If you can remember three weeks ago today - it feels like a lifetime, but it was a mere 21 days - the Raptors were coming off a tough loss in Detroit, but still feeling good about themselves. After all, they were 3-1, had managed to stick with Detroit - who’s had out number for years - for the whole game, and were looking to go 4-1 by beating up on the lowly old Hawks.

Even though the Hawks were 3-0, the Raptors gave them no respect, came out flat, and got their asses handed to them.

And while I’d like to believe the Raptors learned their lesson, I expect their usual un-prepared-ness will come in to play tonight, and they’ll get beat again. Only this time it’ll be even worse because it’s at home and the Raptors desperately need this win before they go out west for three games.

The Hawks are 9-5 for a reason. Behind the veteran leadership of Mike Bibby, the steady all-around play of Joe Johnson, the improvement of Marvin Williams - finally - and the surpising sophomore Al Horford, the Hawks have a lot of pieces in place. They’ve also got Josh Smith, who’s injured - they’re 3-5 without him, pretty damn good considering all the things he does for them - and a cast of solid if unspectacular role players, like Flip Murray and Maurice Evans. They’re a well-put together team; and although I haven’t thought much of their coach, Mike Woodson, over the years, I have to give him some credit. He sure flummoxed the Raptors in game one when he put Joe Johnson on Jose Calderon and Bibby on Parker. Combined output for Bibby and Johnson: 36 on 13-22. Calderon/Parker: 10 on 4-19.

Yep, slight mismatch there. Sigh.

Now, the Hawks are missing Smith so you’d think maybe that’d go in the Raps’ favour, but remember he was hurt in the first half of the first game - he left right before the Hawks went on their game-busting 18-4 run if I recall. Not only that, but we had a healthy Jermaine O’Neal and Jose Calderon for that game, and still got killed.

Now, we’re operating without JO and a Jose who, from all indications, is still suffering from his hamstring issue (seriously? That hasn’t healed yet? What the hell good are our trainers, anyway? Or are we just using that as an excuse for his terrible defense and lack of desire to turn the corner on screens? Just something to think about).

I have to say, going back to mentioning the role players, something bothers me more and more all the time with Bryan Colangelo’s plan last summer… the Hawks lost a key role player when Josh Childress went overseas. He was replaced with Flip Murray and Evans, serviceable guys with proven NBA experience.

So why, when the Raptors lost a key guy - TJ Ford - in the Jermaine O’Neal deal (we traded two key players, TJ and Rasho, but say Rasho is replaced by O’Neal) we didn’t replace TJ with a serviceable NBA veteran? Why was the only free agent pick-up we made an unproven journeyman from Europe? Why did we go into the season with only 13 guys when a high-energy guy like Murray was out there and a bomber like Evans was out there?

And say what you want about Darrick Martin, but whenever one of Jose or TJ wasn’t playing, Martin was always trying to teach when they were on the bench. What the hell is Will Solomon gonna be teaching Roko when the two of them are on the bench? Solomon was really just an indefensible acquisition.

Sigh. Anyway. Enough with the roster-bashing, “this is your team,” as coach Norman Dale would say. Jimmy Chitwood isn’t coming to save us so we’ll have to make do.

It’s gonna take another monster night from CB4 to stay in this game tonight. Without O’Neal to back him up, Bosh is also gonna have his work cut out for him on defense, with Horford. I say we also need Andrea Bargnani to have a big night tonight, and the potential is there for it: Zaza Pachulia is surprisingly effective but Bargnani, at this point, should have too many moves for Pachulia to deal with.

Still, all told, I think the Hawks, with Raptor Killer Bibby at the helm, will likely run us off the floor again. Even if Chris and Andrea score 30 a piece, there’s no way they can make up the mismatch that is Atlanta’s backcourt over ours.

Hawks by 15.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Game Previews, Toronto Raptors.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.