What DON'T They Get!!??

The ESPN NBA page headline for this game reads:

"Duncan, Parker injured | Spurs top Raptors"

What more did the Spurs need to do in order to give us an even better chance of taking this game? Ginobili catches Rabies? We knew Parker wasn't going to play, which was a blessing. Then Duncan was announced to be out as well - that's a Godsend. Seriously, its like the heavens went out of their way to give us a dream scenario - win in San Antonio and be 2-1 in this road trip, and the real plus is that team morale would be up after getting blown worse than a porn star in Dallas. But of course, the Raptors, in their classic style, had a meltdown in the fourth quarter.

I stayed behind in school instead of hopping on the long TTC ride home because I wanted to watch this game live - this road trip includes stops in two of my favourite players' (Ginobili, other being Nowitzki) town - so I plugged in my laptop and sat on a hard bench that made my ass sore, probably what the Raptors are feeling right now, at least they should be.

So, my two favourite players - Manu and Dirk, and this is how the Raptors handled them on this trip:

Dirk Nowitzki: 29 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, 1 block.

+

Manu Ginobili: 36 points, 4 rebounds, 8 assists, 1 steal, 4 blocks.

=

FAIL

Dirk got his points so easily it wasn't even funny, and lets not forget he sat out most of the fourth because the game was long done. So lets fast forward to tonight's game. Fourth quarter, close game, who should the Raptors guard!??? Well...Duncan is out, Tony Parker is out...so of course its Ginobili!! Now its much easier said than done I know, and Manu is one of the game's best closers, but you'd think they'd be able to at least bother him somewhat or not give him easy shots - the Spurs announcer, after Manu hit that last dagger three that pretty much wrapped it up, said "Manu Ginobili is torturing your team...and what do you? Leave him WIDE OPEN!!!??"

While Ginobili was being aggressive; driving, slashing, kicking it out to teammates, the Raptors go into the fetal position and start taking horrible jump shots. Belinelli was on fire, but everyone saw that bad jumper coming - he shouldn't have taken that shot at that instance in the game, unless he was wide open. The only guy I'll give credit to down the fourth is Bosh - he tried to be aggressive and drove hard - it worked once, he got the call, the other time he tried to draw the call but didn't get it and ended up shooting a bad off balance jumper. I mean, the guy had 32 and 10, you can't ask for more. Bargnani stats wise was good too - 17 points on 7 of 13 shooting, but the four boards is ugly. And he should've attacked more - nobody out there can guard him.

• Is it just me or did Hedo look...kinda old in that fourth quarter? A couple of plays it seemed like if the ball is two feet from him he can't get it without collapsing to the ground.
  

• Matt Bonner drove and dunked on us - how's that for a sum-up of the game?

• The Raptors scored 124 points...and gave up 131..131!!! We've finally completed our transformation into Phoenix North or Phoenix East, whatever you like.
  

• No seriously, we really Phoenix now - the Spurs announcer said during the game "the HIGH-FLYING Raptors!"

• As much as it pained me to watch the Raps suffer another excruciating loss, watching my man Ginobili explode on them was amazing (and painful). This guy doesn't get enough credit for how great he really is.

• Antoine Wright has been (in a Barkley voice) TURRI-BUL on offense. I get against Dallas he wanted to show his old team what they gave up (which he really didn't), but this cannot continue.
  

• Jarrett Jack needs to practice shooting..like now. Especially if he's still vying for the starter's job, when Calderon has found his stroke. Even though no matter what Calderon will always be the starter, and deserves to. Even if Calderon struggles now and then, Jack hasn't done enough to warrant it.
  

• Belinelli was doing his best Ginobili impersonation out there...until the fourth quarter of course, when we really needed, when Ginobili was being himself.
  

• Fuck this loss sucked.
  

Maverick Thought

I'll post my thoughts about the Raptors season some other time. Right now, I'm tuned into the playoffs, and other than of course going for the Lakers to win the ring, my favourite player, Dirk Nowitzki, just got a big road win in San Antonio in what I think is the most underrated series in the opening round. That's because my other favourite baller, Manu Ginobili, is injured - otherwise, the Spurs would easily take this series - but because of his absence, it's made it a compelling matchup.

It's anybody's game. Hell, I'm even betting the Mavs take it, but am afraid to get too ahead of myself because poor Dirk and his Mavs have crumbled since that Finals run. Plus, you can never underestimate the Spurs. So, with Ginobili out, the way I see it, its a pretty balancing act which is what makes this series so fun - it could stretch to seven games, which I'm hoping it doesn't, because it'll be in San Antonio, but then again, the last time this happened between these two teams, Dirk made one of the biggest plays, driving down the lane, scoring and getting fouled to eventually win the game/series.

So I was extremely hyped up to see this game tonight. The way I see it, Tony Parker can run circles around anybody, so hopefully Kidd+Terry can somewhat counter him, Duncan and Nowitzki cancel each other out (not in a head to head matchup, just great-players wise), and all of a sudden we're left with anything goes. So, thoughts from Game 1

• Tony Parker, not surprisingly, was penetrating the Mavs to death, why the hell did he stop? The Dallas defense did step it up, but not to the point where Tony Parker-Longoria couldn't keep driving it at will.
  
• Even down 13 when it looked BAD for Dallas, I had hope the Mavs could come back, and did, the best part of it being with Nowitzki on the bench due to foul trouble.
• Jose Calderon? NO, Jose (Juan) Barea! Who the hell saw him having such a strong impact. Tenacious little player, how annoyed was Tony Parker whom Pop had to talk to during a timeout to tell him not to start going one on one and making it personal (I'm assuming he was referring to JJ Barea's scoring)
• Brandon Bass - his body is scary, that crunch time fadeaway on Michael Finley even scarier if you're a Spurs fan
• Matt Bonner's reactions are still hilarious when he gets called for a foul or makes a bad play - looks over at Gregg Popovich scared to death.
  
