Toronto vs. Memphis When: Friday October 30th, 2009 @ 8:00PM Where: the FedExForum in Memphis, Tennessee TV/Radio: TSN2, FAN590 STARTING LINEUPS Jose Calderon - DeMar DeRozan - Hedo Turkoglu - Chris Bosh - Andrea Bargnani Michael Conley Jr. - Ovinton J'Anthony Mayo - Rudolph Gay - Zachariah Randolph - Marcus Gasol KEY MATCHUP Andrea Bargnani vs. Marc Gasol Gasol racked up 21 points and 15 boards in Memphis' season opener. And while that seems impressive, coach Lionel Hollins' comments are far more revealing: "It's not all about scoring. He (Gasol) didn't guard anybody, he didn't block any shots." That bodes well for a Raptors squad that exploited Cleveland's slow, defensively-incompetent frontcourt for a surprising victory. Toronto needs Bargnani to pick up where he left off on Wednesday, making assertive moves with the ball and daring opposing centers to venture out of the paint. He also needs to build off his strong defensive performance against Shaq, by fronting Gasol early and preventing him from getting position down low.
Nice game thread Chuts. What's with the full names? No Christopher Wesson Bosh? The Grizzlies have no depth and if we keep the game tight we can eventually wear them out. Why they drafted Thabeet when they had Gasol I have no idea.
lol, I decided to write out Mayo's full name for some reason (Ovinton J'Anthony > OJ), and ended up extending the trend for the rest of their starters.
the grizzlies have no shot blocking outside of thabeet who i suspect wont get more than 10 minutes so the raptors need to attack, particularly the guards. i think derozan might get 15 points tonight. who's the blonde in the game thread btw?
Joanna Krupa. Iverson is close to returning to the lineup, but he'll sit out tonight's game. That definitely plays in our favour. Memphis' guards didn't play particularly well against Detroit.
It's so ridiculously empty. Amazing. The Raps played very poorly to start this game, until the subs came in. I liked that little run they made to close the quarter.
bargnani and caledron suck tonight. the thing i notice about bargnani is that when his jumper isnt falling, the rest of his game regresses, particularly his rebounding. and bosh is totally forcing it, he needs to include his teammates or else their games suffer. i would also like to see amir play more especially against the quicker bigs like carrol.
derozan is playing angry, i like it. and on a completely different note- antoine wright is my favourite raptor- the guy totally brings it defensively.
caledron simply cannot guard in this league. he attributed last year's poor defense to his hamstring but whats his excuse this year? and he cant even hit his jump shots so he's a complete liability out there on nights like tonight. turk needs the ball more in his hands. he plays off the ball way too much. also, the trio of derozan, beli and wright were impressive- i would like them to get more minutes and see triano abandon the idiotic notion of playing jack and caledron together. why? oj mayo hit two big shots over jack and caledron on isolation. plus, neither caledron or jack play off the ball well.
Well, we've seen this team's defensive best and worst in two consecutive games. Against Cleveland, they played very good man D and rotated when they needed to. Tonight the perimeter D was much worse and players weren't following cuts. And the result was we could string 2-3 defensive stops together in a row. The defensive rebounding was absolutely brutal. I was tempted to blame Bargnani after the first half, but this one was on everybody. A lot of different players guarded Gasol/Randolph, and they grabbed boards over all of them. Bosh's rebounding numbers look great, but he let Randolph/Gasol jump in for second chances far too often. Nesterovic allowed cutters to grab the ball too.
marc gasol manhandled the entire raps frontline and randolph just molested them- i actually thought they were two best grizzly players
The annoying thing is that Bargs played pretty good man D on Gasol. He put him in early foul trouble and except for a couple possessions, did a good job at denying him position and making him pass out. I wish we could find out how many of his points he scored off of rebounds and second chances. We just bailed him out of a insignificant performance with our shit rebounding.
Overall a bad game for the team, I was pretty impressed with Derozan, he's gonna be good. I thought Bargs came out in the 3rd with a lot of intensity and I thought he was gonna turn it around but...it didn't, can't say why though, I didn't get to watch the 4th quarter.
thats when they imploded. they actually had a 88-80 lead and then bosh game into the game and for some reason the grizzlies made their run to close the game.