Look out, NBA, the Raptors are rolling! Two in a row, baby!! It’s on!

In all seriousness, while last night’s win wasn’t an earth-shattering victory, it was a good win - the Raptors’ first against a quality opponent (read: +.500) all year. No, I’m not kidding.

What’s most impressive is that the Raps used the third quarter to make thier run - while I have no statistical evidence to back this up, my observations have led me to infer that good teams makebruns in the third - and that they withstood the Hawks’ inevitable fourth-quarter run.

Now I will grant the Raps caught a bit of a break when, down three with 20 seconds to go, Atlanta’s Marvin Williams froced an awkward drive instead of shooting a triple. Two Jason Kapono free throws later, it was over.

Speaking of Kapono, was it just me or was J-killah shooting jumpers coming off screens last night? Finally! He even made something happen on one of his out of control drives, drawing the D and kicking to Bosh for the lay-in.

Bosh, of course, was magnificent again. 30-10, plus seven assists? I really have no more words of praise to offer the guy, he’s just been too good to describe.

It’s a damn good thing the Raptors closed this one out and got a couple wins before heading west. I don’t think they’ll win one out there, but at least this gives them some confidence. Had they gone out on a 0-4 skid that really would gave been too huge a hole to climb out of.

But with two wins and the promise of Jermaine O’Neal coming back, hopefully spirits are high and this team is starting to feel good about itself. And when teams are feeling that confidence, anything can happen - maybe even a win out west.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Game Wrap-ups, 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.