• Michael Finley's corpse is still deadly - guy still hits threes like its nothing.
  
• Erick Dampier played HARD - props to him. Duncan still had a good game, but the defense of Damp was solid - about as well as you could play TD.
  
• Speaking of Duncan - no one uses the glass like him. Those two jumpers in Dampier's face were a thing of beauty, he almost willed it in, hitting the rim and in.
  
• Really sad to see Manu on the bench, must be killing him not being on the court. Although like I said, I don't it'd be much of a series if he were playing.
• Glad to see Kidd start to post up Parker all the way to the paint - gives me horrendous flashbacks of when he did that to TJ Ford in the playoffs and just killed us.
• Josh Howard always surprises me. He's one of those players that you know is really good, but still surprises you :s
• How healthy is Duncan? We know he's not 100%.
  
• I know Dirk was in foul trouble, so next game he has to go at Bonner, Gooden, or whoever the hell is trying to check him, just as Hubie Brown said.
• Speaking of whom, Hubie Brown adds so much to the games - I hope he lives 20 more years so we can hear his break-em-down-to-the-tee style analysis.
  
• Rick Carlisle, for some reason, looks to me like he could star as an older Patrick Bateman in a future version of American Psycho. Don't ask me why.
• Quote: "We're a humble team, but we're hungry." - Rick Carlisle
  
• Lookin' forward to Game 2.

Rok-A-Fella: Roko leads Raps to a gutsy win over Spurs

Look at it anyway you want, but that was one hell of a win by the Raptors. Let's face it, no one realistically expected the Raptors to beat the Spurs, and even more so, no one could've predicted Roko Ukic would be the clutch performer down the stretch to lead Toronto to that win. Especially without Bosh, Calderon, or Graham for that matter.

Even though we were up around 6-8 points most of the game, us Raptors faithful knew the lead would vanish in the fourth, but we couldn't even hold on that long - the Spurs came out halftime focused and disciplined and led in the third. And we started out the fourth quarter missing 8 of 10 shots. Yet somehow, we found a way to come back, and guys like Bargnani, Kapono, and Ukic stepped up big time. Bargnani may have shot 8 for 21 but when it mattered most he was huge, finishing with 23 points and 8 boards. You've got to love this guy's confidence, he started out in a slump but kept shooting and never hesitated. And he started out the game with a couple of strong drives in the post on Tim Duncan nonetheless. Kapono was given the green light to fire at will by Triano, and he did just that, scoring 21 points - a significant amount of them actually included him dribbling the ball and even driving.

Finally, of course the player of the game - Roko Ukic, scoring a career high 22 points. This kid has great potential. He's figured out his niche - driving the ball straight at his defender and dropping floaters or getting layups, something Calderon used to do last year. As frail as he looks, he's got good size at the pg spot (6'5") which gives him a good advantage and he's wiry with some long arms. His most impressive asset are easily his handles - they're just smooth, and look so natural - add that to his quickness, and you've got a potentially superb point guard in about 2 years. It's almost a good thing that he can't shoot well yet because that forces him to drive and we all know how much of a dire need that is on this ball club. That clutch 3-pointer he hit was just pure confidence, and must have the shocked the hell out of Spurs fans, and probably Raptors fans as well. But of course it was his next bucket that was the dagger. You'd think the ball would be passed around to Bargnani, O'Neal, Parker, or Kapono, but instead Roko saw single coverage and had the balls to do it himself; dude just TOOK it to Parker. He almost travelled too, spinning and almost losing his footing but was able to put up the shot and it rolled in. That drive reminded me of a lot of the one he did on Jameer Nelson against the Magic which was also the game-clinching play.

I wasn't even going to bother watching this game, but I did because I love Manu Ginobili, appreciate Tim Duncan to the max and admire Gregg Popovich. Ginobili is just a joy to watch - he looks awkward on his drives but just slithers through the lanes with great precision and has surprising athleticism. He dropped a season high 32, 15 of them in the fourth quarter.

Jermaine O'Neal deserves a shout out for his defense on Duncan; he didn't shut him down by any means (Duncan had 20 and 10), but he made it difficult and that's all you can ask. I thought Paul Jones had a good point on the post-game show on the FAN 590 : he said J.O., having been an all-star plenty of times and some juice to his name from previous years, got the leeway to play Duncan tighter than most other players would've gotten to (without getting called for fouls). Yes, he still finished with 5 fouls, but he would've probably been out much earlier in the game if he was just any other player.

• You've got to love Popovich's honesty and point-blank answers. When asked if his team wasn't ready or maybe looked past this game, he said "no, we were ready, we busted our ass out there, the Raptors just played better and earned that win" (I'm paraphrasing)
• That last play was definitely not what the Spurs wanted - a Tony Parker fadeaway with J.O. contesting, so we should actually credit the Raps for once on a clutch defensive play - hey, Pop even said so.
  
• Speaking of the last play, how many of you thought Roger Mason was gonna burn us with a 3?
• Parker almost blew it with that turnover, but did that 3 right before.
  
• I was scared as hell when JO was taking those free throws, not because I thought he was going to miss, but because I had no idea how he is with clutch free throws.
  
• Thank God Triano didn't pick Solomon to play the pg slot tonight.
• I was watching some of this game from a stream, and the live chat that goes on with it are filled with hilarious comments from users. Such as: "Chris Bosh looks like a malnourished alien."