Built Ford Tough

That was a brutal offensive possession from Philly. They were literally working 5-4 for the duration of it (Anderson pulled up lame with some sort of left leg problem on the other end of the floor) and they managed to not even get a shot off because of an offensive 3 second violation. Umm, what the hell was that? Calderon being aggressive and pushing the ball up the floor and throwing a risky lob? I'm in shock.

Why is a team that can't shoot (and even worse, has their best shooter injured) jacking up 15 3's in a half? That might be a reason why you only scored 7 points in the 2nd quarter.

I wonder how many times the super scrub 2nd unit of Lucas, two of Anderson/McGuire/Kleiza and two of Amir/Gray/Davis has to either blow a lead or allow the opposing team to extend a huge lead before he realizes that playing the entire 2nd unit together is just a terrible idea and doesn't work? Every game he has done this and, without fail, every game the Raptors find themselves in a hole (well, usually more of a hole since the Raptors have been getting off to awful starts) when the 2nd unit leaves the floor.

Because teams are clearly going right at Valanciunas to start games. It has happened in pretty much every game of the season. Opposing teams are attacking Valanciunas immediately and it usually results in him picking up two quick fouls and that is two fouls closer to them being int he bonus. I'm not saying that I think they shoul('ve) started Amir over Valanciunas becaue I don't, especially when Lowry is back. Calderon and Amir should be playing nearly all of their minutes together because of their chemistry in the PnR together. I just posted what the talk was amongst the beat writers. PS: Remember how stoked you were about John Lucas in the preseason? Well, I'd like to introduce you to the real John Lucas. The career 38% shooter and consumate chucker. Guy is a bonafide scrub.

I liked Teague coming out of Wake, but I thought he would be a scoring 6th man combo guard. I've been very impressed with the improvements he has made in his floor game. He looks a lot better running the offense without Johnson around to dominate the ball. I know he won't keep up his ridiculous pace (67 TS% and a near 30 PER) but I think it is about time Atlanta starts giving him 34-36 minutes a night and keep Harris' minutes to around 12-14. Teague is playing way too well to be under 30 mpg, especially since Harris has been average at best the last two seasons and looks like garbage to star this season.

No Lowry (sprained ankle) or Fields (something to do with his hand/wrist) tonight. Linas Kleiza will return to the Raptors lineup after being in Lithuania for a family matter. There is also a lot of talk about Casey switching up the starting lineup. With Fields out that opens up the small forward spot (probably Alan Anderson, although I'd rather see it be Kleiza or McGuire and keep Anderson's trigger happy mentality with the offensively challenged 2nd unit) but there is also a lot of speculation going around the beat writers that Amir is going to replace Valanciunas at the 5. Not that any of this will likely matter as I fully expect Jrue Holiday to drop a career high in points and hand out 10+ assists with the corpse of the corpse of Jose Calderon guarding him.

What happened? I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to the game but I looked at the score and it was a relatively close game (6 point lead or so) and then it seemed like all of a sudden the Lakers were up by 20. Golden State desperately needs Bogut back and healthy, though. Without him they are way too predictable and easy to defend. If their perimeter shots aren't falling, they have nobody to really get the ball into the paint, get to the line or get any sort of easy baskets from. I know they are a jump shooting team and that happens with teams who rely heavily on perimeter shots, but still.

On the bright side, I doubt the Raptors would realistically win too many of these games to start the season even if Lowry was healthy. If he is going to get injured, and lets face it, with the way he plays, Lowry was going to eventually end up missing time sooner or later, I'd rather it be during this stretch where the Raptors would be hard pressed to win games anyways than later in the season when the schedule eases up. In regards to Calderon, I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't see him stepping up anytime soon. The guy is closer to becoming completely irrelevant as an NBA player than being a productive one. I had high hopes for him as a backup but from what I've seen from him this season, he is the same momentum killing, turnstile he has been the last two years. Anyways, no real update. His status for tomorrow against Philly is a "question mark" and a decision won't be made until after shoot around tomorrow. http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/basketball/Raptors+most+consistent+player+Kyle+Lowry+remains/7527360/story.html#ixzz2BnHdhEIW

