If the Raptors had lost to Minny last night, it would’ve been totally cool. Fifth game in seven nights, cut them some slack. Down nine in the fourth quarter on the road on the second night of a back-to-back, you got all the reason to pack it in. But they didn’t, they rallied instead and got a mighty impressive win to cut the magic number for clinching third spot in the east to three games. The pressure’s on Miami now.
Anthony Parker and Jose Calderon did the damage in the fourth. Mitchell finally showed some smarts by NOT substituting Jose off in the fourth just because TJ had a good game:
“TJ’s stat line was unbelievable (17 points, 10 assists) but Jose was just playing so well in the fourth quarter, it was hard to take him out”
Why this logic didn’t kick in other times (most recently the Miami game) is a mystery.
Let’s talk about KG: He is overrated. Hear me out, he is a great, great, great second option. He cannot carry/lead a team on his own and all this talk of him not having a good supporting cast is pure trash. He’s been given every opportunity to succeed in Minnesota but hasn’t delivered, mostly because of his sheer inability to score in the clutch. He suffers from extremely poor shot selection and often passes the ball up without any hint of a double team. Last night he was shackled by Bosh/Nesterovic/Humphries to the tune of 7-23 FG and yes he was our primary focus on defense but if you’re considered a great player (and he is by many) you have to come up stronger than that. I always thought KG needed to bulk up and throw his weight around rather than rely on finesse and running up and down the floor trying to be a guard. Dwight Howard can be a better player in this league than KG.
KG’s a hard working player which I would love to have on my team, but to ask him to lead your squad is asking too much of him. He used to take a back seat to Terrell Brandon on the team in terms of leadership and you can’t have that from your franchise player. Sam Cassell was their goto guy when he was there, not KG, he was even behind Latrell Sprewell in the crunch time pecking order for Minny. Great big men live in the paint, they don’t flutter around it bailing out defenses by taking jumpers they want you to take. KG’s not a great jump shooter and for him to rely so much on outside shooting (I consider elbow jumpers outside shooting in this case) is either bad coaching advice or a lack of will to consistently go to the rim.
What else, James Posey was driving drunk and Bonzi Wells is feeling guilty about disrupting team chemistry and decides to do something about it by disrupting it even more. Raptors are making me feel good, check out the highlights from Chasin, here’s the NBA TV recap:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIBHYy0UGY]
