Sorry I wasn’t able to do a pre-game on Wednesday, I literally had zero time to sleep much less put something together for us to talk about. The Raptors seem to be 2-0 in games I don’t handle the pre-game duties for; just putting it out there.

It wasn’t even that they beat the Wizards, Arse had it right when he said they inflicted violence on them. It was payback for the loss the Wizard handed sans John Wall; side note: it always kills me when you play a team, a mediocre one, who’s missing their best player and they beat you anyways. Regardless, the Raptors were able to exact some revenge, without Evans, and run them into the ground (a split on the season isn’t so bad now that I look back on it).

I’m super stoked about tonight’s game. I’ve seen three Thunder games already this season, and these guys are fun as hell to watch, and so are the Raptors making this a game I’ve been looking forward too. They have two of the best players (or the two best, depending on who you talk too – I’m one of these guys) at their position and have a bunch of talented kids on the rookie salary scale playing out of their minds (their payroll is under $59mil). At some point, this team will have to start taking a hard look at which of them they keep, rest assured, Durant and Westbrook will there for a long-long time.

I got stood up by the Thunder blogger, but here are the questions I sent his way:

38-15-9, I literally fired up league pass broadband to watch this game this morning, and WOW! Durant has missed three games (so far) this season, and Westbrook has led them to three victories in his absence. I have him ranked as the the best point guard in the league, especially when you consider he’s still on the rookie salary scale. Comment.

Durant’s three point shooting has dipped considerably, while his shot attempts have increased; what’s going on?

Presti has done a masterful job at helm. The teams payroll is $58mill, and with all the rookie scale salaries being paid, this team looks to be in excellent shape for the future. When all these contracts start coming up for resigning, who gets left out?

When does Presti win executive of the year?

Injury Report

Toronto
Reggie Evans – Out
Peja Stojakovic – Day to day

Oklahoma City
Kevin Durant – Knee, Probable
Nenad Krstic – Probable

Match-ups

Point Guard
It starts and ends with Westbrook. Durant might get all the press, but Westbrook was able to lead the Thunder to a 3-0 record in Kevin’s absence; that’s something to talk about and be scared of. Westbrook is really good. He’s literally taking it up to an elite-like level this season. The guy is super athletic, able to easily penetrate and get to the line (9.5 attempts a game). Scoring? 24.6 a game. Playmaking? 8.6 dimes. Rebounding? 5.6. Defense? He’s big, strong and fast aka elite defender. So there you have it, a perfect point guard to run this OKC offense. There are some kinks in the armour though. For all the scoring opportunities Russell creates for his team, the Thunder as a whole are terrible at sharing the ball, averaging 18.3 assists a game (good for second worst in the league). As well, Westbrooks jumper is a bit a lot shaky, and has been known to force things on more than a few occasions.

I would suggest letting him take as many long J’s as he wants, and collapse on him as early as possible to avoid him geting deep into the paint. As you can tell from his shot chart, the further out he gets, the more he misses. What you may not know is that Westbrook is pretty brutal at finishing at the rim as well (he’s actually generally a poor shooter, just able to get to the line a lot), where he only converted 49% of his attempts. Help defense off the dribble will be crucial to keep this kid under control. At the rim, I like both Bargnani’s, Johnson’s and Davis’ length to bother him. Notice I didn’t say anything about Calderon; the fact is, he’s playing well the last few games, but grossly outclassed. If he can hit his shots, move the ball and lead the break, it’s really all we can expect cause he’s not stopping Westbrook.
Edge: Oklahoma City

Shooting Guard
The Thunder literally STOLE Sefolosha from the Bulls. It wasn’t even fair how cheaply they picked him up for – a 2nd rounder or two…Presti is ridiculous. Thabo is one of the better defenders at the shooting guard in the league, but is really no threat on the offensive end. DeMar…the optimist in me says he follows a very strong bounce-back game against the Wizards with another one tonight, but the cynic in me thinks he wont. DeMar still needs a little bit more time to be able to really get after an elite-level defender like Thabo, and take it to him in different ways to get him into foul trouble. Yes, he will have a couple big moves, but anything he provides at this point, to me anyways, will be gravy.

