A move back to the bench didn’t agree with Jerryd Bayless. Bayless who had some outstanding moments in place of incumbent starter Calderon, saw his minutes drastically cut with the Spaniard playing well.
While Calderon notched a double-double, Bayless failed to make an impact offensively, though he looked solid on defence.
Bayless played just 14 minutes, scoring a basket and adding an assist and revealed after the game he was suffering from a bout with the flu.
Bargnani, who is dealing with both some tendonitis in his left knee and a tender right ankle as result of over-compensating for the sore knee, said it was just a matter of getting it loose.
Based on the fact that 24 of his 32 points came in the second quarter, you could surmise it took about two quarters for that to happen.
“It doesn’t feel good yet,” Bargnani admitted. “I have to do work on it. It needs therapy but when it gets warm it definitely gets better.”
Back-to-back off days, including sitting out Wednesday’s game against Chicago helped, but it appears the day-to-day status will be attached to Bargnani’s name for at least a little while longer.
He spent the pre-game in the Raptors practice gym upstairs in the Air Canada Centre trying to get loose and was not pencilled into the lineup until about 25 minutes before the game.
The return of Jose Calderon also played into the big night for Bargnani. After four games off to rest a sore left foot, Calderon was back directing the Raptors offence as only he knows how. He finished the night with 15 points and 14 assists, but his biggest impact may have been ensuring the ball was in Bargnani’s hands a lot in the second half.
Calderon is one of the few, if not the only Raptor, who seems to realize that when Bargnani starts to heat up, it’s in the team’s best interests to feed him the ball as often as possible.
Too often, Bargnani starts to heat up and quickly becomes nothing more than a decoy. That didn’t happen on Friday.
“I think we just did a better job of getting him the ball in the right spots,” Raptors head coach Jay Triano said. “We knew we were going to go to him, we just wanted to ease him back in a little bit. The second half we needed to get the best player the basketball.”
Bargnani may not get a lot of love in Toronto, but more and more he’s hearing plenty from his opponents.
“Every game I have played against him he has gotten better,” Nets centre Brook Lopez said. “He is a fantastic player and is always a great challenge for me. Obviously he is a knock-down shooter and he plays very well off of that. You have to respect his shot, he pump fakes, puts it on the floor and gets to the basket. He is playing more in the post, too. He is doing a fantastic job.”
Now back in the game after a year and a half at home in Atlanta, Mitchell says the time off have provided him the opportunity to reflect on what is important in life.
“You relax a little bit and you realize the last 41/2 years had been a blur,” Mitchell said. “I can think back to conversations I thought I was having with people but my mind was on basketball. It was constant. You realize what a grind it is when you’re the head coach and you’re trying to get to a certain point. It’s a grind and you almost become (unaware) of everything else that is going on in the world.”
Mitchell swears that will never happen again, no matter what his future holds.
“When you step away from it for a while you kind of get a different perspective,” he said. “You have to have a balance in your life and I think at the time when I was (head coach in Toronto) I didn’t have any balance. I think if I ever get an opportunity again, I’ll have more of a balance in who I am as a person in my life. You just get so caught up in the moment and the games because it is so many games in such a short period of time, you kind of forget who you are.”
Mitchell knows exactly who he is now and is much more measured when he speaks, something he learned he had to be after one too many incidents of speaking before thinking.
“I thought it was kind of amusing at the time,” Mitchell said of the many occasions he would speak first and think about the impact those words might have later. “But then when Mr. Tanenbaum would call and he and Richard Peddie would call me into the office, and they’d kind of get on me about it, I didn’t think it was so funny then.”
The fact Bargnani exploded in the second half – he had 24 of his points and five of his rebounds after the break – had to be the most pleasing aspect of his performance.
“I think we just did a better job of getting him the ball in the right spots,” said Raptors coach Jay Triano. “I think the first half, we tried to get Amir (Johnson) going a little bit, gave him a couple of plays to start; we tried to get DeMar (DeRozan) going a bit.
“It was like five, six minutes in before Andrea touched the ball anywhere in our offence, other than a lob. We knew we were going to go to him, we just wanted to ease him back into it a little bit. But in the second half, we needed to get our best payer the basketball.”
That’s exactly what they did, feeding Bargnani down low and in the mid-post as he shredded New Jersey’s Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries on a 14-for-26 night from the field.
But his biggest play might have been an assist.
Up two with 38 seconds left, the Raptors did what everyone expected, setting Bargnani up in the post. But it was late in the shot-clock when he got the ball, he didn’t have time to make too many moves – so he calmly kicked it out to Leandro Barbosa, who drilled a game-breaking three-pointer.
“We didn’t want him to throw the ball back out to Barbosa, we wanted him to swing it to the weak side, which is our system,” New Jersey coach Avery Johnson said of the key possession. “But we lost vision and Barbosa got the ball.”
Bargnani and Calderon returned to the Raptors’ starting lineup Friday, after Calderon missed four straight games with a sore foot and painful knees forced Bargnani to sit out of Wednesday’s one-sided defeat to the Chicago Bulls.
“I think the [injuries] were bothering them,” Triano said after the game. “They just played through it.”
