We should’ve won but I’ll settle for a tie and the feeling of “knocking” Chelsea out of the title race. Kalou probably should’ve given Chelsea the lead with minutes to play but Arsenal were the ones that had more real chances to score (they always do). Great first half for the Gunners, we were able to play wide football and pressure Chelsea for long stretches without conceding anything defensively. Baptista would rather have been fouled than shoot and he got his wish when Khalid Bouhlarouz brought him down - penalty decision was easy. The sending off might have been a little too harsh, but whatever - doesn’t matter.

Baptista and Juggernaut: All strength, no skill

Thierry Henry was seen in the stands, he had the “Man, I would’ve scored at least twice if I was in there tonight” look on his face. I think a lot of Arsenal fans are writing of the disappointments of this season to missed chances, and more specifically our primary strikers not being in there to finish them off. I think RVP and Henry not being fit is about 60% of the problem, we still have issues in central defense (Senderos) and we do need a gritty power striker in addition to the ones with finesse. Baptista was a good idea at the time but the guy turned out to be like Juggernaut from X-Men - no skill, all force.

There were too great Arsenal passing sequences today, of course we didn’t’ score but it was nonetheless great to watch. The early passing play which Adebayor drilled straight to Czech and the Fabregas back-heel pass to Adebayor in the second half were both of very high quality. It brings a tear to my eye when I see such chances not being taken. Even struggling Eboue had a chance on the late counter-attack but his rocket shot grazed the bar. Gallas had a chance to give the Gunners a 2-0 lead but he made a mess of the free header.

It was strange to see Arsenal play better when they were even rather than a man up. I think the defense needs to be given a lot of credit for staving of Chelsea in the final 15 minutes. After William Gallas allowed SWP to service a cross which Essien nailed home, he did step up and made sure that that mistake wasn’t repeated. I don’t know what to think of Gallas, in some games he’s brilliant and in others he’s playing with an IQ of 50, you just don’t know which one will show up. One reason I like Gallas is because he goes forward and tries to score, which is something we need more off. Oh crap, I just got reminded of how we still haven’t filled the hole left by Pires. That’s always depressing.

Fabregas was awesome again, he’s got the exact weight to put on the ball down to a science. It’s hard to believe he just turned 20 and he’s not even close to being how good he will eventually be. If there’s one guy on Arsenal that gets me excited about the future, it’s him. Denilson was in great pain after his injury and I’m no doctor but it’s got metatarsal written all over it. Hopefully he’s alright.

I would like to have avenged our Carling Cup defeat with a win, but as I said before, I’ll take this result. Finishing 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the premiership is the exact same thing.

Gilberto Penalty + Julio Baptista Fouled 1-0

Michael Essien 1-1

Final Score on ESPN

That was the longest subway ride ever. From Eglinton to Union. It seemed like 4 hours but it was only 20 minutes. Just like that last play. I’m just sad, not even upset, just extremely sad over what just happened. It’s too painful to go over the details, let alone the final play. It flat-out hurts and depresses to even think about what the possibilities were if Calderon’s poss to Bosh would’ve been an inch or two higher. Not even a bad play coming out of a timeout, pick ‘n roll and Bosh seals off his man, which he did, but the service was a little too low. That pass is made and the Raptors visit Cleveland in round 2. It really is that painfully simple and straightforward. I don’t even have the energy to break for a paragraph. Here, I’ll do it.

We played well, so well that I wonder how we were so bad in the previous two games in this building. I guess it has to do with having the perennial backs against the perennial wall, something about survival that brings about the primal fear and fights to stave of extinction. Fights so hard that you actually believe that they might come through, that we can pull off a win so big that it can define a franchise. So big that it can forever bury the betrayal of Vince Carter, so big that it was too good to be true. I had no doubt in my mind that we would score in the final eight seconds, I was sure, sure as there is snow in Canada, sure as RJ is gay, sure as Calderon has balls, sure as rice is white, sure as Kidd is a great player, sure as Parker is a keeper, sure as Bargnani is a future star, sure as….well, you get the point, I was pretty sure. But the man I least expected to make a fundamental mistake actually made one as Calderon gifted the Nets a turnover. Season over.