http://ucla.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1434082 I don't know the exact specifics of what made Muhammad ruled ineligible, but I really do hate the way NCAA makes millions and millions of dollars off of these kids but they get ruled ineligible for accepting a pair of shoes. I love college basketball, March Madness is one of my top 3 favourite sporting times of the year, but part of me would like to see a bunch of these top recurits decide to screw the NCAA and head over to Europe for a year. Now, if he was given something big like a car or a large sum of money, sure, I can get on board with this since that isn't fair and a line needs to be drawn somewhere. Knowing the NCAA and their stingy rules, I'm skeptical that is the case, though.

Season got underway today so I figured it would be time to make a new thread for anybody who wants to post their thoughts about any college games they are watching, even if the thread last season was mainly me talking to myself. I didn't watch the game, but McAdoo had a monster game for UNC today. I don't recall the exact numbers (and don't feel like looking it up) but it was something like 24/15 on over 50+ shooting. I'm expecting a huge season for him this season as the undisputed number one option for the Heels. I wish I could've saw it to see how Paige looked, though. He has some huge shoes to fill as Marshall was arguably the best point guard in college basketball last year, but I think he is going to be a very good player for this team. Crappy thing is that with my schedule, I probably won't be able to see many UNC games so I likely won't see a lot of him.

[expletive]. The. Refs. EDIT: I thought I had this in this post, but I guess not. Anyways, I'm not saying the refs are the reason for this loss since the team sleepwalking through the first quarter and Casey having Acy, Anderson, Lucas and McGuire on the floor for the first 4 or so minutes of the 4th killed any real chance of them completing the comeback. However, they have been utterly attrocious in basically all of the games so far this season. I never believed the whole "Refs are bias against Raps" conspiracy theory, and I still don't, but this is getting really old.

Valanciunas getting the complete rookie treatment from the refs. All three of his "fouls" have been a joke and now he is going to rot on the bench for the rest of the half.

Raptors looking like the Raptors of old. Give up 36 points to a team without Dirk, Brand, Marion and Beaubois. Bargnani and Calderon just suck the life out of the team. I can't wait until these two, along with Colangelo, are gone.

It really doesn't even matter that much since Bogut is on a strict 20 minute a night limit. He may be effective when he is on the floor because of his significant size advantage, but he won't be on the floor enough to really make a huge impact or dominate the Cavs.

Yay for Calderon starting! The guy is like a damn cockroach. No matter what happens, he always finds his way back into the starting lineup.

If I had to guess, I'd say he misses the Philly game, the Utah game and returns on the 13th against Indiana. I would say that he will be back on the 12th against Utah, but I think that they'll hold him out since it is the front end of a back-to-back.

Bogut really struggled with Cousins in this game. Whenever Cousins took Bogut more than 10 feet away from the hoop he was getting whatever he wanted on the slower, injured Bogut. This was one of those games from Cousins wehre you think to yourself that the guy should be a top 3 center in the league if he would just grow up and focus on basketball. The guy is ridiculously skilled for his size. It is a shame that so much of that talent is probably going to go to waste unless he really changes his attitude and mindset. Curry looked awful for Golden State. I really haven't been all that impressed with him to start the seasona side from that game against Memphis and a couple of stretches against the Clippers. He was just brutal against the Suns in the opener and I don't really have much positive to say about him last night either. I don't know if his ankle is still bothering him or what, but he just doesn't look like the same player right now. His jumper is completely off. As far as Barnes goes, this game he was pretty much a non-factor. He had some open looks from 3 but couldn't connect and I really didn't notice him much out there. The 4 assists were nice to see and I do recall seeing him initiating the offense during the 3rd quarter, but all in all, not a whole lot to say about his performance in this one.

