Back from the west coast, but still playing western teams, Toronto hosts the Denver tonight, a chance for the Raptors to avenge that embarrassing loss the Nuggets handed them almost a month ago. You may remember that one… it cost Sam Mitchell his job.

With most teams, especially pro basketball teams where pride and respect is valued very highly, you can count on them to come out fired up and intense and well-prepared to avenge such a loss. Unfortunately, the Raptors are the most mentally weak team I’ve ever seen - they’ve responded incredibly poorly in every “pride” game they’ve played this year. (Examples - after The Worst Loss in Raptors History to Vince and the Nets, they didn’t bother to show up against Boston in the next game and got booed off the home court. After getting Mitchell fired in Denver, they didn’t bother to show up in Utah (even with Carlos Boozer sidelined). After losing to a stunning Steve Blake 3, the got blown out in Cleveland. And on and on…)

Aside from that aspect of it, Denver clearly proved that they are a tough matchup for the Raptors. Like the Warriors, the like to push and shoot - but they’ve got more muscle and an experienced point guard to guide them when in the halfcourt. They’re aggressive and intimidating, things the Raptors don’t respond well too - especially if Jermaine O’Neal doesn’t play (he’s still suffering from the flu and an apparent knee bruise he suffered the other night).

I just don’t see how the Raptors can compete with the Nuggets, short of several Nuggets having bad games. It’ll be another Raptors loss, though hopefully, not a blowout… let’s say Denver by 10.

Meanwhile, it seems the protest went down at Rogers yesterday, about 10 Raps fans strong. Disappointing turnout, but not surprising considering that it was very cold, and it was a workday for most. Still, they got some coverage in the Globe and Mail and that can only be a good thing.

I still don’t fully understand why they’re protesting Rogers and not MLSE, but hopefully they’ll get around to the real villains.

I really don’t see what Rogers has done wrong here. I think it’s because people just don’t like Rogers as a company; after all, they’ve had a bad rep for years thanks to gouging people for cable fees, forcing people to take “packages” of 27 channels just to get the one they want, exorbitant cell phone plans and fees, long-term contracts, Internet bandwidth throttling, and so on… not to mention terrible customer service and incredibly annoying and pervasive ads… so it’s easy to hate them. I get that.

But how are they to blame for this mess? What obligation are they under to carry EVERY channel, especially ANOTHER all-around sports channel when they already carry three (plus about a dozen other specialized sports channels)? It wasn’t their decision to air the games on this station!

That decision belongs to TSN and they’re to blame for that. If they are The Sports Network and they want to bring sports, especially sports with a Canadian angle, to Canadians, then they should be showing Canada’s one and only NBA team on its main network.

But still, they paid their money, probably a lot, for the rights to air them on whatever channel they wanted - that’s their right for the money they paid. That’s the way such a transaction is supposed to work.

The folks really to blame are the ones that enabled it in the first place, the greedy bloodsuckers at MLSE. It’s pretty clear now that what happened is TSN said “we’llback up the money truck and you let us put the games on the channels we want,” and MLSE, seeing only the dollar signs, decided it didn’t matter that Raptors fans wouldn’t be able to watch. I mean, fans don’t matter, only the bottom line, right? So what if TSN only paid that cash to try and force Rogers to pick up their ridiculously excessive and unnecessary channel? What do we care where the games air, we got paid!

At the very least MLSE should have included some clause in the contract that said “If Rogers doesn’t have TSN2 by X date then the games get moved to TSN, or we can air the games on RapsTV,” or something to that effect. Since they did nothing like that, and are allowing this to happen, means they just didn’t care enough about the fans, and only cared about the money.

So at this point, honestly, I don’t want Rogers to pick up TSN2. Yes, I want to see the games - and of course I’ll be happy if they do end up picking it up (and even happier if they issue a press release that says “we’re sorry it took so long, but it’s clear The Raptors don’t care about their fans, so someone had to take the bullet”) - but I really feel like Rogers is being unfairly blamed here for something they had no part in. They are the ones being bullied here, and that’s not right, is it? OK, maybe turnaround is fair play - after all, they’ve been bullying customers with their cable monopoly for over 20 years - but two wrongs don’t make a right. They shouldn’t have to be forced into paying for something they don’t want.

And quite frankly, I don’t want another sports channel! I’ve got enough sports channels and besides, you know TSN isn’t asking for chump change from Rogers here (otherwise the deal would already be done) - so how do you think Rogers is gonna pay for it? By raising cable fees! No thanks, I pay them enough.

Finally, I particularly don’t want to have Raptors games on yet another channel. I mean, 82 games spread across five channels… are you kidding me? Ideally every single game should be on one channel, shouldn’t it? I know that won’t happen, but I don’t think two is unreasonable - majority on The Score (being the only network that cares about ball) with the Sunday afternoon games on CBC (maybe try and start a tradition there, and CBC is in the most homes and lots of people sitting around on Sunday afternoons might stop in to check it out).

