So in my opinion he still has an upside whereas Evans who is 29 and knocked around the league has only a downside as the drop off in his play the last two years has shown.

How much of an upside does Johnson have? I have no clue but it will probably be very limited unless he can meaningfully reduce his foul rate and get an opportunity to play and development.

It could be that they want to see more, especially now that the Raptors are pretty much at home in the near future and they are having time to practice and hopefully work out some of the kinks.

He will always and I mean always except for a freak game or two, be a lot more valuable on offense then he on defense.

Five fouls is highly possible. I can’t argue with that.

However, fouling out is another story unless Bargnani doesn’t play.

In 148 NBA games Johnson has fouled out of three of them. Interestingly enough in none of those 3 games did he play over 21 minutes although he has played a lot more games of over 21 minutes in his career than three.

Bargnani’s had stretches where he’s done a good job on Howard only to be bitched out by the refs.

Love the optimism though. I was at ACC for the first game against the Magic, and felt terrible during the first half. They were drilling threes from everywhere! Hope our Raps to a better job to get out and contest today.

Just one thing Arse – when you say fans would likely have been “reigning” down cat-calls, it doesn’t mean what you think it does – namely, to reign means to rule. As in, a king reigns (orders, supervises, rules, iz tha boss) over his kingdom.

I think you were looking for “rain” which is a perfectly acceptable homophone. Picture this: Vince Carter walks out on the floor and boos rain down upon him, as water droplets in a massive thunderstorm of hatred, showering him with scorn, leaving him soaked in derision. Yeeeep, that’s our VC.

/English

Can’t wait to see the comments posted by raptors republic on the game.

One big difference we have with Orlando vs Miami is that Orlando has almost nobody who will penetrate (Vince ofcourse CAN… but whether he WILL or not is always questionable, but then again he likes to actually try when he plays us).

Staying on the perimeter and hacking the crap out of D-12 usually leads to decent results against Orlando. I expect Johnson to have atleast 5 fouls this game (if not foul out)

Johnson still has weaknesses on defense, but doesn’t just about any player? However, Johnson is still terrible in making the right decision when defending one on one when he is isolated on the ball handler and not up close.

He totally mishandled how to play Wade on the two early fouls that he picked up on Friday. Of course Wade is not that easy to guard one on one for anyone but Johnson needs to learn when he is beat and give up on a play and not make a risky defensive move that most likely will result in an unncessary foul and possibly a three point play the old way.

I know that he has the “no one scores on me going to the basket” mentality but sometimes you just have to let the guy go in and score especially when he has you beat or in a bad defesnsive location.

Nothing like spending a Sunday afternoon watching Raptor ball while tiling your backsplash in your kitchen. :(