My puke bucket was full midway through the first quarter. After suffering through a few more minutes of watching the Raptors get their ass absolutely spanked by the Nuggets, Jack Armstrong dropped a gem, and I’m pseudo-quoting:

If your plan is to outscore teams and you start playing the better ones, you’re not going to win.

If you stuck around to watch the fourth quarter (which is my duty as a blogger), you would’ve heard him drop another one:

If the Raptors matchup against Washington, Cleveland, Orlando or whoever, do they have what it takes to win 4 games? I’d say ‘no’. Can they stop a team by playing “down and dirty”? I don’t know.

O wise Jack, you see right through the facade of this team. We can beat the bad teams but once you stick us against an opponent of half-decent quality, we’re in deep trouble. The flaws of this squad were apparent and out in the open for everybody to see. We knew Bryan Colangelo’s experiment had holes but that they were this big, we didn’t know. And even if we did know, didn’t want to believe. This West coast trip is showcasing just how misconstrued the idea that the Raptors have any sort of depth really is. Take Bosh out and we’ll struggle in the D-League, that’s not even hyperbole, we lack the strength, ability and desire to compete at a consistent level against above average opposition. If you stick this team in the West, we’ll be bottom three every time. Colangelo has a lot of work to do and it’s got to start in the upcoming draft and off-season. If there’s one good thing that comes out of a loss like this it’s that you get an indication of who the people you want to weed out are and who’s still competing in the face of adversity.

This insufferable display of deplorable defense was a sight to behold and remember. I have not seen a Raptors team play this bad in a long, long time, I remember this Clipper game from ages ago (forget which year, maybe even 10 years ago) where the Raptors got embarrassed and blown out of the building. I thought I’d never see that day again but today matched that. We gave up 79 points in the first half, we couldn’t prevent a single Nugget from penetrating the lane. We couldn’t rotate out to any of their shooters, not even the first one out of the pass. We never covered the guy leaking out, we never provided help when a teammate was beaten (hell, we didn’t even bother calling screens out), we couldn’t take away the drive or the shot, we just laid down and waited Denver to pummel us in every which way. And they did, they killed us like we haven’t been killed before. Utter embarrassment and humiliation. Total degradation.

There’s nothing much to say, if you saw the game you know how bad it was. But I’d like to touch on how unmotivated, unprepared and lacking a plan this team came out tonight. There wasn’t an emphasis on doing a singular thing, we couldn’t contain Iverson, ‘Melo, Camby or anybody else on the Nuggets. We allowed every single player to have a great game and didn’t have an idea of just how we were going to try to win this game. Double Iverson? Front ‘Melo? Get Camby in foul trouble? Force Anthony Carter to create? Force perimeter jumpshots? Collapse on ‘Melo? These are just some of the strategies that we could’ve used but we did nothing. We played man-defense for most of the game and got burned every single time the Nuggets put the ball on the floor. We never stood a chance because we didn’t have a damn clue on how to even approach this game. Typical freestyling, only this time even the effort wasn’t there.

Calderon and Ford both stunk and TJ played as disinterested as ever. They combined for 9 points and Bargnani had 6 in 13 minutes. Rasho and Parker carried the load, the latter’s 15 points coming almost entirely in the first quarter. That’s when this was still sort of a game, by the time it ended the score was 44-23 and garbage time had officially begun. The rest of the game was a display of Denver athleticism, creativity, desire and skill. The Raptors ended up looking like clowns with careless turnovers, forced passes, lazy defense and not to mention body language that would’ve made Zack Randolph blush.

Sure, Bosh is out but how hard and how long can you ride that excuse? I don’t care if you’re dressing 8 players and 3 of them are gimps, you still have to come out and compete. Nobody has a problem that you get blown out by 30, it’s the way you get blown that says a lot too. Speaking in intangibles, this team lacks toughness, grit, desire and emotion. Speaking in basketball terms, they lack the lateral quicks to stay with opposing guards, they lack the agility to play interior defense, they lack the physicality of playing a gritty hard-nosed contest and finally, they lack the instruction to do any of the above. Chris Bosh is injured but that doesn’t mean you get a free pass to lay an egg every time.

