Blogs Courtside

I’ll subscribe to the “If you have nothing good to say …” school of thought for the first 2 plus quarters of this one.

- OK, I tried, but I have to add, starts like the one the Raptors had against the Wizards have become far too commonplace. I’m not sure if you can put a finger on why exactly the team consistently comes out so terrible, but it is awfully tough to win basketball games if you fall behind and look dead in the water for most first quarters.

- Leandro Barbosa told me he was in a groove on Saturday. Since then, he’s shot 1-for-12 from the field. He had at least two airballs and something clearly has changed. Bryan Colangelo needs him to heat up again closer to the trade deadline, since games like this again proved that Jerryd Bayless has a future as a dynamic scorer off of the bench going forward. There isn’t room for both Barbosa and Bayless long term.

- Bayless was excellent. Obviously the offensive numbers stand out, but he also gave John Wall a few problems at times and frustrated him a bit, which no other Raptor could do.

- Surrendering two defensive rebounds off of missed free throws cost the Raptors this game. Pure and simple. Once is bad enough, but the overtime miscue cannot happen.

- Linas Kleiza is playing very well and like Bayless looks like a nice bench piece for the future.

- After a string of good games, Ed Davis was a non-factor.

- Aggressive DeMar DeRozan showed up again. He needs to keep taking it up strong. If he does that, results will follow.

- Jordan Crawford takes some silly shots, but if I’m Washington management, I move Nick Young and give him more minutes. He’s slightly less clueless offensively and a lot better defensively.

The Raptors turned in a nice effort in South Beach on Sunday. Minus Andrea Bargnani, the team hung with the Heat for a while, before falling by six. No shame in that.

Holding the Heat to 44.9% shooting was solid work, especially considering LeBron James started off 5-for-5 and the Heat shot over 68% in the first quarter.

- DeMar DeRozan has had success over the course of his career against Miami and that continued. He brought the attitude we mentioned here earlier this week that he needs in order to play at a high level. DeRozan came to play, he showed some new wrinkles in an encouraging 25 point performance and got to the line 11 times, making nine of his free throws. If that DeRozan shows up on most nights, he can be a key building block going forward. Consistency is the key, something Jack Armstrong brought up on the broadcast. He can’t just play like that once a week, it has to be a permanent thing.

- The play of Ed Davis of late also has to be a positive for the Raptors. The sophomore forward had been struggling, but recently has been productive. His jumper looked quite a bit better and he was active on the boards. His eight point, eight rebound totals equalled what he had been averaging in his previous five appearances.

- One thing the Raptors did quite well was fight to establish position on the boards. Winning the battle 38-36 against Miami was an accomplishment and a lot of that had to do with fighting harder to establish inside position. That was particularly evident on the offensive glass. Toronto hauled in 10 offensive boards to Miami’s four.

- Leandro Barbosa’s streak is over. He had been carrying the team of late, but did not have it at all, shooting 1-for-8, 0-4 from three. His outside shooting has been horrible of late. After connecting on 6-of-7 in late January, Barbosa has hit just one of his past 14 three-point attempts.

- Interesting to see Jerryd Bayless get the call down the stretch with Jose Calderon making some uncharacteristically bad decisions. Bayless played well and how the two are utilized could be interesting to watch going forward.

Give the Raptors credit, everybody on the team needed to respond to the debacle in Boston (and also the Atlanta letdown, to a lesser extent) and the team really came through. Granted, it was against Washington, possibly, the worst team in the NBA and definitely the squad with the lowest basketball IQ.

- It is shocking to me how many bad shots, bad passes, bad decisions the members of the Wiz make. Even without Andray Blatche, the poster child for Washington’s malaise, the remaining group looked pretty clueless. Especially guards Nick Young and Jordan Crawford.

- Toronto’s dominance of the boards (almost doubling Washington’s total) was shocking and a good sign for the club. Like in Boston, one team was going after the ball twice as hard as the other. This time, the team going all out was the Raptors.

- Linas Kleiza obviously provided a big lift off of the bench, along with Leandro Barbosa. As was said during the broadcast, surely Bryan Colangelo is getting calls about Barbosa. This is an excellent draft. The 25th pick of this draft would be like a 15-20 pick in most other drafts, so if a contender wants to offer a first round pick and an expiring non-factor in return, the Raptors need to think hard about accepting. If the offer is only a second round pick, that’s a tougher decision as the Bargnani-less offence has looked mostly lost whenever Barbosa is not on the court.

- More solid minutes from Aaron Gray and clearly Amir Johnson was looking to prove a point.

- DeMar DeRozan’s offence remains a massive concern, but at least he is starting to contribute in other areas (on the boards, defensively), which hasn’t been the case for much of his career.

