Bulls good. Raptors not so good. That should be sufficient for a post-game report. Right from the outset the massive gulf in talent between these two teams was apparent, the Raptors might kid themselves about staying with a stacked team by making up for lack of talent with effort, but it’s hard to pull that act off. The Bulls are an organized unit with a plan of attack and talent at all five positions, the Raptors are starting David Andersen.
There are three good players on the Raptors, and by good I mean players who have a well-defined game, play within their skill-set and are reasonably effective and consistent at what they do. They are Leandro Barbosa, Sonny Weems and Jarrett Jack. Barbosa tends to force his game sometimes but he’s been as advertised so far, decent jumper, great speed and quick in transition. Sonny Weems is another who can get his shot off because he’s got the bulk to get inside and has a sweet mid-range game which he uses in moderation. Jarrett Jack is the other one, even though he finds himself in some sticky situations late in the shot clock, that’s only because we’re asking him to be a starting point when he’s not.
The rest of the bunch either don’t know what they are or have trouble living with what they are. Jose Calderon seems to have forgotten just what made him good, Andrea Bargnani drifts in and out of consciousness and DeMar DeRozan is having real trouble living without a jumper. These are three guys that need to be producing consistently for the Raptors and when they don’t, things get tough.
Things get even tougher when you don’t have a post-up threat because it forces you to play a outside-in game and when the jumpers aren’t falling, it can quickly turn into a track-meet with the other team getting a head start. The imbalance on offense is going to be a very strong theme this season as the Raptors’ four guards (DeRozan, Weems, Jack and Calderon) try to create offense playing outside-in. With no post-presence to draw perimeter defenders in or throw big men out of help-defense positions, defending the Raptors can become very simple.
On defense, being aggressive in the half-court is a good strategy but when the other team has a guard like Derrick Rose, aggressive perimeter defense can quickly turn into over-helping leading to exposed coverages underneath. It’s a fine line which the Raptors have to tow and it’s entirely situational, if they come across a team with good interior passing (like the Bulls), it’s lights out since the interior rotations will not be able to make up for any help a big offers to an over-committed guard. This isn’t even addressing the havoc caused on defensive rebounding position, something which was clearly evident as the Raptors got thumped 44-22 on the glass. That alone isn’t to blame for such woeful rebounding numbers, lot of it comes down to technique and Bargnani, Johnson and Evans just didn’t have it. We all know about Bargnani so I’ll spare comment; Johnson needed to establish position and body someone before leaping for a rebound by relying on reach, and Evans is just too erratic and out-of-control to be bothered playing sound defense.
Touching on this game a little more, the Bulls came out looking to establish themselves early and Noah and Rose did a good job of it. Noah’s too bulky and wide for any of our bigs and he’s got the mobility and intelligence to make decisions with the ball. The Raptors came out flat-footed, with no Kleiza in the lineup, Julian Wright got the start along with David Andersen who got the nod ahead of Bargnani. Johnson finally evicted Evans from the starting lineup and Calderon rounded out the starting five. The drastic starting lineup changes are now open to be questioned, it’s understandable that the rotations are not set but the Raptors need to at least start looking at what a reasonable rotation might look like, because throwing Andersen and Wright out there to start tells us nothing.
No other team is shuffling their starting lineup this much and for the Raptors it’s resulting in a multitude of different lineups playing in a seemingly random order. It’s got to be hard for Triano to read anything into what he sees because all he’s seeing his one-on-one play by his guards who want to pass it to Reggie Evans with the shot-clock running low. This was the worst game for the offense because there wasn’t any cohesion to any of the possessions, after an initial half-hearted screen or two every half-court possession came down to a one-on-one play. For the first time, the absence of Chris Bosh was truly felt because tonight the Raptors showed just how hard it’ll be for them to score against a committed defense.
