Game No. 50: Magic 117, Raptors 101
I thought Saturday night’s close call loss against the Bulls would be my last RaptorBlog recap for a while, but it turns out Joseph still isn’t back from New York so I got to watch and write about this dog of a game. Well, you don’t get a fancy intro tonight. Before my six thoughts, you get this.
After the Kentucky Wildcats beat the Baylor Bears to advance to the NCAA Final Four on Sunday, Charles Barkley expressed his belief in the unbeatability of the Wildcats. Why am I mentioning this on a Raptors blog? Because this is what he said:
“Nobody can beat this team. I mean, the Toronto Raptors can’t, the Charlotte Bobcats… maybe. But there’s nobody in this NCAA tournament that can beat this team.”
We’ve got video of Chuck’s Raptors dis after the jump, if you think you can watch it without breaking something.
For the sensible Raptors fan, this was the perfect game. It was a closely-fought, exciting game that was decided by an overtime buzzer-beater by Luol Deng. The Raptors remain fifth-worst in the NBA — a half-game behind Detroit for sixth-worst — which is important because we should root for the franchise to get a top-five pick in this upcoming draft.
As with Wednesday’s game against the Bulls, Derrick Rose sat out to heal his groin injury. Of course, this meant that optimistic Raptors fans couldn’t help but ask the question. But it was not to be on this night — the tank momentum was just too strong.
You might think you can’t afford more than a couple of my thoughts on this game, but you’re in luck tonight because we’ve got a special deal on a half-dozen of them. Don’t consume them all at once!
Game No. 38: Magic 92, Raptors 88
For whatever reason, the Raptors have consistently put up a good fight against the Magic over the past couple of seasons. Tonight was no exception as they lost by just four points even though they went into battle without Andrea Bargnani and Amir Johnson. When you consider that Bargnani is this team’s MVP and Amir is probably among its top four players, it’s not a stretch to suggest the Raptors might have pulled this one out with a fully-stocked roster.
Since ifs and buts are not, in fact, candied nuts, here are my random observations about this contest.
I’m not even going to describe the zany hijinks that ensue in this video because I don’t want to give away any surprises, but it looks like Jonas Valanciunas has a ton of charisma to go with his immense basketball potential. And yes, that’s Jonas in the Gandalf costume.