- Jerryd Bayless usually excels as a starter, but this wasn’t his night.

- After a tough stretch, Ed Davis seems to be finding his game. The sophomore big man has averaged 8 points and 8.4 rebounds, along with 1.2 blocks over his past five appearances.

- An excellent bounce-back game from Jose Calderon who was clearly mad when I saw him in the locker room in Boston.

Well, that was about as bad as it gets no?

At least it better be. I’ve never seen Dwane Casey so upset (though he still kept his composure when it was over) and that was a pretty dejected group of Raptors in the dressing room, most noticeably, Ed Davis, James Johnson and Amir Johnson.

Mercifully, this season is nearly 40% over.

-       While talent trumps all, effort is a close second. Don’t play your hardest, don’t match the level of your opponent and the result is almost always going to be ugly. Casey and centre Aaron Gray both said as much after the game and said the odor of this one has to stick with the team to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

-       The lone positive probably was the play of Gray – offensively at least. The Raptors established Gray early and he was effective. He gives them a legitimate 7-footer to start games, something that is badly needed.

-       The Raptors didn’t rotate well and have slipped noticeably defensively. Couple that with obscenely bad shooting and wins will be difficult to come by. But losses should never be as bad as this one was.

-       Some Casey quotes:

“Boston came out, threw their haymaker and we didn’t respond. We competed again for one quarter, but after that, we just didn’t compete.

We didn’t play with the confidence and the spirit that we’re going to play with.

Shooting 34% that’s one thing. We carry over our lack of offensive execution over to the defensive end where before our defence was solid even when we don’t score. Frustration on the offensive side is now creeping in.

They made some tough shots, they shot the heck out of it, but again, we have to have a stronger constituation on the defensive end and I didn’t see that.”

Jose Calderon said the Raptors were awful, but gave some credit to Boston as well (and Atlanta the game before). “Those are two good teams,” Calderon said. “We’re playing against two of the best teams in the East. That didn’t help neither.”

Doc Rivers mentioned he is aware how much the Raptors have struggled without Andrea Bargnani who “creates so many options for them” and said that was a factor. More from Doc:

“Paul (Pierce) said: ‘I’m going hard this first six minutes (of the second half) because I want to sit.’ He said, ‘We’re going to try to et this lead up, so we can sit.’ And they did and the Raptors simply can’t let that happen.

Sure Ed Davis’ second double-double in a row is a nice stat, but the vast majority of those numbers came when the game was well out of reach and against Boston’s bench.

Ray Allen on what he told the bench about not letting up: “I said, ‘Take them seriously. Don’t come in thinking that, oh this is just play time and we’re up by how ever many.’ And I said Go out there and really play as though the score is 0-0.”

- People laugh at him for his contract – and it’s a bad one – but Joe Johnson is a heck of a player and he certainly seems to enjoy competing against the Raptors. He destroyed them in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago and the song was the same on Tuesday night in Toronto. Sure, $20 million U.S. a season is a tad ridiculous, but Johnson certainly is worth $15 million or so and any team would be better off paying him that than overpaying reserves or bad starters.

- Toronto’s defence allowed an opponent to shoot 50% for the first time this season. Early on, the combo of Toronto’s defence and Atlanta’s nerves forced 9 Hawks turnovers. However, the team settled down from there and the small Toronto lineup couldn’t handle them.

- The edge DeMar DeRozan showed against New Jersey wasn’t evident. Without that, DeRozan is just an average player, with it, he is very good. The trick for Dwane Casey and the Raptors is getting the angry DeRozan to show up more often.

- The small lineup didn’t work against an Atlanta team that has a size advantage at almost every position against most starting units. If Jerryd Bayless or Jose Calderon are matched up with Johnson, the results aren’t going to be good for Toronto if James Johnson tries his luck, Marvin Williams will be guarded by somebody 4-6 inches shorter, etc.

- Bayless scored well again early, but it didn’t last. He only notched two points in the second half and though I’m not a big +/- guy, his -23 was the worst on the team.

- Amir Johnson clearly is not himself and has some injuries. At some, point, the team has to consider sitting him down for a couple of weeks to allow him to get back to 100%. Of course, that probably can’t happen until Andrea Bargnani comes back.

- On the bright side, Ed Davis has been better of late and his first double-double of the season was worth mentioning. In Atlanta, Josh Smith had his way with Davis and the coaching staff was on him a bit, but Ed appeared to learn a few things from that meeting.

- The fans might as well keep booing Tracy McGrady until the end of his career. It’s stupid and he always raises his game when it happens, which kind of defeats the purpose of it no? But, anyways, might as well keep doing it, it’s past the point of stupidity now.

