Another tough loss last night. How many times have I written that this year? Probably a lot more to come, too. As usual, I didn’t expect a victory, but at least the Raptors stayed in it. Had a chance at the end, too!

But man… Kapono had two great looks from downtown when the Raptors were down two with a minute left. You just can’t ask for more than that. Well, you can ask for them to go down, but they didn’t and the Raps were forced to foul and couldn’t climb out of the two-possession hole.

I’m glad they fought back from the 13-point hole they were in, at least, although the Warriors are of course infamous for letting teams back in the game. For once, the Raptors’ rebounding wasn’t awful (although they did give up a couple of late offensive boards that hurt) but once again, the perimeter defense was atrocious. Way too many open looks for the Warriors from downtown. I know the Raps under Triano like the “pack the paint” and all that, but don’t you have to adjust your defense a little for the opposition? When the Warriors bust out a lineup of Ronny Turiaf and four shooting guards, chances are, they ain’t pounding it inside, and honestly, having Ronny Turiaf go one on one against Chris Bosh from 8 feet is better in my mind than a wide open Steven Jackson or Marco Belinelli three ball. But, what the hell do I know.

I do know that not having Jermaine O’Neal for most of the game hurt. Even when he was in there you could tell the flu was affecting him - he was moving in slow-motion and shot 1-4 before sitting for good in the second quarter. But with a healthy O’Neal, there’s no way the Warriors can run that 4-guard lineup. Well, actually, they probably still would, but O’Neal and Bosh would have been able to dominate it on the other end. Andrea “Colangelo’s Bane” Bargnani wasn’t terrible in replacing O’Neal (7 points and 6 boards) but he’s just not the inside presence JO is. Alas, the Warriors used a 32-point second quarter to take the lead and the Raps would never take it back.

So, it’s 12-19 and with a likely home loss to Denver tomorrow night, we’re looking at 12-20 heading into 2009. That’s not good folks. I really don’t see the Raps climbing out of it any time soon; yes there have been good signs, but that’s not enough any more. The good signs need to start translating into wins.

Do you realize that in the 2008 calendar year, including playoffs, the Raptors have gone 37-49? 12 games under .500. Wow. That’s brutal for a team that was supposed to be improving (they were 53-36, including playoffs, in the 2007 calendar year). I mean they need to go 29-22 just to get back to .500 by the end of the season. That means a couple winning streaks and no more stretches of three losses in a row. And what signs have pointed to the Raptors being able to do that?

Even with a trade or two, then you’ve got your adjustment period, and chemistry realigning, and by the time that’s done, well… eventually it all just becomes too little, too late, you know?

Anything is possible - after all, no one expected the 06-07 team to go 34-17 once the calendar turned - but the chances of such a run seem less and less likely every day, regardless of any sort of trade or change. Yeah, the schedule eases up a bit; there are no more Pacific trips (although there’s still two Texas road games to come) and the Raps have 28 home games left against 23 road games, but the Raptors haven’t exactly been stellar at home (5-8), have they? No, it’s still a very tough road to travel if the Raps want to make the playoffs, and all the signs so far indicate they won’t be able to do it.

You know, it’s hard to get too upset about a loss to a good team like the Trail Blazers. They’re stacked, and in fact, I feel like they’re better than their record - even though it’s pretty good at 19-12 after beating the Raptors.

Unfortunately, it is frustrating, because once again, the Raps had a big lead - 11 points before a miracle three a the halftime buzzer by Travis Outlaw cut it to eight. It’s also frustrating to think that, heading into the season, our expectations were set high enough to make us think we were in the same class as the Blazers.

But, in the past two months reality has set in and we’ve come to expect that the Raptors don’t have much of a chance against good teams, because, well, they’re not a good team themselves. And although you can clearly say there’ve been improvements - three weeks ago the Raptors were getting blown out of games completely, now at least they’re in them in the first half - it’s not enough to get them back into the race.

So we’re stuck with another middling team in another mediocre season. In other words, it’s hard to get excited or upset about anything at all - they only beat teams worse than them and never beat teams better than them, so where’s the drama?

Of course, we all know the most frustrating thing about the loss was seeing Brandon Roy dominate the fourth quarter like that. 18 points, and most of them very difficult jump shots, the kind of “give me the ball and let me create something from nothing” mindset that none of the Raptors have. And he could have been a Raptor. Sigh. That one play, where he drove left, stumbled, lost the ball, got on his feet, recovered it, and hit a fade-away? No one on the Raptors even has the balls to take that shot. Sigh. That one mistake is haunting us every time we play the Blazers.