But five is too much. Enough is enough. The madness must end. I think we can all agree this season is lost regardless, so you know what, TSN2, you can have your games and I hope at the next meeting Rogers extends a big middle Raptor claw at you and says “you paid for nothing, ‘cause you ain’t gettin’ on Rogers.”

And maybe by the time next season’s negotiations roll around, MLSE will have smartened up enough to not let something like this happen again and will get the games on a smaller number of channels.

In the meantime, enjoy your dwindling viewership and ad revenue, you greedy motherfuckers. You deserve it.

Raptors in Denver for the kickoff of what I’m prepared to call “The December Death March.” Not only did they just play the Lakers, but now it’s Denver (12-6, 11-3 since the trade), then Utah (11-7 and getting healthy), Portland at home (12-6), and the LeBrons (14-3, undefeated at home) in Cleveland.

You’d think it’d let up after that, but then it’s the TJ Ford reunion show, and two games against Vince and Little Larry Frank - with a game against New Orleans Sandwiched in between.

At least it quiets down after that, right? Oh, wait. It’s a Dallas at home, followed by a six-game Western trip. And then Denver at home on New Year’s Eve.

Given the Raptors’ inability to beat good teams, well, let’s see… they can beat Seattle, I know that much, and probably the Clippers… they should beat Indy and split with New Jersey, right? Right. Well, so that’s four wins, which makes it a 4-12 month.

Um… yeah… that, um, well, that’s not very good, is it?

Now, obviously, the Raptors can and likely will beat some of those “better” opponents. But since you can say that about any team, you know they can lose to some of those “lesser” opponents. I’d lay money on a 7-9 month which, after the 8-8 December, leaves the Raptors at 15-17 entering the New Year.

Is that good enough? Well, given how many other teams in the east are also “middling” - The Raptors are one of nine teams within 4 games of .500 - that’s probably good enough to leave them in the top eight of the conference.

Of course, January won’t be much easier for the Raps - they play Houston, Orlando, Boston twice, Chicago twice, Atlanta, Detroit and Phoenix before the 23rd.

And there’s the problem. The Raptors struggle so much to get wins, that there simply isn’t any easy stretch in which they can make up any ground until the end of March - when they play their only homestand longer than three games, hosting Charlotte, the Clips, the Bucks, Seattle, and Chicago - and it may be too late by then. They also struggle so much to score that the team never gets to rest anyone and by that time, the starters might be dead on their feet. And of course, as I’ve mentioned before, the Sam Mitchell Raptors have proven themselves incapable of going on winning streaks, so add it all up and, well, as I’ve said before, I don’t think the playoffs are a certainty with this team. Winning a round certainly isn’t going to happen.

I just don’t have a lot of confidence in this roster, as you can tell, to win many games.

As for tonight, well, look for more of Chris Bosh getting pushed around by Chris Anderson, Nene and Kenyon Martin if Jermaine O’Neal doesn’t come back. Heck, even if he does, he’ll undoubtedly be rusty. Chauncey Billups owned us in Detroit, no doubt he’ll own us here.

If Carmelo Anthony plays - he’s nursing a sore elbow - he’s got a size and strength advantage over Moon, Graham, Kapono, Parker… pretty much anyone we can throw at him. Hopefully he’ll be less than 100% or have one of those games where he seems to float around half trying, that were so frequent in his early career.

Melo had a great season last year - his scoring was down from the year before but all his other numbers were up. He averaged 25 points and 7.5 boards, while shooting 49% and 35% from three. It looked to me like he was taking the next step.

This year, even though they’re a better team, and he’s got a true point guard for the first time since, um, ever… his scoring is down below 20 and he’s shooting under 40%. (Still rebounding, though - up to 8.4). Is it early season woes and post-trade chemistry? Is the elbow injury to blame? Or is he taking a step back?

Maybe it’s the hair! I used to think that womens haircut of his was one of the worst do’s I’d ever seen. It got so long last year I started to believe it was some sort of bizarre WNBA cross-promotion, that David Stern was paying him millions to grow it long enough to join the sisters league and make it relevant. But now he’s coiffed like a man and he can’t shoot the rock (and the WNBA is still irrelevant) so maybe he needs to grow it back.

I guess what has to be frightening to the other Western conference teams is that, if they’re 11-3 since the trade and Melo is struggling, how good will they be when he and Chauncey get on track together? Let’s just hope it doesn’t start tonight.

Thankfully for the Raps, Denver is a little thin on the bench, just like we are. Of course, they start four NBA-quality starters, while we start two, but hey. And while their bench isn’t much, they’ve do have those hustle guys - Anderson and Renaldo Balkman, who killed the Raptors in New York last year - that we can’t seem to find.

So even though they’re not “deeper” than us necessarily, what they do have is NBA veterans who know their roles. We have guys who shouldn’t even be on an NBA roster.

Anyway. Depth or no depth, this team is too fast and too physical for the Raptors to play with. Jermaine O’Neal would help, but not enough. This won’t be as bad as the last time the Raps flew to Denver - a 30-point loss - but it won’t be pretty either. Nuggets by 16.