No Bosh tonight against the Nets on the road. You can count on one hand the number of games the Nets have won and we definitely don’t want people to start using two hands starting tonight. Last time out they managed to hang around too long before we put them away early in the fourth quarter, this time they could actually pull it out being at home and all. They took Miami down to the wire on Wednesday and that’s after beating Les Bobcats in Charlotte, so I am a bit worried.
Triano’s hinting at starting Rasho because he might be a better fit against Lopez and thinks Evans would match up better with Humphries. How do you like that, eh? An NBA team actually planning to defend Humphries, almost seems like a bit of an honor for the little shot-happy Gopher. Triano’s glad that we didn’t make a trade, not because he thinks the current roster can win the conference, but because it means he doesn’t have to integrate new players, which as you remember, turned out to be quite a chore.
The coaching and player failures of Memphis don’t need to be regurgitated here, we need to simply rebound from it and put the pressure on Boston who lead the division by five games and BEAT LA! in LA. We do have the easier schedule and can give the C**tics a good run for their money; how much home-court would come into play against them is another matter since it seems they could beat us rather convincingly even if we played on ice.
There’s no comment from Colangelo since 3PM yesterday but if the rumours are to be believed, we were after Sasha Vujacic for three-point reasons and Josh Powell for Bosh-buddy reasons. Very glad Colangelo didn’t pull either move because I’d take Belinelli over Vujacic any day and we already have an undersized PF. Besides, this is a basketball team and not a fraternity. The lack of moves hasn’t made the fans particularly upset, most feel that the roster is good enough to win a round, others don’t. Count me as part of the latter group. Not that it matters now, all we’ve left to call upon is Hedo Turkoglu who has been such a big disappointment that if we brought him up in every single post written on this site, it still wouldn’t be enough. Other than him, Sonny Weems, DeMar DeRozan and Marco Belinelli need to find a gear of consistency for us to be a credible threat in the post-season. Otherwise it’s just two playoff home games.
The Knicks cleared up a lot of cap space and could have enough to offer two free-agents max-money deals. I think this summer will shape their destiny for the next decade because if they fail to get their hands on a top-tier free agent, I can totally see them splurging big money on second and even third tier players just to kickstart the franchise and enter another Isaiah Thomas era. You can bet your life that they’ll make a play for Bosh by gifting him a private jet and tempting him to play with LeBron, all the while doing the same with LeBron. You can expect ESPN and the NY media to start hyping things up starting today and it’s going to be hard for all three big-name free agents to say no. I say at least one of them ends up there.
There’s not much to be said about this game except we should win it and do it convincingly. Not having Bosh is no excuse and it’ll be fun to see Evans, Johnson and Rasho try to make up the 37 minutes by scrapping it out. Unless it turns out to be one of those nights where everybody (including Belinelli) has it going on offense, you’d think one of Bargnani and Turkoglu needs to take charge of the offense. Should be a tight affair at the swamplands.
The Nets TrueHoop blog is wondering why nobody’s showing up to the games.
Today is Raptors Fan Friday at Sports Centre Cafe. Come for the game, stay for the mega-hot waitresses.