(A bit of a tradition for me is watching Lord of the Rings; you know how Boromir and the men of Gondor call the one ring “Isildur’s Bane?” I think I’m going to start calling Bargnani “Colangelo’s Bane.”)

Actually Andrea had his best game in recent memory last night. Slump buster? I’m not holding my breath, but at least he hit some jump shots.

Oh well. The Raps roll into San Fran tonight to take on the Warriors and they’ve got a chance to finish up 3-3 on the trip. That’d be nice since I expected a 1-5 trip. Of course, I expected that “1″ to be against the “Thunder” and losing to them still hurts. A lot. They could have already guaranteed a 3-3 trip by beating the worst team in the league. Alas.

However, I don’t really think 3-3 is going to happen. I’m sure you’ve all noticed, Golden State is virtually impossible to defend - they just run up and shoot. Given the Raptors are one of the worst transition defensive teams I’ve every actually seen play professional basketball, that can be trouble. I mean on most nights you can be assured the Warriors won’t hit a high enough percentage to win, but they’ll get enough layups and open looks tonight to outscore the Raptors.

And even if they don’t shoot that well, the Raptors’ offense isn’t good enough to keep up. I know Golden State is a terrible defensive team but if you’ve seen the Raptors struggle to even get open shots, let alone hit them, then you have to fear that that will continue tonight.

Of course, it is completely possible the Warriors will stink. You never know with this Golden State team. But I don’t believe the Raps have it in them to really step up, and play aggressively enough to take the Warriors out of what they want to do. I just think Golden State will simply run them off the floor and will take it by 19.

Now, one last thing, it’s been brought to my attention in the comments that there will be a protest at Rogers headquarters regarding the TSN2 issue tomorrow, December 30. Now, it’s planned to last all day, which seems a little extreme in this weather, but if you can make it down there and support the guys who’ve put it together, that would be great. Anything to bring some sort of attention to this ridiculous impasse.

I do hope that there is a future protest planned for those morons at MLSE since this is more their fault than anyone else’s (what team signs a television contract where the games are shown on a station that’s not available on cable in their home market?).

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow goes well for these guys, they get some support and maybe some attention. It’s probably a good time to do it, you know this is usually a pretty slow news week so a station like CityTV would likely be able to send a camera crew over. Anything to get some attention and pressure on the parties involved can only help.

Here’s the details:
Tuesday December 30th, 2008
Rogers Building
333 Bloor St. East, Toronto
8 am to 5 pm

There’s a dedicated Facebook group and if you need any more info, you can email Drew at spuddaz@yahoo.com. Good luck to everyone heading down there.

Well, I survived the first heart-stopper if the year! Whew. I could have used another game or two to ease into things, you know?

All in all, a very exciting game from start to finish last night, marred only by some awful officiating in the second half. The stats won’t reflect how many calls the Warriors had to their way since the Raps shot so many free throws in OT, but for a while there, I was wondering if we were ever gonna have another whistle go our way.

Really, it should have been an easier win than that. The Raps let up too much in the second - Settling for jumpers and not being aggressive. The Warriors of course climbed right out of a 12-point hole and stuck around the whole way.

It wasn’t until the final minutes that the Raps showed that aggression again. Chris Bosh, who settled for a number of awkward fallaways against those defensive terrors Ronny Turiaf and Andreas Biedrins, finally realized they couldn’t guard him, and got himself to the line a couple times before blowing by Biedrins for the go-ahead dunk.

Jeemaine O’Neal had an uninspiring night, but made a sensational block on Corey Naggette in the final seconds… A block that went right to Al Harrington for a triple. Sigh. But Bosh tied it at the line again and it was off to OT.

And then it was all Raptors.

I can’t stress how impressive the Raptors D was at the end of regulation and in OT. They pressured Stephen Jackson, they hustled on their rotations, they sprinted to the ball. They forced the Warriors into several long jumpers and managed to corral the boards.

It sure wasn’t pretty earlier; the Raps were once again ourebounded and they gave up a lot of open shots. Still, they buckled down when it mattered and got the W.

Bosh filled the stat sheet once again, although he settled for a few too many jumpers in my mind. He also played 42 minutes so we’ll see how that affects him tonight.

O’Neal didn’t show much in his home debut, outside of 3 blocks, with only 5 points and 6 boards. But the blocks were good to see, especially an early one that sent him to the floor - where he popped back up, finger wagging.

Jose Calderon finished with 16 and 13, but I have to say, I wish he were a little more aggressive. Be needs to look for his shot a little more to keep the defense honest.

