Before I start describing this pathetic night, let’s focus on the one positive of this game: us. It’s time to give props to The Dirty Dozen that drove down to New Jersey to support the Red. The Raptors gave them nothing but they gave everything to the Raptors. We were the loudest bunch in the arena and the entire arena was looking and staring at us as we cheered everything even when the Raptors were getting crushed. We cheered the players, coaches, management, trainer, TV people, everybody! We even forced Sam to sub-off the ineffective TJ Ford for Jose Calderon in the first half which had an immediate impact on the game. We even made it on TV.
Chuck Swirsky was nice enough to mention to TSN to focus on Section 112 where the Raptor fans were, I’m guessing thats why they put us on TV.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTftPKuf9wA]
We made it on Raptors.com too:
Anyways, let’s get to the actual game. Over 20 hours in a smelly van, pay over a thousand dollars in tickets, much more once you figure in the food, gas and shelter and what do you get out of it? A front row seat of your favorite team getting their ass kicked like it’s been never kicked before. If that wasn’t enough, you get heckled out of the stadium because you were actually dedicated enough to stick through this “game” and cheer as loud as anybody in the arena. I can live with all the above as long as the Raptors do something to help the cause, something, just a little, anything, even a little fight. But alas, nothing of that happened here last night. The Raps got buried by the Nets so fast that Calderon didn’t even get a proper chance to rescue the Raps from another big early deficit. Franchise player, ahem, Chris Bosh played as well as he did in Game 3 which meant he only bothered to trouble himself with shot attempts of the most perimeter kind with only a couple exceptions when he was spoon fed near the rim by Calderon.
Only two Raptors showed up: Jose Calderon and Morris Peterson. Jose played decent as usually but Mo Pete deserves an honorable mention, he was fired up and angry every time his teammates missed a defensive rotation (once very possession) and was downright pissed off at the lack of ball movement by the Raps. Mo Pete played hard if not great, which is more than what can be said for most other Raptors. The most shocking thing to see – even more shocking than playing no defense – was the lack of any offensive creativity on the part of the Raps. It didn’t matter if it was coming out of the game, timeout, quarter, tv timeout, the Raps had nothing. Their entire game plan seems to be “swing it around the perimeter, fake a drive and pull up for the jump shot”. Instead of the simple enough pick ‘n roll, this has become our primary play. Failing to execute the most on this play were Andrea Bargnani, Juan Dixon, Anthony Parker, TJ Ford, Chris Bosh….you get the idea. Another uneasy thing I finally realized was that Anthony Parker has serious difficulty creating his own shot against athletic forwards and guards, the best he seems to be able to do is pull-up for a jumper or a semi-fade. His game thrives when there’s movement and Mitchell’s offense has none of that which is making Parker look much worse than he actually is.
At halftime, Embry looked like he was really pissed off and the Raptors braintrust got into the visitors tunnel and started talking, Colangelo was making all these basketball-move type gestures, Embry actually had to sit down.
TJ Ford has a bad game, not because he took too many shots, because he took horrible shots – early in the shot clock, no rebounders, heavily challenged, really no idea what he’s trying to do. Maybe he’s trying to get into a pissing contest with Jason Kidd which is a bad idea to start with since Kidd appears to own TJ in both the post and perimeter. Chris Bosh decided to take off another night after his miserable Game 3 performance, I even feel disgusted saying CB4 anymore or cheering him on, either he’s just not playing hard enough or he’s very, very confused about what to do on the floor. He’s resigned to sticking to the perimeter and “faking the drive” to launch contested jumpers. All Sam can do is shake his head and call the same play all over again. It’s quite amusing to watch it in person.
Continental Airlines Arena sucks compared to the ACC but the event staff there do a much better job of making the fans louder, they hand out those noise-making sticks to EVERYBODY in the crowd so when noise needs to be made, it’s quite easy to just bang them together than to yell at the top of your voice. Although I think the ACC is louder, Continental Airlines seems louder because they actually crank their speaker volume up making the crowd seem louder. Although this might look retarded if nobody’s there, on a night like last night when there’s a decent enough crowd, it sounds nice. I think the ACC can learn a few things from them.
Prior to the game, some people from Toronto showed up who wanted to burn a Vince Carter jersey, we helped them out. Some hardcore NJ fan came up to us right after this and wanted to rumble but his wife held him back. My friend goes to him, “Aren’t they moving to Brooklyn next year?”. It was jokes.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63PupM7vOys]
James Cybulski showed up and preferred TJ Ford over Jose Calderon. We disagreed:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXsji6xvPDQ]
I filmed the tip-off and our first missed wide-open shot by Anthony Parker, an early sign of the impending disaster.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BUi_FkySTg]
In the meanwhile Tim Micallef came by and chatted with us, we made him feel better by taking a picture of him.
At the end of the half I decided to tell Jess Kersey that he’s doing a crappy job. He did not like what I had to say.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUtIojmCaMU]
Here’s some more random noise being made in the first half:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOx9Rh_CI0]
After halftime when the Raptors down big, we tried cheering up the Raptors players and staff who were coming out of the tunnel. Even Wayne Embry felt the love.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O92t6VJZAKc]
The videos and atmosphere are a nice distraction from what actually happened which is us getting destroyed by a team that just seems better. Nachbar is playing like Bargnani should and RJ is playing the way Anthony Parker should. Bosh is getting shut down by Bosh and helped by Moore/Collins/Boone. TJ Ford is self-destructing and clearly trying to take over the game way too early and digging the Raptors into holes that they can’t possibly come out of. Vince Carter is hitting everything and even Jason Kidd’s starting to drain the outside three. The turning point in this game was in the second quarter when after doing down by 19 the Raptors made a run (courtesy Calderon) to cut it to 11. Jason Kidd came back to hit two consecutive threes to push it back to 17, the crowed got really into it and effectively the game was over. The Raptors never recovered.
So now it’s the old cliche, “one game at a time”. If we win Game 5, we just need to beat New Jersey once in their arena (aren’t we due?) to force a Game 7 at home. Sounds simple enough.