With the overall offense and defense thoughts out of the way, here’s how the players did:
Johnson: Still picking up silly fouls and had four by the early third. Couldn’t finish near the rim when the game was close but got a few buckets late on, tried a baseline jumper that was badly missed. It’s early, but right now he’s exactly the same player as last year. Only richer.
Wright: Hit a three which shocked every single one of the 125 people in the chat. He definitely has the body-type to be an effective defender, and on a good team he could be valuable player, but on a team with so many holes he doesn’t seem as important.
Andersen: Looked rather smooth with the jumper and the dribble. Don’t get me wrong, he’s nothing more than a scrub but by comparison with the rest of the bigs, he’s looking alright. Looks to be a decent pick-up. When the effects of the ganja wore off by the third he seemed to lose some of his panache.
Calderon: I was talking about this in the chat, but Calderon’s mid-range game seems to be shot. There’s too much arm and not enough leg in his jumper, and that little hitch in his shot is coming into play more. Personal opinion is that he should only attempt the jumper after making at least a couple layups, back the defense off of him and get his confidence going. He’s credited with 7 assists but I swear I don’t remember any of them, but that’s kind of what his assists are like.
Barbosa: As advertised, but if the Raptors aren’t disciplined about what they’re doing on offense, he’s going to turn into a shot-happy guard that fans will hate. Still, 20 points on 6-13 FG isn’t shabby and his defense hasn’t been as bad as people thought it was going to be.
Bargnani: Another poor showing, two threes in garbage time makes his line a little more respectable: 26min, 3-9 FG, 11pts, 3rebs. What stuck out was his reluctance to take Noah to the rim in an isolation situation where the Bulls weren’t even showing help. Want to compare a center and a center? Check Noah and Bargnani’s shot-chart. The help defense was poor as usual, and the offense sparse. The Bulls commentators felt that the Raptors weren’t running plays for him, which I’m starting to agree with because that’s what needs to happen since he can’t create his own shot. In the Raptors’ defense, they’re not running plays for anyone.
Weems: The best Raptor on the night (12pts, 6-9FG), most of his shots came out of some kind of flow and seemed reasonable at the time. I can see Kleiza and him being 1-2 in terms of scoring provided Triano doesn’t hurt Weems by ignoring him in the offense in favor of others.
Evans: Absolute trash. Turned the ball over three times trying to dribble it (why?) and was caught in no-man’s land on defense on every other possession. This showcasing isn’t working, just put him on the end of the bench in the classic POB role.
Jack: Got frustrated and showed why people think he’s a little too shaky to be a leader. When things go south, don’t try to take on three guys and have your shot blocked, just try to instill some calm instead of panicking. Not a good game, 2-9 FG and didn’t come close to checking Rose.
DeRozan: Must hit the jumper and he wasn’t doing it tonight either. Bricked one badly and seemed to lose confidence. Anytime he has zero FTAs, you know it wasn’t his night.
Dorsey: Eight minutes of nothing, still the only Raptor that knows how to box-out. Miles ahead of Evans, now if only he could teach Johnson to carve space in the paint instead of reaching for a rebound like it was an apple on a tree.
Dupree: Played garbage time, should be cut in favor of playing time for Wright. Probably only played because Kleiza was out.
Alabi: Played three minutes, scored a basket. Garbage time hero.
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Unlike the last two games, the defense wasn’t as committed and the first backcourt pressure was seen in the third quarter. The Bulls were scoring in transition on Raptors makes which is a sign of the worst kind of transition defense. The blame for that goes one through five, but keep in mind that the Bulls are simply better than us. This is going to be a common theme this season so get used to it. Lot of talk in the chat about YGZ® being a bust so far, to which I say that they’re doing their best and are coming up short. Let’s forget about the summer-league because that was a step above the YMCA, now that the Raptors are in the big leagues we’re seeing first hand just how much YGZ® have to develop in every aspect of the game before being worthy of a nickname.
Raps at home to Philly tonight at 7PM.
