Forgive me, but I am fighting a cold, and sorry AltRaps, I had to kick it off from my living room (none of those decorative books lining my walls).
- Bosh/O’Neal/Bargnani to outplay Brand/Dalembert/Evans
- How many times Rautins mentions Dalembert, and what he says when he does mention him
- The Raptor wings play tough defense on Iguadala, Speights and Young
- Calderon to turn Miller into a jump shooter
- Moon TO toke it to the rack more then he pops jumpers
- For Kapono to be used correctly
- Bosh to set the offensive tone by driving and not shooting his jumper
- If Joey Graham sees the floor, I want to him to pretend he’s a professional basketball player
- Mitchell to call a timeout to squash a potential run, not when the run has already been made
- See more from the raptors then what I saw in the pre-season
Tune in next time when I list my Top 10 things I want to see Colangelo dress up as for Halloween.
15 Raps
Holy shit man..you are one brave mofo for showing your face on the internet. Especially with a cold.
that’s how i do ;)
Make some excellent points, but please don’t eat my children.
i will if moon takes more then 4 bad jumpers during the game…i’ll eat everyone’s children…
Great stuff Raps Fan! The video is a nice touch.
I’d like to see:
(1) Jose spending more time on the ball and making more decisions for everyone
(2) Bosh and O’Neal be aggressive offensively for longer periods.
(3) More cohesion in general, and on both ends. The squad looked more like a bunch of individuals rather than a team in some of those preseason games.
(4) Less touches for the wings, less of them trying to make plays by themselves. I’d like to see them play off the main trio more often than they did in preseason.
(5) Bosh vs Brand … statement game for Bosh. Prove he’s the better power forward.
(6) Phily are a good rebounding team, especially on the offensive end. I think they were the best offensive rebounding team in the league last season, and with Brand joining them they have another weapon on the glass. I’d like to see the Raptors be competitive on the boards and try to hold Phily to one shot.
(7) I’d like to see how well they defend the screen and roll with Miller/Brand and also Iggy off the bounce.
O’Neal took a beating here at #9:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/081028
ouch.
Sam Mitchell said: “What we may lack athletically, I think we have a chance to make it up basketball-wise.”
I will be watching to see if this edition of the Raptors have the bball IQ to play as a “basketball-wise” team. I expect Jose to distribute the ball in such a way that the other 4 players will meet the challenge and step up their game, and play in an intelligent fashion.
If any of the Raptor players revert to dumb bball, bench them for the season, or send them to the D-league to scare the sh!t outta the others.
Physical effort must be matched with mental effort … or else …!!!!
The only thing I’d like to see from the Raptors on Wednesday night, in Game 1 [@ Phi], is a W.
Do THAT … and, it gets the season off to a solid start.
Get kicked, on the other hand …
1.bargs,jamario and good joey need to grow some nuts and go to the hole.
2.bosh and jo need to learn ho to coexsist down low and still find space to manuever and compliment one another.
3.sam needed to have magically mystically been abducted by aliens and given a brain transplant and we hope its a better coaching brain or were doomed.
4.roko and will to play smart turnover free backup pg to get jose a breather.
5.am i the only one somewhat fearful of the injury jose suffered in the summer rearing its ugly head?
6.can sam and his newly aquired brain have designed 3 set plays soley drawn up to free up our #1 weapon kapono from 3 pt land…because if not kapono is as useless as tits on a bull.
7….AND YES,GATORADE BLISS HANDED OUT AT HALFTIME IN A TJ FREE ZONE TO AN ACCOMPANIED BIG ASS SMILE ON MY FACE.
…and we win…GO RAPS.
In other words, you want to see the best-case-scenario of the Toronto Raptors (ie: the team you will never see)
at this point, i would take any sort of win, a blowout, scrappy, grind, luck..anything.
andiamo: i don’t think jo/bosh need to exist down load. o’neal prefers to play in the paint, and bosh likes to play outside-in. there is more then enough room for the two of them, considering no one will be taking it to the rack, or slashing through the lane on a consistent basis.
Jamario Moon captured the imagination and attention of Raptor fans with his ability to TAKE THE BALL TO THE RACK and his BLOCKING ABILITY. That was last season at the beginning. Then Jamario started trying to expand his game by trying out the jump shot, which was a terrible idea. He got so liberal with his distance shooting that he ended up taking more 3-point attempts than KAPONO (the most efficient 3PT shooter in the league). Therefore ANY jumper Jamario takes is a bad one considering Kapono shoots 50%
O’Neal is an inefficient Low-Post scorer.
Bosh is an inefficient Perimeter scorer.
O’Neal & Bosh are both more effective when allowed/made to operate in the mid-range area, where they can face up, shoot their J’s, get their teammates involved, or get to the hoop off a single bounce.
It says here that O’Neal and Bosh do not have the type of individual games which are going to compliment one another when the Raptors are winning games this season.
Instead, what will be one of the ‘Keys to Success’ for this year’s team is whether or not Andrea Bargnani can in fact ‘get his’, in conjunction with whichever one of CB4 or JO is in the better match-up situation for that specific game, given who the opponent is.
From a points production standpoint, per game, look to see if the fllowing trends emerge, over the course of this season:
O’Neal [+] x Bosh [+] x Bargnani [+] = W
O’Neal [+] x Bosh [+] x Bargnani [-] = L
O’Neal [+] x Bosh [-] x Bargnani [+] = W
O’Neal [+] x Bosh [-] x Bargnani [-] = L
O’Neal [-] x Bosh [+] x Bargnani [+] = W
O’Neal [-] x Bosh [+] x Bargnani [-] = L
O’Neal [-] x Bosh [-] x Bargnani [+] = L
O’Neal [-] x Bosh [-] x Bargnani [-] = L
so what you’re saying is that 2 of the 3 need to score positively for a raptor win…makes sense. i would imagine any positive contribution from bargnani would go a long way to securing wins too.
You had me at verbal fellatio.
Great job man.