There are going to be sweeping changes in Toronto, the question is who should go and who should stay. It's obvious that our roster isn't good enough and there's plenty of dead weights, overpaid players and bad fits. Looking at the mess that is our roster, who would you actually keep, if anyone, who would…
The Raptors will no doubt renounce the rights to O'Bryant, Wright and Nesterovic thus freeing up a cap-hold of $5.57M. This amount would otherwise be counted against the cap when making any transactions. The only question is whether they will renounce Amir Johnson or not. His cap-hold is $7.88M.
The starting lineup changes have had one effect which I think is very important: it has reduced the pace of the game, i.e: the number of possessions played. The combination of having better defensive players on the floor longer and having to guard less has helped us become a better defensive unit.
“We don’t have any resistance,” Chris Bosh said “We let guys walk down into the post, we let guys go by us with no resistance. There’s no resistance. It’s just too easy.”
“We need him to focus,” head coach Jay Triano said. “When we were rolling, he was doing more things and it becomes a confidence building thing for him. If he’s not making shots (he has to) do something else so we can keep him on the floor. Defend, be there on the help side, rebound…
“He wanted the basketball,” Raptors coach Jay Triano said, “and we gave it to him.”
"It doesn't matter who starts, it doesn't matter who plays more minutes, we've got to win games. We're upset because we're losing games. We're not upset because I'm not playing or I'm not starting".
"No. What else do you want me to do?" he said. "Do you want me to score 30, 40 points a game? Twenty blocks a game? That's not my game. That's not what I do. I try to get these guys going, and that's pretty much it. I'm not weak-minded by any means.
Comparing the schedule of the Raptors and Bulls, we notice that the Bulls play two more games against teams over .500.
"I thought Jose was playing pretty darn well," said Triano. "I thought we had a good rhythm with that group so I just rolled with it. When he was on the floor, I thought we were playing pretty darn good." However, the coach stopped short of confirming a permanent shift for Wednesday's game at home…
Check out our second episode of LCN with host Colin Alschotz direct from the ACC!! It just keeps getting better.