Defensively, the further he can keep Thabo from the rim the better. Thabo will hit the occasional jumper, but that’s the plan, and you gotta stick to it. I like the dynamic that Barbosa will bring tonight, since he pushes the ball so effectively in transition. Barbosa could look to get Thabo in foul trouble, forcing him to lighten up on defense against him and DeRozan. I’d normally like DeMar to do that, but he hasn’t shown much promise in drawing contact off the dribble at any consistent clip.
Edge: Toronto

Small Forward
So in my fantasy league, we had a $200 budget to buy 13 players for our teams. I spent 90 0f that on one guy: Kevin Durant. For the most part, I follow him through my fantasy league, and the one thing that has struck me is how consistently amazing he is. Every game he can be counted on to score 25pts+ grab 6rebs+, get to the line a lot and convert a lot of those bad boys. I don’t even know what it’s like to watch a player like that on a game-to-game basis. Actually makes me sad that we’ve never had a player as close to Durant since VC used to give a crap. KD is a game-time decision, but if he’s out, Green is more than capable of filling this slot, giving the Thunder front court a pretty big/mobile dynamic.

If Durant is playing, Sonny will need to play off him a bit and let him shoot long jumpers and 3s to his heart content and hope he doesn’t find his range. If Green is in, I expect Kleiza to get a bit more burn as he has the size to bump him on both ends of the floor.

If Durant is feeling it early, and Julian Wright doesn’t get 12min+, Triano needs to be questioned vigilantly. Not saying Julian is going to shut down KD, but he has the best shot at slowing him down with his length and athleticism.
Edge: Thunder

Power Forward
While he may have come back a bit too early from his injury, Ed Davis brought the goods, and looked damn good doing it. Ibaka and Green are a formidable duo, providing a one-two punch of scoring and defense. If Amir and Ed didn’t have to worry about the Thunders ridiculous dribble penetration, then they would be able to hold the fort down. However, they have to worry about the wings getting beat off the dribble, and Bargnani’s inability to rotate on the defense, all the while worrying about their own man. If Green and Ibaka come out on top tonight, it won’t be because they outplayed our guys, it will be because they had little help.

Edge: Even

Center
20pts 11rebs 2blks tonight is what I’m looking to Bargnani for. With Evans out, he HAS to pick up some of the rebounding slack, if not a great deal of it. Krstic really shouldn’t be a factor tonic, and Collison isn’t fully healthy. I got nothing else here, sick of Bargnani just being a one-trick pony (note: being able to score in different ways doesn’t mean you have more than one trick; it all rolls up to scoring, nothing else).

Edge: Toronto

Keys to the Game

Offensive Rebounding
The Thunder absolutely excel when Westbrook has a head of steam in the open court. A lot of that can be traced back to their rebounding, where they are 13th in rebounding in the league (Raptors are 12th). The break always starts off of bad/missed shots, and with Evans out, the Raptors aren’t as effective on the offensive glass. Bargnani needs to make extra effort on the offensive glass, and help Amir, Ed and Joey tonight or this could get ugly fast.

Don’t Get Into an Early Hole
Its not that the Thunder can shut the Raptors down defensively, it’s that their offense can run us into the red rather quickly. The Thunder have a lot of weapons, and if Durant is healthy, will have a loaded bazooka aimed at the Raptors basket. Expending energy on catching up will only create the illusion that the Raptors are playing hard, when in fact, the key ingredients of focus, execution and defense will be left in the pot that Triano will be left stirring wondering WTF went wrong,

Perimeter Defense
Bargnani, Johnson and Davis can’t have wave-after-wave of Westbrook and Durant coming at them if the Raptors want to put themselves in a position to take this game; it just doesn’t work like that. Folks have to hedge on screens, play defense with their feet (and not their hands), and make the Thunder beat us with the jumper. Much easier said than done, but Triano will need to play the lineups for there to be any hope; Julian Wright for one should get some burn.

Sports Center Cafe will be hopping tonight if you want to get out of the house.

For those at home, we got Twitter, Facebook and Live Chat.

You can plan for a game all year, but this isn’t football, and you don’t know how the ball bounces until you step on the court and play it out. This Raptor team has won some huge games (Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Orlando), but also dropped a couple gawd-awful ones (Sacramento, Golden State).

