<div align="center"> <font size=""7"">Vs. </font> <font size=""5"">Eye Candy: Elsa Benitez</font> </div> I'm too lazy to do the rest but I kept all the essentials . Discuss!
42-40 Raptors at halftime. Bosh leads all scorers with 15 points. And for once, Toronto is outrebounding the opponent.
What a terrible first half, both these teams are living up to the eastern conference reputation. I'm absolutely horrified at how we are playing right now. The ball movement we once had in our offense is completely gone. We're dependant on our guards to draw and kick while the rest of the team sits on the perimeter and bosh tries to rebound over three guys. Dixon and Ford seem to think they are entitled to taking crappy shots whenever they want. Bosh could have 25 points by now if they would just give him the freaking ball. The fact that we go Parker / Dixon / Graham and then Peterson in our rotation is disturbing. I would have absolute confidence in Mopete to play well if he could at least consistently get 15 minutes a game. Instead we waste our time with a guy who is as dumb as bricks and Mike James Jr.
Man, the wheels just fell off in the second half. I hope this isn't the beginnings of a long losing streak. I could see us losing to both Orlando and Denver...
Ugly game for the Raptors. The Knicks shut us down for good, they handled Bosh very nicely even though some calls were arguable. We were out of control and the turnovers really costed us the game.
I totally missed this game, but it looks like I was lucky. When you really look at it, we haven't played well since the ASG. We broke our slump against some crap teams and with TJ playing well for 3 games, but we haven't reached that level we were before the break. Teams have made adjustments.
<div class="quote_poster">Chutney Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">I totally missed this game, but it looks like I was lucky. When you really look at it, we haven't played well since the ASG. We broke our slump against some crap teams and with TJ playing well for 3 games, but we haven't reached that level we were before the break. Teams have made adjustments.</div> Yes you were very lucky, this was one of the most frustrating games to watch of the season.
After a horrible collapse in Toronto and against the Hornets I knew the Knicks weren't going to lose again.
<div class="quote_poster">dunksworth Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">I missed the game. What was the deal with Parker? Is he still bothered by the ankle?</div> Yes he was still having problems. He basically couldn't push off it at all. You could tell because his jumper was very off. I have no idea why we decided to play him this game, we should be thinking long term instead of one game against the knicks.
Sorry for the double post but I'm just going to bring this one up in any case. One thing I think was lost in the fold this game is Bosh's defense was terrible. If you watched closely most of the time Bosh floats around the key and doesn't pick up a man. This is becoming a trend: Petro, Paterson, Howard, Frye, and Varejao all come out operating at a high degree of efficiency. Now Bosh isn't the only one who deserves blame but his defense is by far the worst. He played better defense in his rookie year than he does right now. Bargnani puts out a better effort on that end of the floor than he does and he's a rookie coming from Europe!
Its hard to pin-point one player to blame. It was a total bad team effort against the knicks. Raps came out in the third quarter flat. I would personally blame TJ FORD more than Bosh. We could have used Calderon in this game. Ap will be ready for orlando especially after 2days rest. Hopefully calderon will be back for friday game or next week in Boston...
Too many mistakes on offense side and defense side. It seems all the hustle players in the league tend to kill us on the glass. First Anderson Varejo, now Renaldo Balkman. We couldn't stop the Knicks even with Eddy Curry ON THE BENCH. Stephon was on fire throughout the game. Also Channing Frye had a great game. Offensively, it was very frustrating. The turnovers really killed the Raps which led to 16 fast break points, compared to our 2 fast break points. Raptors had 19 turnovers. We were also destroyed in the paint, being outscored 46-34. The 3rd quarter was the worst. The game just got away from them. The Raptors were leading by 2 at the half and by the end of the 3rd we were down by 20. Outscored 35-13.
I've picked on Bosh's defense before and I thought that blowout loss to Washington was the worst example of it. He was guarding Antawn Jamison for most of the game and was basically drifting away from the basket and doubling random guards for some reason. I can't even remember the amount of points Jamison scored by making a simply cut to an area that Bosh should've been covering, but it was a lot.
It was just a really sloppy a game as whole. No one seemed to know what they were supposed to to do, they were just running around. It seems like this team has multiple personalities and it changes from game to game. Honestly this team has not been impressive at all since the all-star game.
More: No one on the Raptors had a good night IMO. I don't think it was a good idea to play AP. He didn't play that much, he should just rest for a few more games, so that he is %100. Calderon was missed a lot in this game. He gives a pace of the game when TJ isn't playing too well. I don't trust Derrick Martin that much. I rather have him on the bench, preaching to everyone. Teams have made adjustments, like Chutney said. We're now on the "radar." Other teams are defending Bosh differently by putting a smaller defender on him and double-teaming. This little skid can turn into a losing streak, that can really hurt the Raps if they're going for 3rd spot. The next two games are against the Magic and the Bulls. Now, if we played like we did the past 2 games, we'll lose against Magic. Also the Bulls have been known to kill us in games. I think we were on a 15 game losing streak against them before we beat them earlier in the season.
