one of DeRozan's dunks are going to be him taking off his jersey to reveal a throwback purple Vince Carter jersey and doing one of Carter's signature dunks. Awesome...

I found an online link to it and am watching it right now. Here is the link if anybody is interested in watching it. http://www.cbs.com/primetime/60_minutes/video/?cid=60%20Minutes/60%20Minutes%20Full%20Episodes&pid=UHMI_aAl1bF4grHiBD1x1CTwxUJvoKDi&play=true The Donaghy portion starts about 14 minutes into the video, if I recall correctly. If you don't feel like watching the video (I think that it is well worth the time) then here is some of the major points of the interview: Basically, Donaghy says that he bet on over 100 games and a lot of them were games that he was reffing. He says that even though he had bet on a certain game, he wouldn't make calls to sway the game in the favour of one team or the other and always tried to be as impartial as possible. An example of this is in a game between the Spurs and Hornets he had bet on the Spurs but still ejected Gregg Popvich early in the first quarter, as the Spurs would eventually go on to lose the game. He says that he had a 70-80% success rate on the games that he betted on because he knew that certain refs had certain bias for certain players, both positive and negative. He used Iverson as an example and said that if the ref liked Iverson he would tend to favour him and make more calls to benefit him, but if the ref didn't like him then he wouldn't make as many calls for him because of his personal opinion of AI. Basically, he knew that relationships refs had with certain players would effect the point spread of the games and bet accordingly. He also made note of a situation where Iverson was fined $25,000 for criticizing the officiating but the refs felt that he should've been suspended for his comments so they decided that the next game they would "teach Iverson a lesson". He then went on to say that he bet against the Denver Nuggets in that game because he knew that the refs would make every single possible call against Iverson that they could, including numerous palming violations and not giving him any foul calls unless they were blatantly obvious. They showed clips from this game and Donaghy talked about specific examples. Here is a quote from him about a specific incident with Kobe Bryant and the Lakers: He was basically inferring that because of how many missed calls the refs had on a prior game that he knew the next game that Bryant played in he would get plenty of free throws. He used this information to help him with his bets. He would call refs before games and talk to them about certain players and such and how they felt about them and use the infor that they told him to help him make his bets. He bet on his games through a friend because he was scared to get caught. They went on for 3 years but during the 4th year his friend let slip that he was getting inside information from an NBA ref, to which the mob found out and told Donaghy that he would tell the mob all of his picks or else they would go down to Florida and visit his family. They had a code that if the bet was on the home team Donaghy would mention his brother Chuck and if it was the away team he would mention his brother Johnny. Donaghy made $200,000 per correct pick despite the fact that the mob was making millions of money off of him. It was Donaghy's connection with the mob that eventually brought him down and got him caught. He cooperated with the FBI in order to get a lesser sentence and as a result he was getting death threats from the mob and he even got attacked by somebody because of it. He claimed that in the playoffs the NBA would do everything possible to extend series and help big market teams advance because it would make the NBA more money. He said that over the course of 4 years he profited around $100,000. When asked why it was so little he said that he wasn't in it for the money, but for the high and thrill that betting on NBA games gave him. He didn't really deny being called a "rouge referee" and says that he did some very shady and terrible things, but the culture that existed withing the NBA enabled him to be able to bet on games at a very successfull rate. His wife divorced him and has sole custody of his 4 daughters. He said that he feels that this incident has actually improved the officiating in the NBA because the league has made changes to prevent refs from allowing their bias to have an effect on calls. He hasn't watched a game for 2 years. That is most of the major parts of the interview. I definitely suggest that you watch the interview for yourself because it is a lot more telling than simply reading my post. I definitely feel like Donaghy was telling the truth about every single question that he was asked. He answered them all in a very calm and collected manner, there wasn't any sort of nervous behavious on his part (like a lot of blinking or looking around the room) and even the FBI has not once caught him in any sort of lie. I really do belive that Donaghy is telling the 100% truth about every single question that he was asked. Again, I highly suggest that you watch this interview. It is about 30 minutes long, and it will be a 30 minutes well spent if you are a fan of the NBA, which all of us are.

http://www.nba.com/raptors/video/2009/12/05/RGI6091205CHICAGOBULLS16x9flv-1145291/index.html Go to 5:07 or so and you can see him clearly do it after laying it in.

