The Goods On The Game, Heat at Raptors

Finally, a home game.

Feels a bit odd, no?

GruntTV enjoys a bit of a break

Live: Raptors Pre-Game Chat

Doug Smith held a live Q&A session today at 1 p.m., as the Raptors prepared to take on the Miami Heat.

Back to the usual blather

After a day for everyone to catch their breath, we offer this a bit later that usual but it felt good to sleep for a wee bit of extended time.

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So what do we all make of Chris Bosh’s torrid start to the season?

The numbers, as we showed in the paper today, are quite something and I think the one I’m most impressed with is the more than four offensive rebounds he’s getting per game. We haven’t seen that kind of aggression on the offensive glass over an extended period in years.

But what I found most interesting in the 10-minute chat we had in a corner of the Energy Solutions Arena locker room the other night was his contention that a large part of his transformation came about because he wanted to really be considered among the elite in the league.

Ego-driven, it is. And, to me, that’s a very good thing.

All the best players in every sport have a lot of “me” about them, a bit of selfishness and a cockiness that makes them stand out. Bosh really hasn’t shown much of that, he’s talked it a little bit in the past but he’s never really displayed it on a consistent basis. Now? He is.

No, his game is far from perfect and he fully admits to a couple of brain freezes on defence that cost his team buckets and he knows that has to improve. But there is an edge to him this year that can only help.

He remains the team’s best player – by far – and if the best player has an edge to him, you’d think it would eventually rub off onto some of his teammates.

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You all remember Ira, right? My guy at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel?

Well, here’s what he’s got to say today before this big one.

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Speaking of travel heck, I want to personally thank United Airlines for screwing things up yesterday by having the plane that was coming to get us in Salt Lake be late so we were late getting to Chicago and the connection home was missed.

Nothing like a 15-hour travel day to end a week-long trip.

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Here’s the thing.

You read my mail and you’d think this is the worst 5-7 team in the history of basketball. More Nets-like than you could imagine.

Guess what?

They’re not the elite but they’re not with the dregs and isn’t that what everyone expected when this whole exercise began? Not sure what kind of instant gratification everyone was thinking about over the first three weeks of the season but, two below .500 now is about where they should be.

This is, in my opinion, still about a 43-win team, all things being equal, and being 5-7 now may not equate mathematically to that number but, in the reality of an NBA season and the vagaries of the schedule, I still think it does.

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You saw Dave’s piece on Reggie Evans, I presume.

And there you have it: No one knows for certain when he’ll be back so the questions can end, right?

Let me also say this: Reggie is good and he’s tough and he’ll answer a lot of needs this team has. But, please, don’t think that he minute he’s back in uniform that things will magically turn around and be good every second of every game.

Fans sometimes have this ability to over-estimate the value of missing pieces and turn them into something they’re not.

The Raptors will get consistently good when everybody – chief among them the other 11 guys in uniform – put out a consistent effort every night.

It’s on guys like Bosh and Bargnani, Calderon and Turkoglu, DeRozan, Bellinelli, Wright and Johnson and Jack to be better more often.

Yes, Reggie helps; no, he doesn’t get it going better all the time just by himself.

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Only a few days left to enter our nifty contest. If I were you, I’d click here and try to get in on the fun.

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We all have read, or heard, that the Knicks have some interest in Allen Iverson, who cleared waivers last night.

Well, the whispers I was hearing at a couple of places on the road trip was that Miami might be in the mix, too. Not sure how that fits – well, I’m not sure how Iverson fits anywhere, to tell you the truth – but I do know he’d probably get his wish to be a starter.

The thing would be if he’d try to dominate the ball on a team with Dwyane Wade, that’s where trouble lurks.

But we will know tonight where Iverson will land.

Under waiver rules, teams put “claims” in on players who are on waivers and if there are more than one claim on a player when that period ends, the team with the worst record is “awarded him.”

So, if the Knicks and Heat want him, well, he’s off to New York.

Might make the pre-game period tonight a little more interesting as we wait around and see what happens.

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Speaking of pre-game period, we’re back to some kind of normal schedule around here.

We’ll try to knock off a 1 p.m. chat; we’ll try to get an episode of GruntTV on the air and then the regular game drill tonight.

We’re also going to put together a Sunday mailbag (I believe blowing off practice tomorrow will be in my best interest) so if you’ve got some non-game specific queries send ‘em along.

And by that, I mean questions that aren’t: “Well, they sucked in the first quarter in Utah, here’s 250 words on why I think that way. “What do you say?”

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As I’m sitting out the missed connection at O’Hare yesterday, in the cramped little Air Canada corner by Gate E1, I’m thinking just how much I dislike that airport.

Too spread out but too crowded; the $10 little sandwich and bottle of water was a bit much to take and there just seems to be a bad vibe around the place.

The last missive from the road -- for now

Okay, this is it.