I don’t even feel like going over how we were schooled after every timeout or stoppage of play, how Anthony Parker missed two crucial FTs after getting fouled on a 3 pointer, how VC almost cost the Nets the game with an ill-advised shot, how we left Nachbar wide open so many times, these are all moot points. The season is over and there is nothing we can do, no chant or cheer that will bring that back. It’s all over. There’s no point breaking down this game except to say that we played hard, we played competitive and even outplayed the Nets, a few lucky bounces, a couple missed FTs, a few bad calls, it all worked against us today, but I can say that I’m proud of the way we came out, we went down fighting and it was just a few funny bounces of the ball that saw the Nets through.

Is Sam Mitchell going to be back?. Probably not. Colangelo wants a coach of his choosing and I think he’s seen enough mistakes by Mitchell to have the motivation to find one. Mitchell being in demand also helps to justify looking for a new coach. I want Mitchell out because his offensive sets are a joke (even though those curls were effective today) and I don’t think players are being utilized to the best of their ability. It doesn’t matter, too early in the off-season, which I don’t believe just started.

Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Let’s Go Raptors.

This installment of Why IE Sucks? is dedicated to the innocent and virtuous developer who has spent hours and hours wondering why their Ajax calls are returning data so stale that it’s inedible to the point of being deadly. Here’s the scene: if you’re using Prototype or Scriptaculous and are wondering why Ajax.Updater or Ajax.Request are “not working” and the server-side call is never being made, relax there’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing, it all has to do with IE’s sick love of caching.

Firefox and any other browser made by developers possessing an IQ of over 50 don’t have this this “feature” as IE likes to call it. The easiest way to avoid this is to not make GET calls at all using Ajax.Request or Ajax.Updater, instead use POST and you’ll be fine. If you’re hell bent on using GET, you will have to make every call made to the server unique. The fastest and easiest way of doing this for me is to append a random number at the end of the query string. In other words, use the parameters option from Ajax.Options and throw in a random number as one of the request parameters:

new Ajax.Request( 'myPage.html', {
   method: 'get',
   parameters: {
      differentiator: Math.floor(Math.random()*50000)
   }
});

As nasty and laughable as the above code is, it works since your final URL will always be something like mypath.html?differentiator=25632 courtesy of the random number being generated. Again, all this can be avoided by just using ‘post’.

So why does IE go out of its way to break our balls? It’s the philosophy of assuming your customers have the exact same needs as the developer who made the piece of software. You’d think after making life miserable enough by not having a debugger for JavaScript, they’d go easy on us when it comes to the most basic things of web development but no, every sweat or tear extracted is a penny earned for Microsoft.

This post has moved here.

Greatest T-Shirt Ever

If this game is two minutes longer, we lose. TJ Ford gets plowed by Vince early on and is forced to leave, and as inhumane as it sounds and I’ll probably go to hell for it, it was the best thing to happen to the Raps. After he threw his first quarter pass in the second row everybody in the arena was like here we go again. His injury plus the unproductive Bosh picking up early fouls meant our theoretical two best players are out of the game. Great! They’ve been stinking it up anyways. Enter Calderon and Bargnani who light up the first quarter from inside and out to put the Raps up 20 by the end of the first. From then on the Nets kept on shaving the lead at a steady mathematical rate with Calderon, Parker and Mo Pete providing just enough buffer to last the 48 minutes. When Nachbar launched that final three to win it, here’s what went through my mind: Oh shit, he’s already missed one game-winner plus he’s been off tonight so the law of averages is about to catch up to us and he’s about to put the final nail in the coffin and I might just have a coronary. Luckily he missed.