I take this back. I really regret not going out last night so that I could stay home and watch this card. Marcus Jones looked like he didn't work on his stand up for one second since the show ended (July 9th I believe). He was just as robotic and stiff in his stand up as he was on the show. He looked like a mummy or Frankenstein walking forward with his hands held out akwardly in front of him as he tried to clinch with Mitrione. He did a great job of getting Mitrione to the ground and he has a very good ground game, but man his striking is just attrocious. He looks like he has Andrei Arlovski syndrome as well, or in other words, a glass jaw as he gets put out from any flush shot it seems and with his style of fighting, you have to be able to absorb some blows because you are definitely going to get hit if you are constantly going in for a clinch. I think that the UFC might have convinced him to come back to fight on the Finale show though. After his last fight in the house he didn't seem to stoked on fighting anymore, and with the performance that he gave I wonder if he is done with fightng all together. Kimbo fight was just a snooze fest. The 2nd round was good as Kimbo showed a real improvement on the ground, although it was against Houston Alexander who has no ground game either, but any improvement from Kimbo is nice to see regardless of who he was fighting. Alexander looked to be scared of Kimbo's power, but I do have to admit that it was a smart move on his behalf to not get into a slug fest with Kimbo. Alexander had the superior all around skills and if he would've actually committed to the leg kicks throughout the fight, he would've done a lot better as he would've weakened Kimbo and took away his power, but instead he was pretty much playing footsies with him the entire fight. It seemed like he was scared to commit though because of Kimbo's power, which is understandable considering he has a glass jaw. That third round was absolutely terrible though. Both fighters were completely gassed and couldn't do anything. I couldn't care less about the McSweeny and Schoonover fight. Schoonover was going back to active duty after the fight no matter what and James McSweeny has no future at heavyweight. That was a bathroom break fight if I have ever saw one. Frankie Edgar looked good though. When Maynard gets by Nate Diaz (I hope he doesn't but I can see him smother Diaz to a UD) they should have Edgar fight Maynard to determine the next number one contender at 155. The Jones-Hamill fight showed that Jon "Bones" Jones is for real. Yeah, he got a DQ loss but the fact of the matter is that he dominated that fight from start to finish and if anybody thinks that the 12-6 elbows actually played a factor in that fight getting stopped is fooling theirselves. That fight could've easily been stopped 20 seconds earlier. Hamill's shoulder injury obviously played a part in it, but Jones looked amazing in that fight. He is a future stud at 205 if you ask me. Lastly, the Nelson-Schaub fight went exactly as I expected it to. Well, I actually expected Nelson to either sub him or GNP him out, but he dominated the younger Schaub like I expected. That was a nasty one punch KO as well. I was 99% sure that Nelson would win the contract was I saw his name on the cast because he was clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the fighters, and he showed that last night. Him coming out to Weird Al's "I'm Fat" was absolutely gold. All in all, it was a pretty dissapointing card if you ask me. I was expecting a lot better. Oh well, at least we have Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell as coaches next season, and I have heard that David "The Crow" Louiseau will be on the show as well, which should be nice as he was one of my favourite fighters when I was first getting into MMA.

I mentioned it in the game thread. This incident pretty much summed up the Bulls entire night last night. Nobody was playing with any intensity, heart or like they gave a damn if they won or lost the game. You can't even blame the fact that it was a back to back either because the Raptors were coming off a more grueling game last night as they played an overtime game in Washington. That was a pathetic effort from the Bulls last night, and trust me, as a Raptors fan, I know a pathetic effort when I see one. I must admit though, it is nice to see the Raptors opposition getting heat and not the Raptors, lol.

Terrible, terrible news. Oden is my favourite center in the NBA and he finally looked like he was taking the next step in his career this season. He was playing elite defense and finally seemed to start to develop some confidence on the offensive end as well. He was really starting to show flashes of the dominant defense that everybody thought he would bring to the NBA and his offense was progressing as well. Whether you are a fan of his or not, you really have got to feel for Oden. The guy has so much talent, but he just simply can't catch a break, no pun intended. At least this wasn't the same knee as the one that he had microfracture surgery. That is probably the only good news about this injury. I hope that Oden has a complete recovery.