Sacramento is our only shot of winning a game on this trip, they’ll be playing a back-to-back (Phoenix) and we’ll have a days rest. No excuses.

Liners:

• Jason Kapono was put in to guard Carmelo Anthony.
• What is Kleiza’s problem? He was jawing at Jay Triano for a good 10 minutes and got T’d up for it.
• Chuck/Jack much more enjoyable to listen to than Chuck/Leo.
• Denver leaked out on every possession but the Raptors never adjusted.
• Aside from a couple blocks, Anthony owned Moon and penetrated at will. Iverson got into the paint at will, almost embarrassingly easily leaving Ford and Calderon a glimpse of what true talent looks like.
• Wasn’t there talk of a VC for Iverson swap years back? Should’ve probably made that if it was on the table.
• Another Friday, another loss. This is the 6th straight time we’ve lost on a Friday night, the last victory was at home against Milwaukee on January 25th.
• If there’s one thing i expect to see from a Sam Mitchell coached team it’s a consistent effort. Screw the X’s and O’s but the effort should always be there because he’s supposed to be a motivator before a basketball coach.
• Circle March 23rd on your calendars. That’s when we play Denver at home. How the Raptors come out in that game after tonight’s humiliation will speak even greater volumes about this team.
• Nights like these test your Raptors fanhood.

RSS Feed

It’s the West coast Hump Day. No, nothing to do with Kris Humphries but after tonight the roadtrip will be more than half complete.

If there’s one thing that’s abundantly clear about the Raptors, it’s that they cannot survive without Bosh. This might sound like an obvious statement but given how well the Raptors played last year without Bosh in the middle, there were many who believe that we were better without him. Again, as ludicrous as that sounds there is some traction to that school of thought. His absence has shown just how desperately we need him to do the things he does on the court and how his influence is the difference between the lottery and a 4th spot in the East.

On the positive side, this stretch of games without Bosh has shed some light on what this team’s true weaknesses are. There’s not much surprise anywhere but it does give more direction and reason to any offseason moves we might have to make. Aside from missing the obvious scoring and rebounding from Bosh, we have lacked an interior defensive presence and a real shot-blocking threat. It’s no surprise that we’re getting clobbered at the points in the paint stat over the last little while.

We need to resolve the PG position: It’s better to have one very good starting PG and a good backup rather than two good ones who both are started quality. I don’t buy the “internal competition” argument, not when it comes to a position that is so critical to your team. There needs to be a uniformity and a level of consistency in our PG play so that the ball is distributed properly at all times. There’s no need for stories like this.

It’ll be very difficult to get a result in Denver tonight, needless to say the rebounding must be even for us to have a shot in the dark and one of our transition and/or perimeter defense must be solid. Asking for both to be above par is asking too much of this team, so here’s hoping we tighten up one of the two, hold our own on the boards and get some good scoring from the Bargnani/Calderon combo to keep this game close in the fourth.

If you haven’t heard, Caron Butler is back and the Wiz are looking very dangerous. I will be shocked if they don’t take over the fifth spot and drop us to sixth and into a playoff matchup with Orlando. As much as it hurts, all this losing might not be so bad.

Here’s how pathetic the East is: If the playoffs started today, the 27-38 NJ Nets make the playoffs while the 38-26 Denver Nuggets miss it. If the Top 16 teams in the NBA made the playoffs, only 3 Eastern Conference teams would be there: Boston, Detroit and Orlando with Orlando being the 16th seed.

I leave you with that infamous picture of Andris Biedrins’ wife (courtesy of Dinosty). But if a quick jerk isn’t in order there’s an absolutely great article on RaptorsTalk.com about Anthony Parker which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Till after the game.