Jamario Moon went a solid 4-5 from the field; He hit a couple of long Js that I’d rather he didn’t take, but hey, you take what you can get I guess. Unfortunately “what you can get” apparently doesn’t include rebounds. That’s right, a big goose-egg for Apollo 33 on the glass, giving him a 0.5 average through two games.

Anthony Parker, as usual, expended a ton of energy on D, but he also got into it on offense with 23 points. He grabbed 5 boards and 4 steals as well. I can’t say enough good things about Parker, he’s been a rock since he’s been here.

As for the bench, the big story, of course, was Andrea Bargnani. 19 points (8-10), 5 boards, 3 blocks. Is he back on track? Too soon to tell but a hell of a Halloween performance. Again, all good shots, most around the basket, and his two three point attempts were in rhythm - and his shot looked a million times smoother than last year. Very nice to see.

Kapono didn’t get as many chances as he did the other night, but no knock on him - Parker was the guy providing the wing scoring tonight. Graham also got some burn and looked decent again, showing good hustle - although Maggette beat him to one loose ball that Graham should have been on the floor for. You can bet Sam Mitchell didn’t miss that one.

Ukic only got 10 minutes, mostly due to matchup problems with Golden State’s all-swingman lineup. Still, he had 2 assists and 2 rebounds and didn’t turn the ball over, so no complaints.

All in all, a tough win that shouldn’t have been so tough, but a win none the less.

Toronto Raptors

One of the most dysfunctional franchises in recent NBA history comes to town tonight in the form of the Golden State Warriors.

You might remember Golden State as the team that ran the #1-seeded Dallas Mavericks off the court in the 2007 playoffs. But don’t equate one big upset with success; after all, this was a team that hadn’t made the playoffs for 12 years before that and didn’t make it last year (although I’ll note that’s more due to the West’s strong upper tier; the Warriors did win 48 games). And three of the key players from that 06-07 team aren’t there anymore - Jason Richardson, Baron Davis, and Matt Barnes are all gone.

Monta Ellis was also on that team, and he’s out for 30 games thanks to his moped joyride, which not only tore some ankle ligaments but also apparently fractured the front office. Al Harrington’s a four-position-player and a key contributor over the past two years, but he’s asked to be traded.

Basically, their entire fortunes rest on Stephen Jackson.

Now, we all know all about Stephen Jackson, his role in the brawl in Detroit, the strip club incident, etc. But you can’t forget, the guy is an absolute offensive force. He can score from anywhere, in a variety of ways. Given the injury to Ellis and the departure of Davis, they even have him initiating the offense this year. He might be crazy, but the guy can play.

Their off-season addition was Corey Maggette, who is also a great offensive player. The two of them fit perfectly in coach Don Nelson’s aggressive, attacking offensive style, as does Harrington. But has Harrington checked out? He had 13/7 in 42 minutes in Wednesday’s opener. (Wouldn’t it be great to see him on the Raptors? If only we had the players and cash to make a trade work!)

I’ve complained about the Raptors’ depth, but the Warriors may be even more shorthanded. They played 8 guys the other night - and CJ Watson only played 23 seconds so it was really only 7 - and Jackson played all 48. Maggette logged 39. Their bench is Ronny Turiaf and Kelenna Azubuike. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that, after that game and a cross-country trip, they’re gonna need something from Marcus Williams and Marco Bellinelli tonight, and they don’t exactly scare me. I have to give Toronto’s short bench the advantage here.

Still, they are a very athletic team and that could be a problem for the Raps. Other than 7-foot center Andris Biedrins, they aren’t big - but they’re strong and fast. Maggette and Jackson are both physical and both can hit the glass. They could give the Raps all kinds of problems. And they do get off to good starts, a contrast to the Raptors who traditionally suck in the first quarter. Don’t be surprised if the score is 35-24 for Golden State after one.

The matchup of Harrington on Bosh is a tough one for Bosh; Harrington is quick enough to give Bosh problems on both ends of the floor. If Bosh can mix things up as he did on Wednesday and get Harrington in some foul trouble, that’ll be a huge plus.

I give the Raps a big advantage in the center department, as O’Neal is light years ahead of Biedrins, and the point guard department, as Calderon can take anyone the Warriors have off the dribble.

The swingman spots obviously favour Golden State in a big way. The Raptors will need to limit transition opportunities for Golden State, meaning Bosh and O’Neal need to get some offensive boards and the guards need to be hustling back on every play. And Parker, Moon and Kapono need to funnel Jackson and Maggette to our big men, preferably on the baseline where the passing lanes are shortened.

A half-court game favours the Raptors. If they can keep the tempo down and let Calderon run the show, and if the rebounding is there, the Raps should take this one by 12.