From the Milton Sports Guy:
Raptors 99 Bulls 89
Terrible offence met putrid defence and somehow putrid won.
It wasn’t pretty
I’m not prepared to give the Raptors too much credit for this win, even though they put forth a gritty effort down the stretch to pull this one out.
It was obvious that the Bulls, on the 2nd night of a back-to-back, simply ran out of gas. We knew their offence was bad, but “0 for their last 15 field goal attempts bad?”
No. They simply just didn’t have anything left come midway through the third quarter and almost all of their shots were short or hit front rim in the fourth — the classic sign of a team with no legs as per the trusty observation of Raptor colour man Leo Rautins which has been etched into my basketball brain over the course of several winters now.
The first half, namely the second quarter was just a disgusting display of indifference on the part of the Raptor D. The Bulls began to score at will on a series of open dunks from the workmanlike Joakim Noah and a series of open jumpers from the suddenly impressive Bulls rook, Taj Gibson. This freakshow Raptor team that Colangelo has assembled (ranking first in offensive efficiency and dead last in defensive efficiency entering the game) allowed the Bulls to score 60 on them in the first half — only 29 points below their full-game season average offensive output thus far.
Unacceptable and inexcusable.
I will give the club some credit for stepping up the intensity later in the second half, forcing the Bulls into a series of mid to long-range jumpers – not exactly their forté, that’s for sure, but if Chicago shoots a percentage even somewhere in the high thirties in the second half, including not missing their last freaking 15 shots of the game, then this one goes down to the wire.
However, a win’s a win for the Raps as they try to put the pieces together with this remade roster and truth be told, 4-4 is probably where we thought they’d be at this point when the season began — even though two winnable games on the road: losses at Memphis and to a vulnerable Spurs team, really, really sting.
Props to Chris Bosh (28/11) who continues to put up some impressive early season numbers. He was the man late in the fourth, battling underneath and snaring a couple of clutch rebounds and putbacks as Toronto pulled away for the win, even though Noah gave him fits on D all night until fouling out. I couldn’t help but think, watching this game, how royally screwed this team would be without CB4 next year, the way he battled and put the team on his back. Let’s just not talk about this any more right now.
Props also to Demar DeRozan who had a nice game, knocking down some jumpers and a huge dunk off a Calderon pass on the fast break in the third to help spark the up-until-that-point-listless ACC crowd and the team as they crawled back from an 11-point deficit.
Let’s see what they can do on the road now. I think we can safely say that Friday’s game at the Staples Center (Clipper version) is a must win with games in Phoenix, Utah and Denver to follow. I think we all remember how the team fared in games in those three cities last year — um, not good and let’s not go there either. A 1-3 trip would be considered a success at this point as the Raps make their way through this tough early season schedule.
We’ll also be on injury watch, as Turk didn’t look good walking off the ACC court with a banged up hip Wednesday night, and apparently all of Bosh, Calderon and Antoine Wright needed ‘maintenance’ Thursday.
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The Milton Sports Guy is a regular contributor to MiltonSearch.com and wishes that all of the American sports networks would just stop using the Raptors’ purple logo already which the club phased out over four years ago. Sheesh.
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