- Toronto only blocked one shot, which has to be close to a season-low.

Let’s start by stating the obvious: New Jersey minus Brook Lopez and promising sophomore Damion James and with a disinterested Deron Williams is a pretty bad team. That said, this was one of the only “should be a win game” for the Raptors in a while and the team did what it had to and looked quite good doing so.

- Williams, even this version, remains a premier point guard, so Jerryd Bayless deserves the credit given to him by Jack Armstrong during the broadcast for his defence. Bayless frustrated Williams and did a great job against a very tough player to guard.

- DeMar DeRozan’s defence has picked up of late, necessary since his offence has been a concern. On Sunday, DeRozan showed something we haven’t seen much from him this year – using his leaping ability to block shots. He had a couple of nice ones, using timing as much as his hops and also was disruptive in the passing lanes. DeRozan’s third quarter was one of his best of the season on both ends of the floor.

- Clearly DeRozan was feeling some heat from critics and came out with an edge we haven’t seen very often. He took charges, had a swagger and was intense. The Raptors need to see more of that from him. Some minutes at small forward agreed with him.

- Dwane Casey deserves a lot of credit for helping the team complete its first winning road trip of at least five games since 2001. It was the latest embarassing mark to get erased this season (losing streaks in Phoenix and Utah, also accomplished on this trip). It should never have stretched this long and it’s good for the franchise to have that road record pushed to the background.

- The Raptors shot 29 free throws to New Jersey’s 19. That hasn’t happened many times this season. Toronto was the aggressor in all facets of the game and that’s what it takes to have success.

Though the Raptors lost once again without Andrea Bargnani, it’s difficult to be hard on them. There are far more positives to take out of Friday’s 96-81 loss to the Denver Nuggets. Such as:

- This team doesn’t quit, no matter how bad it starts Down 22? No problem. Toronto battled to within six at one point, but James Johnson fouling out and another disappearing act by DeMar DeRozan made a full comeback too difficult to pull off.

- At some point Dwane Casey has to think hard about making another change to his starting lineup. Although Leandro Barbosa has made a career out of being one of the league’s premier bench performers, it could be time to send a message to DeRozan and to let him regroup by coming off of the bench for a few games. He’s struggling badly – though his defence has been improved – and maybe playing against second units will get him going? Meanwhile, Barbosa has been carrying the team. The team is big enough elsewhere if Jose Calderon, James Johnson, Amir Johnson and Aaron  Gray start to make up for Barbosa’s lack of height at shooting guard.

- The refs didn’t do their jobs, particularly late when they blew it, big-time.They let Nene manhandle DeRozan and DeRozan shove Nene in retaliation, then let Al Harrington – who has often behaved like a knucklehead throughout his career – escalate what should have been a meaningless incident with Linas Kleiza. It was a chippy game and they let both sides set some hard screens, which is OK, but they also let a lot of cheap shots go, which caused the drama late.
Fans in Denver were right to yell at the refs: “You guys lost control in the first quarter.”

- Maybe it is the altitude, but the Raptors seem to bring their worst when they come to Denver. It was the site of Sam Mitchell’s last stand and Jay Triano didn’t fare very well there either. Early on, it looked like Casey was going to leave with a 20-25 point loss.

-Andre Miller is like that old guy who always schools you at the Y or in rec league despite not being fast or able to jump He hit an absurd shot at the buzzer from well past centre court and posted a double-double. His fourth, I believe, since saying he still should be a starter in the NBA.

- Jerryd Bayless and Barbosa were a nice combo last season and jelled for the first time this season in the second quarter.

- James Johnson looked very solid again. He’s really blossoming and looking like a very astute pickup by Bryan Colangelo. He’s got a little Shawn Marion in him and looks like a keeper going forward. That’s a good thing, considering all kinds of questions are popping up about whether DeRozan and Ed Davis can be building blocks to rely heavily on in the future.

- What else? The Raptors still aren’t getting to the line enough, Jose Calderon looks completely gassed (missing shots he normally makes, turning the ball over in ways we don’t often see) though he wasn’t hammered off of the dribble as much as he has been lately.

- Aaron Gray and Jamaal Magloire were excellent on the boards and set some bone-rattling screens.

- Rudy Fernandez is going to have a couple of nights like this every season. He’s a better Marco Belinelli and just as frustrating. He might go 2-for-11 in his next game. Just tough luck for the Raptors.

- Davis needs to spend the off-season shooting 100 jumpers a day because he doesn’t have any touch offensively. He appeared to have more of a feel around the basket last season.

- You aren’t going to win many games missing 14-of-15 shots at any point, especially to begin a contest, but Toronto deserves credit for hanging around with a Denver team that has been elite so far this season.