Sixers at Raptors, game-day Dino-bytes

Welcome back to our usual pre-game look at tonight’s Raptors game.

 

PHILADELPHIA (15-21) at TORONTO (12-22)

Air Canada Centre

TIPOFF: 7 p.m.

TV: Sportsnet; RADIO: FAN590

Probable starters

Philadelphia: Jrue Holiday, Jason Richardson, Evan Turner, Thaddeus Young, Lavoy Allan; Toronto: Jose Calderon, DeMar DeRozan, Mickael Pietrus, Ed Davis, Aaron Gray.

Key backups tonight

Philadelphia: Nick Young (doesn’t the prolific scorer always torch Toronto?), Spencer Hawes (best big man off the bench for the Sixers); Toronto: Amir Johnson (should be able to exploit suspect Sixer frontcourt), Alan Anderson (can he continue torrid scoring streak).

Season series

Philadelphia leads, 2-0.

Couple of bad Toronto games so far this season, were blitzed in a second quarter here early in the season and lost; then Raptors were out-scored 33-18 in the fourth quarter of a defeat in Philly.

All-time, Toronto is 32-34 against Philly and 16-16 at home.

What happened this morning

Wait and see

Terrence Ross, who tweaked an ankle Sunday, did some work at shootaround and was walking normally when he passed us in the hallway.

Still, Raptors are going to wait and see how he comes through pre-game warmup before declaring him fit, or unfit, to play.

With Philadelphia heavily reliant on wings and guards to score, having Ross available is pretty big.

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No happy Holiday, they hope

The Sixers’ best player right now is guard Jrue Holiday.

He averages 18.4 points and 8.9 assists per game.

Dwane Casey was all about trying to make sure Holiday doesn’t create havoc in the paint, according to Toronto’s coach Holiday is behind only San Antonio’s Tony Parker and Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook as the best break-down guards in the league.

“He’s playing all-star basketball,” was how Casey put it.

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The men in charge

Derrick Stafford, Courtney Kirkland and Derek Richardson will tote the whistles tonight.

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What they’re saying

Here’s this morning’s game story from Philadelphia’s drubbing at the hands of the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday night.

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Esoteric stat, Part 1

The Raptors are 0-5 against Atlantic Division foes this season.

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They know the feeling

Philadelphia is in the midst of the worst possible schedule you can imagine.

They have just finished an eight-game road trip (they went 2-6), were home Tuesday and back out today.

They lost 12 of their last 15 and dropped to ninth in the East thanks to the grind.

Dwane Casey? Hardly sympathetic.

“No one had any sympathy for us, we’re not going to have any sympathy for them,” he said.

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Esoteric stat, Part 2

In the last 10 games, Jose Calderon has an assist-to-turnover ration of 6.19 (9.9 assists per game, 1.6 turnovers per game).

That’s the best in the NBA.

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Comments

[Peter]

I know that you'll probably say that they're unrelated. But does the firing of Brian Burke, put Bryan Colangelo on more of a hot seat. Is this a sign of the new ownership showing less patience with struggling GM's?

Blogger's note: Am shocked and have to some calling/texting/e-mailing but believe there's no correlation. Had been plenty of opportunity for management to move earlier and it didn't

[Peter]

Well, I just hope they change Burkie's Dog House, to Bargnani's Dog House, just to see the comment section explode. :)

[sportschic]

Glad to see the Dino-Bytes back, but I think you mean it's a pre-game look. If it were post-game you could already tell us what happens tonight! ;)

Blogger's note: I was too flabbergasted by the pucks, obviously

[p00ka]

doug do you believe that all the media attention the leafs get contributed to burkes firing?

whereas you just sit there and try to do as little reporting as possible on the raptors?