Quitter Carter

The Let’s Go Raptors, VC Sucks chants work. I have no doubt about it. Every time he’s on the line and the chant is on, he invariably goes 1 for 2. He missed 4 free throws today and we won by 2. How’s that for proof? VC hit some ridiculous shots to bring the Nets back and even though he struggled early, he found his way around Mo Pete and Parker’s inspirational defense. Mo Pete hit 3 massive treys to keep the Nets at bay, all three came at crucial times. Nobody still has any clue why Mo Pete was glued to the deep end of the bench for so long by Mitchell, this guy is a veteran who plays with passion even when he’s playing five minutes a game. Mo Pete came up big for us tonight and without him we would’ve lost. The best part is he kept it simple, nothing was forced and when his shots come naturally, he’s deadly.

The funny part about the VC Sucks chant is that it starts completely randomly when he’s not even involved in a play, or even when there’s a complete stoppage of play, like here:

Here’s a great Let’s Go Raptors, VC Sucks chant from the live broadcast:

Some thoughts about SuperFan. He was sitting next to Milt again and I don’t mind that but he wasn’t cheering at all. It was like he didn’t want to offend Milt Palacio by cheering for the Raps. I don’t care either way but c’mon man, wear some red or even wave the freaking free towel they handed out at the game.

SuperFan looked pretty cozy sitting next to Vince’s mom

I am shit scared of Boki Nachbar. This guy is the X Factor of all X Factors, it doesn’t matter what Vince does, if we keep Nachbar and his outside shooting and drives in check, we can contain the Nets. Vince is not our primary defensive concern, it’s the combination of Nachbar and Jefferson that kill us. Jefferson is just attracted to the rim anytime he’s playing us, we must keep him on the perimeter to contain him and today we did a decent job of that. The Raptors decided to just switch on perimeter screens rather than fight through them which was great because it didn’t’ allow the Nets to drive as much since the lane was clogged immediately after the screen. Give Smitch some credit for switching the lineup and bringing in Peterson and Bargnani for Nesterovic and Graham, going small equals going mobile and the Raps were much better getting back on defense. The start sparked Bargnani who had his first good game of the series, maybe his legs are coming back but if he plays like this in Game 6, my moneys on the Raptors.

What the f**k is up with the halftime entertainment?

Jose Calderon needs to play 40 minutes in Game 6 and Chris Bosh finally needs to have a decent game on the road. The recipe for success is that simple, we can’t rely on Bargnani and Mo Pete to have great games again, although both are capable, anything they give should be considered a bonus of sorts - it’s upto Bosh to make something happen. This was the third game in a row where he did nothing of consequence and if it hadn’t been for him making 3 of 4 FTs in this game, everybody would be ripping him for costing us the game. Butch Carter said Bosh is a “fake all-star”, this is the time where you prove your critics wrong. CB4 needs to do that now!

Sam Mitchell’s out-of-timeout plays pale in comparison to his counterparts

Out of timeout plays. It’s this simple: Sam Mitchell’s suck while Lawrence Frank’s rule. I was paying attention to this, the Nets always got a good quick shot coming out of a timeout while the Raptors struggled. It was for this reason that I hated the Mitchell timeout during the Nets’ final run. Calderon was stripped off the ball and we were lucky it didn’t kill us. I was hoping to catch video proof of this but Sam actually one-upped me:

I know it’s sick of me but I wanted some free pizza and was starting to think if the Nets actually tied the game and sent it to overtime, maybe it wasn’t all that bad.

The Raps didn’t score a 100 points so this ticket is worthless

The question is whether to take a flight to New Jersey or not? The answer is I need to sleep over this and see what the financial situation is and whether the Raptors have a legitimate chance of winning. I’m pretty sure of the latter. Here are the final minutes as seen from Section 102, Row 11, Seat 2.

Don’t forget, Chasin - unofficial Raptors MVP - has got the highlights. More discussion of this post here.

No Arsenal post last week because of me going to New Jersey for the Raptors/Nets Game 4. So here’s Ashley Cole getting kicked out of the Champions League. Liverpool wins on penalties to advance to the final in Athens. Buy tickets here.

Go Gunners!