A few weeks ago I talked a couple times about every game being a must win until the end of the year. Unfortunately, that level of effort hasn’t been there each game, fortunately the Bulls have been utterly plagued with injury, and on a 9 game losing streak of their own. So while they aren’t out of the playoffs, there is a way to go to maintain a playoff seed (and hopefully move up), as well as building some positive momentum heading into the playoffs. The last thing this team needs is to stumble backwards into the first round and get rolled over by whoever we end up play (it looks like Cleveland for now).

That process was started Wednesday against the Hawks, where the Raptors hung around until the last 2 minutes of the game, then grabbed the bull by the horns and won it on a Chris Bosh jumper with 2 seconds left. With 16 games left (8 on the road and 4 back-to-backs), that game could be a turning point for the Raptors; they just need to build on the positives that came out of it, and apply it to the rest.

They can start tonight against the Thunder, who dropped a tough game to the Bobcats on Wednesday. I checked in with Royce Young from Daily Thunder about his team:

Russell Westbrook has had some MONSTER games the last month. While Kevin Durant is the franchise, would it be fair to say that as Westrbook goes, so do the Thunder? Is it overshooting to put him in the same league as Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Derick Rose?
It’s absolutely fair to say as Westbrook goes, so do the Thunder. When he dishes out 10 or more assists, the Thunder plays over .700 basketball. Since he’s made his big progression starting in the middle of December, OKC is 28-11. Durant is the best player on the team and obviously the most valuable, but Westbrook is a close second. A lot of the opportunities to score Durant gets are created by Westbrook. As for putting him in the upper tier of point guards, I don’t think we’re there yet. Though you could make a strong case he’s outperformed Rose to this point in their careers.

Given how the Thunder have owned the Jazz all year, and are a game and a half out of 8th, how important is it to maintain the 5th seed? Is Utah the desired match-up?
Utah is absolutely the desired matchup. The things Utah struggles with – length, athleticism, speed, youth – Oklahoma City has. I think the 3-0 record is a little misleading in the sense that people think OKC owns Utah, but if there’s one team the Thunder wants matchup-wise, it’s the Jazz.

One of the rumours I’ve heard as a possible destination for Chris Bosh is Oklahoma City, would he be a good fit? How does Durant at PF and Bosh at C sound to you (match-up hell)?
Yeah that’s something Thunder fans talk about a lot. While I don’t see it happening, it is fun to think about. Bosh could definitely start at center, giving OKC a front line of Durant, Jeff Green and Bosh with the super-athletic Serge Ibaka and gritty Nick Collison coming off the bench. I’d say the Thunder would be a 60-win caliber team. But again, the chances of Bosh coming to OKC are pretty slim.

I always thought Toronto Raptor fans were crazy-obsessed…until I stumbled on your blog earlier in the year and just fell in love with the discussion you guys get. All I can say is wow! Talk about OKC fans and their passion for the game.
I can’t say how unbelievably impressive it is how dedicated Thunder fans are. It’s a true passion right now. Maybe a little bit of it is still infatuation with the new girl in town, but I think Thunder fans are some of the best. A game never has fewer than 17,000 at it (capacity 18,206). This state is college football crazed, but with the Thunder being the only pro sport in town, I think a good comparison for what OKC will be is what Green Bay is with the Packers. I feel incredibly fortunate to get to root for these guys in this city. The team is fun, management is wonderful and the fan base is excited and passionate. It’s really a perfect combination.

With Calderon starting, he will have his hands absolutely full with Westbrook, who is fast becoming one of my favourite players in the league. Over the last 10, Westbrook is averaging 17.2pts 4.9ast 9.7ast while shooting 50.8% from the field. Don’t fool yourselves, the Raptors beat the Hawks because Bargnani and Turkoglu stepped up, not because of Jose’s insertion into the starting 5 (Bibby is an old man). Tonight, it probably will get a bit ugly for Jose. I almost don’t even mind if Westbrook drops 30 from the perimeter if Calderon stays in front of him and keeps him out of the paint (limiting penetration and distribution).

The Thunder have missed Hardens perimeter scoring recently, so his expected return to the lineup tonight (as of publishing this piece) is a big boon for OKC. Kyle Weaver has contributed exactly zero in his absence, something we’ve come to expect from far too many of our own; sadly.

