The Morning After The Night Before, XXXIII, The Moony News

Not a particularly entertaining game Friday, was it? At no time did anyone in the building really thing seriously that the Knicks would come back and win. Dead crowd, dead night, Raptors were okay except Bosh was great and it was one of those ‘team wins game it should’ victories.

But there were still lessons.

Three Things I Learned

Moon shines in Big Easy

Word got out after the game that Mr. Moon is going to New Orleans.

To dunk on all-star weekend.

Not sure who he’s going to be up against but, as many of us had figured, his shocking athleticism makes him the first Raptor to be in the dunk contest since Vince in 2000. And we all know how that turned out.

Great honour for a great kid who’s gonna wow ‘em with his stories of growing up in small-town Alabama and his tour of the alphabet soup of minor leagues.

A cynic might suggest now he’ll learn to go to the basket more often.

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Big time Bosh

Never mind the 40-11 he dropped on the Knicks – my man Grange ™ and I both thought he was going for 50 and he probably should have – he’s getting some cross-over appeal with that outstanding youtube all-star thing of his.

Picked up my copy of Newsweek on the way to New York (Barack Obama on the cover, for a change) and right the Perspectives page is wee note on Bosh’s video.

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A mirror image?

Every time I see Eddy Curry, he reminds more of Oliver Miller.

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Let’s go quickly to the mailbag for one:

Q: Seeing as Miami and Atlanta have to replay the last 51.9 seconds of a game due to Shaq fouling out in error, why didn't the Raptors and Hawks get a do-over last year when two Raptors points weren't counted? Isn't that even more critical to the end of a two point game then who is on the floor? I know they might not have an exact time of the mistake, but at least correcting the score and giving them say two minutes to play the rest of the game would have made sense.  Also, does Atlanta need to hire some new scorekeepers?

Jason C, Port Perry

A: No, it’s not. The Raptor points, you could argue, may have created a different strategical end of that game, but that’s it. The blown foul situation with Shaq directly determined who could play and who couldn’t.

That’s much more egregious, in my opinion. Of course, that won’t be shared by many of you but … And I'm not entirely sure the Raptors actually lodged an official protest when they found out.

But, yes, they need to whack that entire scoring crew down there.

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I’ve known Isiah Thomas for about 15 years now and the guy who was sitting in an ante-room doing a pre-game media session Friday night was not him.

Two-word answers to questions, none of the laugh that used to come so easily. Too bad, too. At many levels he’s a likable guy, at some he’s not.

But he’s really a Dead Man Walking and it’s too bad. If Jim Dolan were any kind of man, he’d do the inevitable now.

Seems Frank Isola in today’s NY Daily News thinks Dolan might just do that.

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How tough are the New York fans?
My boy Brian Mahoney of the AP recounts the Kid’s Day at the Garden this year when they had a little lass introduce the starting lineups.

Surely she’d get a pass from the boos that accompany every mention of Isiah Thomas’s name, right? Nope, they booed him – through her – no matter how it made the little girl feel.

Nice folks down there.

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That’ll be it for now, just got off a plane and on way to practice to see what Moon’s got to say for himself. Don’t forget, a bonus mailbag tomorrow.

Comments

[Dan West]

Hey Doug. Maybe I missed somthing but did Andrea not assist Bosh on a dunk. Looked on raptors.com at the box score and he showed no assists. He was being covered in the post by Marbury I think and threw Bosh a bounce pass.I Taped the game so I will check again. I'm positive that was an assist.

Blogger's note: I remember the play and if they didn't give him an assist, they should have. It is the vagaries of scoring, I guess.

[Mikey]

Love the W. No complaints about last night. I love it when Bosh takes it to the ring. If we had one or more other guys doing that consistently, along with Bosh, and with the shooting coming around, we should be able to win more consistently. Moon could be another good inside guy I think. A dangerous backup point guard, until TJ is back would also be nice, even though Martin was better than Dixon.

BC looked a little disgusted near the end but I don't think there was any possible way they were blowing the w last night.

I've been to Knicks games when they were playing better and the fans were loudly complaining then, mainly abut QRich. I guess I concluded that loud complaining is just part of the tradition.

I can't imagine what it was like last night.