Did anybody think the Knicks didn't get the last laugh? I think you'd be hard pressed to find any Raptor fan that doesn't completely despise the contract. I obviously don't know as well as you, but I'd guess that a vast majority of Knick fans are thrilled to not have Fields on the team at that price as well. It really does suck, though. Fields seems like a cool dude but he is going to get murdered by the fans because Colangelo is an idiot.

I can agree with that, especially in regards to the first two games of the season. I can't really comment on this game since I paid hardly any attention to it as the game was already a blowout by the time I got home from work, but the first 2 games of the season were awful and I did notice some really cheap fouls get called on Toronto and some fairly obvious ones not get called on OKC. The only bright spot I saw tonight was Valanciunas. I don't know what was going on with him, whether it was nerves or what, but he has really struggled finishing around the rim to start the season and for anybody who watched him play for Rytas the past two years (so probably just me, haha) would know that Val excells at finishing and has a very soft touch. That (and his free throw shooting) was what made me confident that even if he did struggle with fouls throught his rookie season (which, he probably will), he would still manage to be productive when he was on the floor. His finishing tonight was what I expected to see from him coming into the season. Hopefully now that he has a few games under his belt he will be able to settle down and not rush his shots so much. Other than that, Ross had his best game so far, but that isn't exactly saying much when you consider he had a -14.5 PER coming into the game.

Yeah, I couldn't believe when I saw that. I'm so glad he is on the team for the next 3 years. I'm not even joking when I say that I was surprised to see him actually convert that wide open dunk he had. I was fully expecting him to [expletive] it up somehow. PS: As for embedding, all you have to do is copy the link right from the address bar. You don't need to have the feature=player_embedded& part.

Wolstat tweet on Lowry: Yeah, he isn't playing tomorrow.

Whew, I thought Fields was going to miss that wide open, uncontested dunk. That was a close one.

Happened with about 1-2 minutes left in the first half of the game against OKC. He came down on Ibaka's foot and immediately went down holding his ankle, screaming in pain. He was helped to the Raptors locker room and wasn't putting any weight on his ankle. I don't know the severity of the sprain as the only thing I've heard is that he has a sprained ankle and will not return. Based on the way Lowry reacted, I'd be surprised if he plays against Dallas tomorrow, but when I do hear anything concrete, I'll post an update here. Here is a picture. http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/683558393.jpg?key=19131063&Expires=1352256575&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIYVGSUJFNRFZBBTA&Signature=NK5-~bvkGB3zQ9GStAPn1xBOnENn8nUJJhFyCAslffoqcEjpzMOtECT3YqBGZf9hOo90ERlxHunor~JpKTaJRp~-1Thg1ose5WJ0iD4bKlPL-QB6vDetWxTdFuBzxVnr6IaT6XJ8DCpqt8Ad8ioxlJ~gmNBKtv36~OED67hLrz8_

Well that was a great half. Down 21 points and Lowry has to get carried to the locker room. Yay for Jose!

I think he has actually played pretty well to start the season. Better than my expectations at least. Like you said he has made some dumb mistakes on both offense and defense, but his shooting has been on point, he has looked a lot better driving the ball than he ever did in college and he has held his own defensively for the most part (he did get abused a bit by Caron Butler in the 3rd quarter of the Clipper game). I think more of the problem is that he isn't exactly having anything run for him as all of the pin-downs, curls and off the ball movement/screens are being run for Thompson or Curry (not that you can blame Jackson or anything since they are both great shooters) and that is leaving Barnes as the safety net. The times he has had plays run specifically to get him a look, he has looked pretty good at running it and knocking down the shot. If there is one thing I'd like to see him do, it is be more aggressive on the glass. I know he wasn't a great rebounder in college, but he was pulling down between 5-6 boards a game despite playing beside two of the best bigs in the country. Him only grabbing 4 boards in 3 games (haven't watched the game against Sacramento yet, will probably watch it tomorrow) is inexcusable as far as I'm concerned. That is one are he really needs to improve on.