Indeed. Bargnani limped noticeably at one point, but charged all night, contributing a game-high 32 points, including key jumpers during an intense forth quarter, where the lead changed five times and both teams led by six points or more.
Calderon announced his return with 14 assists and 15 points, although Triano said the Nets deserved credit for making his job difficult. “This is one of the first teams that picked up our point guard in the front court and [didn’t let] us run the way we like to run.”
Credit also went to Linas Kleiza, who played a whopping 45 minutes and sat icing his feet and right knee afterward. Triano said Kleiza’s 18 points and 12 rebounds were “huge,” notably because he took the pressure off Bargnani and allowed him to ease into the game. “The big thing for us was his rebounding,” Triano said.
“To see how Andrea has developed [is great],” Mitchell, who shared a hug with Bargnani after the game, said. “We all knew he was going to be good, it was just how long it was going to take for him to get there.”
It must have pained Mitchell on Friday. Bargnani toyed with former Raptor Kris Humphries in the second half, giving Kim Kardashian’s significant other shot fake after shot fake before he finally bit.
"We’ve got to execute better down the stretch," said Farmar (nine points, five assists).
"We came to play tonight. We just couldn’t finish," coach Avery Johnson said
"We pretty much had control of the game until the fourth quarter," said Devin Harris (15 points, six assists).
"We had a couple of defensive breakdowns," said Brook Lopez (20 points). "We did a great job of getting stops early and running off that and that kind of evaporated."
And so did their hope of winning. After that flying Farmar jam off a turnover, the Nets missed nine of 11 shots, tossed in three turnovers and on the other end failed to arise defensively. The killer shot, one of three critical plays singled out by Johnson, came from Leandro Barbosa (10 points), who banged home a 3-pointer at :14.9, beating the shot clock by :00.9. The Nets, down two, doubled Bargnani who kicked it out to Barbosa for the dagger and a 97-92 lead.
"We didn’t want him to throw the ball back out to Barbosa," Johnson said. "We wanted him to swing it to the weak side, but Barbosa got the ball."
And rammed it down the Nets’ throats.
"We wanted to make someone beat us besides Bargnani," Harris said — so Barbosa filled the role.
Although the Nets came off a game last night, they led for the majority of the game. New Jersey led, 48-42, and did not relinquish the lead until Jose Calderon knocked down a three with 8:08 left in the fourth quarter.
That energy that Avery Johnson praised in Thursday night’s win over Washington was absent down the stretch. After Toronto’s large run, New Jersey needed everything in the tank to get back in the game.
Brook Lopez finished with a team-high 20 points and seven rebounds, but the center also committed six turnovers. Kris Humphries, the former Raptor, notched yet another double-double with 12 points and 12 rebounds.
With the loss, the Nets drop to 7-20 on the season and 2-12 away from The Rock. In addition, they are 0-6 against teams in the Atlantic Division. The Nets sit three games behind the 10-17 Raptors and 15 games behind division leading Boston.
“Bargnani’s a tough cover for anybody, and he had a big night,’’ Johnson said. “We gave him a lot of different looks. He beat some of our coverages, and just when we’re down two points there, in the closing seconds, we double-team him and then we give up a 3-pointer to (Leandro) Barbosa.’’
That was with the Raptors leading, 94-92, and less than 20 seconds left. Calderon gave it to Bargnani in the high post and Bargnani passed out to Barbosa, who buried a 3-pointer to make it 97-92 with 14 seconds left.
“We wanted to make somebody else beat us besides Bargnani, and he made the shot,’’ Harris said of Barbosa. “You’ve got to give them credit — they made the shots, and they wanted it more than us.’’
But there were other key moments that Johnson pointed to. There was another rebound not corralled off a free throw — this one with 8:16 left with the Nets up, 79-77. Linas Kleiza (18 points, 12 rebounds) missed the second of two foul shots and Amir Johnson tipped the ball out to — who else? — Bargnani and the Raptors got a fresh possession. Calderon ended up hitting a 3-pointer to put the Raps ahead, 80-79.
Harris scored on a drive to put the Nets back in front, 81-80, but that was the last lead the Nets would have. Kleiza hit a 3-pointer to start a 9-0 run as Toronto took command.
Leaving Barbosa alone was just the tip of the iceberg.
Earlier in the fourth, the Nets couldn’t control a defensive free-throw rebound – the fourth time that’s happened this season at critical times. The Raptors took advantage as Calderon buried a three with 8:09 left to put Toronto up one.
The Nets’ perimeter defense was terrible in the second half as they let the Raptors hit 6-of-12 from deep, including 4-of-6 in the fourth.
“We give up another free-throw rebound which has been our Achilles’ heel,” Johnson said.
“Defensively we lacked a little bit in that fourth quarter,” said Devin Harris, who had 15 points and six assists.
Down 92-90 late in the fourth, the Nets had two chances to tie it. But Travis Outlaw’s jumper was short and newly acquired Sasha Vujacic misfired on a jump shot.
Another costly defensive breakdown occurred on the next trip as Calderon got in the paint and kicked it back to DeMar DeRozan, who drove and threw down an emphatic dunk with 43.3 seconds remaining to make it 94-90.
