If you thought watching the Raptors blow a 10-point fourth quarter lead in their home opener was crushing, how about blowing an 11-point fourth quarter lead and eventually losing in triple-overtime to fall to 1-6 on the season?
Some thoughts on the most “Raptors” of Raptors losses…
I came into Saturday’s game thinking the Raptors could take two from Philly and Utah to temporarily right the ship and stem off the early panic. I came out of this game thinking this team is a loss against Utah on Monday away from cementing the beginning of a disastrous season, though I do understand how short sighted that seems.
Here are some thoughts on yet another frustrating loss:
More than any game related performance or story, the talk of the town this past week has been about what the Raptors rotation will look like when the season opens up against the Pacers on Halloween night. The spark for the discussion came earlier this week when Dwane Casey mentioned that he planned to use the last few pre-season games to pare down his rotation in preparation for the regular season, and that he’s planning on using a more traditional eight-man rotation that could expand to nine or possibly 10 on some nights.
Casey did add that a lot of his game to game decisions will be based on matchups (ie- Aaron Gray getting playing time against bigger centres), but if and when the Raptors coach does decide to cut down his rotation to eight or nine men, the hard part of having a deeper roster at his disposal will come into play, as Casey will surely have some tough calls to make.
Let’s examine some of those upcoming decisions.
Jose Calderon has 10,561,982 reasons to smile this season
There are a few websites that NBA fans can browse when they’re trying to find player and team salary information, but over the last couple of years, I’ve found that none is as accurate, as specific or as detailed as “ShamSports,” a basketball website run by Mark Deeks, who you may also know as a TBJ contributor.
On Thursday night, Deeks released salary information for the Raptors. Let’s discuss.
We’re going to handle preseason player profiles differently this year on RaptorBlog. For each player on the 2012-13 Raptors’ active roster, Joseph Casciaro and I are going to email our thoughts back and forth and then post the resulting conversation on the blog. It’s an edgy new form of journalism! Or something…
Linas Kleiza, SF/PF, 6’8″, 234 lbs.
2011-12 stats: 49 games, 21.6 MPG, 9.7 PPG, 4.1 RPG, 0.9 APG, 0.1 BPG, 0.5 SPG, .402 FG%, .346 3P%, .810 FT%, 12.4 PER