For this team to have any hope of going into the post-season on a positive note, they will need both Bargnani and Turkoglu to give that same level of effort and production they got from the the Hawks game.

Bargnani won’t have his hands as full as he did with Smith, and whatever Hedo hives up on defense, he should be able to get back on offense. Hedo especially needs to keep Durant out of the paint, and by extension, off the foul line where he wreaks most of his havoc.

All said and done, this game comes back to the point, and how well a job Calderon and Jack do at keeping Westbrook in check. The Thunder are 1.5 point favourites with an over/under of 209; not exactly a big endorsement for them, especially since they are on the road. This is anyones game, so expect a high scoring affair with big swings.

Come join us at Sports Centre Cafe tonight for Raptor Fans Friday.

For all our Persian readers, happy Naw Ruz (New Year)!

The first of two meetings with one of the teams I have been looking forward to watching all year. The Thunder are an exciting young lot, that can’t be called ‘up-and-coming’ anymore. They are here, 6th in the West, and have been running folks ragged with all that  young talent. The most talented of the lot… Sam Presti. It blows me away that the GM of a professional team is the same age as me (33). Could you imagine if Babcock got as much talent back for Vince Carter as Presti got for Ray Allen? How far ahead would the Raptors be right now?

The Raptors are fresh off a tough loss to the Cavs that came down to a game winning shot for Turkoglu, and again, he jacked a shot instead of trying to drive to the rack…obviously he missed, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m hoping the “clutch” switch turns on automatically when the playoffs start since I can’t recall him hitting a game winner yet this season.

I’m done with Turkoglu; I’m done trying to figure out why he keeps shooting the ball with the game on the line instead of driving to the basket. I don’t get it. I really don’t. Someone please try explain this to me without bringing up the 3 or 4 game-winners he hit last season. This is a whole new season, and he’s had two good games. Bargnani should have got the ball at the end there, the guy has ice in his veins too, why not see what he can do for us?

Oklahoma is 8-2 over their last 10, with their most recent win a 17 point whooping of Minnesota that saw Russell Westbrook put up a masterful 18pts 15ast in only 33 minutes of action. The Thunder are 17-11 at home, and 17-6 against the East so far this season including two big wins over the Hawks. This is not going to be an easy day, not by a long shot.

Bosh didn’t accompany the team to Oklahoma, and I feel like a broken record asking this; but why? Why wouldn’t you travel with your teammates, provide leadership and support when the team is without your services? I’m not saying he doesn’t support his team, just that there is only so much you can do sitting in your Lakeshore condo watching your boys play on TV. I’m mostly lashing out because the Raptors are only a game ahead of Chicago for 5th, and things are just going to get tougher over the next 12 (8 of which are on the road, and 6 of those in the West).

Stopping the ball is the name of the game tonight. The Thunder live in the paint by either planting themselves in the post or, for the most part, penetrating the crap out of the ball. Durant and Westbrook are relentless in attacking the rim, and need to be stopped on the perimeter. Let them shoot the ball all they want, but please don’t let them in the paint, especially with Bargnani the only one available to challenge shots.

If Amir can keep himself under control, he will have value tonight as he is can run up and down the floor with the likes of Green and Collison, as well as blocking some shots. Evans, while furious for a few minutes, doesn’t play defensive on the block well enough for my likings, and will run into trouble keeping up with the youngsters.

Jarrett Jack has been playing out of this world since Bosh has gone down. While he has struggled at times, the man has really stepped up and taken this team by the reigns averaging 20.8pts 3.5rebs 7.3ast. In all fairness, Turkoglu has answered the call, but his 18pts 5rebs 4ast are what we were expecting from him every game, and not just his production when he’s stepping up to help compensate for missing Chris.

Triano will have to field a team that will protect the paint (the Thunder are tied for 4th in offensive rebounding rate) as well as keeping Jack and Calderon from being on the court at the same time. I just don’t like their chances against Westbrook and Sefolosha (who they stole from the Bulls…raped em…dammit). Also, if the game comes down to one shot at the end, give it to Bargnani; he won’t disappoint. I believe.

The Thunder are 8.5 point favourites at home, FYI.