The last middle-of-the-night (well, Eastern time, at least) posting for a little while. I’m going to be home eventually today and back on some sort of normal schedule like I used to keep so things will be as they were starting tomorrow.

Unless there’s jetlag and I’m up all night. Then all bets are off.

Until then …

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THREE THINGS I LEARNED

So, where are they?

We all wondered how they’d come out of this difficult start, what with the nine new guys and the eight road games against the West in their first 12 games.

And I think they’re probably right where they should be, record-wise and the way they play.

It was never going to be a seamless transition from what they looked like on paper to how they performed on the court and we’ve seen all kinds of blips in the first dozen games. The interior defence, which is as much about slow rotations by wings as it is the bigs, is scary bad at times, and passable at others. Perimeter defence? Same thing. Horrible and passable, passable and horrible. Sometimes within the same game.

But, really, 5-7 isn’t that bad. It’s about what I expected and it suggests they’ve survived this stretch without fracturing.

I mentioned when the season began that something like a 3-9 or 2-10 start would be disastrous to the psyche of a team still trying to find itself and the feeling I’m getting being around these guys is that they really think the pieces are there and the consistency that’s been sorely lacking will come.

Maybe it will – I still say we need 20 games to truly assess what they’ve got and what they are – but going 5-7 through this stretch isn’t terrible.

It’s not great, but it’s not as bad as it could be.

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Now, about that house

The theory sounds great: Protect the paint, shrink the court, make teams beat you with contested jump shots.

In reality: It’s the one glaring and consistent weakness of this team right now.

One play comes quickly to mind from last night.

Think it was in the second quarter – or maybe the first – but a Jazz shot goes up and Andrei Kirilenko goes from the left elbow to the right side of the rim to tip in the miss.

Not a single, solitary Raptor even shot him a passing glance, let alone put a body on him and it’s a perfect example of them not protecting the paint.

Now, it was one play that stood out but the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming that they have to work harder at doing what the coaches want them to do.

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Ups and downs

Oh, those rookies. They can be such teases.

How many thought DeMar DeRozan had broken through some imaginary boundary with his 17 points against Denver on Tuesday night?

I know a lot of you did because dozens told me yesterday how he had to play more because he’s good and ready to make that next step.

Well, how’s two points in 15 minutes, four missed shots in five attempts, the same number of rebounds that I got and absolutely no impact on the game whatsoever.

He got lost fighting through screens, found himself standing in the corner watching on offence instead of getting involved and had one of those Rookie Nights that are going to pop up every now and then.

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And in other news …

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This is one of those ‘duh!’ stats but what the heck.

When these guys give up 100, they’re 0-7.

When they score 100, they’re 5-0.

When the other team scores less than 100, they're 5-0.

Not sure what that means but it was in the notes package we got last night so I figured I’d pass it along.

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Remember a while ago, I was making an astute observation that one thing I disliked about hotels were elevators that only had the floor buttons on one side because I always turn the wrong when I get in them?

(Yeah, that was a major digression, wasn’t it?)

Well, after four hotels in seven nights on the road just now, here’s another:

Wall plugs.

Or, more correctly, no wall plugs.

Seriously, great expanses of boring wall and you’d think they’d put a socket in there somewhere so a guy could use the iron and ironing board without having to stand in the freaking doorway to the bathroom.

Yeesh.

So, all you hotel builders who are reading this, get it together!

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So, what do you think of the Jazz?

If you’re me, after one whole game of seeing them, you think they are very much a middle-tier team in the West. Yes, they were without Okur and he’s a big part of what they do but they just don’t seem to have it all together.

They’ve got two kids – Matthews and Maynor – playing big minutes, I don’t like the offence they get off their bench at all and I think they’re behind the Lakers, Suns, Blazers, Spurs and, probably, the Mavs right now.

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Speaking of Salt Lake, here’s how the game played out in the local paper.

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You’ll never guess who I ran into in the airport on the way from Denver to Salt Lake yesterday? Give up?

How about Mike Lupica of the New York Post.

Anyway, we’re chatting and he brings up a point I had entirely forgotten about. When I told him I was headed to Salt Lake for another game, he mentioned that the Jazz, thanks to the largesse of one Isiah Thomas, have New York’s unprotected first-round draft pick this coming June.

How sweet is that for the Jazz?

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You know what you should do today?

Click here and make a kid’s Christmas. The Proudfoot Corner of the Star’s Santa Claus fund is one of the very, very best things we do – my man Perk works tirelessly at it – and it’d be very nice of you to make a little donation, if you can afford it.

Thanks.

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Hmm, let’s see.

No game, no chat, no video.

What’s a guy to do with all this idle time?

For real, it’s going to be quite odd to be home tonight after just a regular day of writing and traveling.

Odd. But fun.

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One more digression, and I swear that’s it for today.

Slovenia beats Russia and qualifies for the World Cup?

Just saw the highlight here on ESPN and I’m pretty sure that was Rasho I saw running down the streets of Salt Lake waving the flag.