So we all agree that we need to make a serious move or two if we want to do anything significant this season and Bryan Colangelo agrees. Apparently Colangelo offered his once prized signing Jason Kapono to the Nuggets for J.R Smith but the Nuggets wisely declined. So there you have it, Colangelo does admit that he makes mistakes and does try to fix them. The same article hints at Chris Wilcox being available if the Nets decline to match the Nenad Kristic offersheet as they are expected to do. He wouldn’t be too shabby of a pickup but I wonder with Jawai’s heart beating, Voskuhl not sucking and Humphries relegated to the deep bench, how much room we have for another big man.
It’s natural to blame the big men when trying to explain the league-worst -5.50 rebounding differential but closer examination points the fingers at the guards. Jose Calderon is 32nd amongst guards with 3.3 RPG and Anthony Parker, our starting shooting guard for the majority of the season, is 46th amongst the same group with 2.9. Contrast this with Bosh being 3rd amongst forwards with 9.9 and Jermaine O’Neal 18th among centers with 7.5 and you see that the problem is much more severe in the backcourt than the front. A few days ago I went over the impact Triano’s system has had on our rebounding and defense and although his philosophy works on paper, you can’t help but think we don’t have the personnel in our backcourt to sustain the activeness on defense required to see Triano’s scampering defense through. Triano however believes in the current squad’s ability to play his defensive style – we’ll see if that’s true in the next couple of weeks.
The Knicks could sign Carlos Delfino to an offersheet which would give the Raptors a chance to match, that right there could test whether Colangelo is serious about going over the luxury tax but then again do you really want him going over to sign someone like Delfino? The reason Delfino is an attractive proposition is because he brings two things we need: perimeter defense that doesn’t entirely suck and an ability to handle point-guard duties for 5-8 minutes a game. If Will Solomon or Roko Ukic aren’t doing a satisfactory job the natural reaction shouldn’t be to sign another player, but to see how Anthony Parker handles the role in limited minutes. If he doesn’t get exploited by the quicker PGs then we just might’ve found a role for him here (if Colangelo decides not to trade his expiring contract).
The Raptors are in Sacramento tonight (live blog at 10:00 PM EST) to finish off the second half of their 6-game roadtrip. After the OKC humiliation, an expected result in San Antonio and an equally expected result in Los Angeles, the Raptors face a Kings team that has lost 4 straight, 8 of their last 10 and 16 of their last 19. They’re also without Kevin Martin for tonight’s game – he is out indefinitely with a sore left ankle. Technically speaking this is a winnable game but the Kings probably have had this one circled for a while. The Raptors haven’t won in Sacramento for more than a decade and just like how OKC only appeared to be a seemingly easy opponent, so are the Kings. If we can pull this win off we’ll have to beat one of Golden State (lost 7 of 8) or Portland to come back 3-3, that wouldn’t be too shabby.
Jamario Moon will not be in this year’s dunk-off in Phoenix. It’s between Dwight Howard, Rudy Gay, Nate Robinson (wtf?) and one of Rudy Fernandez, Russell Westbrook and Joe Alexander. I thought Moon got robbed last year because he clearly had better stuff than Gerald Green and his material was on par with Rudy Gay, he just screwed himself with the whole tape thing. At the same time it’s very understandable why he’s not in it this year – he’s just not that great. However, why Nate Robinson is allowed to be within 500 miles of a dunk-off is unexplainable.
From Eric Smiths’ blog as he’s talking about miscellaneous NBA stuff:
Minnesota – The ghost of Brandon Roy will always haunt you.
Is he joking? Should we really be making fun of Minnesota for trading Brandon Roy? At least they got Randy Foye out of the transaction, we got VL.
There really isn’t that much going on, here’s a chance to win some tickets to the Magic game. Be sure to grab our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter for in-game updates, latest web articles and other news as it happens.