Friday, October 31, 2008

View From Above the Tunnel: Pasta Boy to Pasta Man?

Hot off the presses right after the game because the Raps are playing again tomorrow. I am so happy the NBA is back, and baseball is over. Onto the triple double:

3 thinks I liked:

1. Andrea: What a game from the Italian big man. Taking it to the hoop, and playing the kind of inside game that none of us thought possible. Yes, he did it against Rony Turriaf, but I give the effort a standing ovation. Il Busto, no more? We shall see, hopefully he can abuse the Bucks tomorrow night.

2. Crunch Time Chris Bosh: CB4 delivering the goods. He is getting the job done in crunch time. Nothing more needs to be said. He looks like he is going to lead us to the promise land (As an aside, for those of you who believe in the D Wade resurrection, why is it so hard to picture Bosh rising that that level as well?).

3. Over time defense: Actually this applies to late in the 4th quarter defense as well. Congrats to Jamario and AP who were able to shut down Corey Maggette in the 4th quarter. The aggressiveness they showed, definitely showed up on the stat sheet through forced turnovers and points of TO. If the Raps keep this up they will be tough to beat.

3 things that made me go hmmmm:

1. Ah, Jason. Just when I thought you turned the corner, there you are trying to drive again. He was ice cold tonight because Golden State sold out on his 3. Give the Warriors credit, they locked down on the Raptors perimeter. Still, why not just hoist a couple up, its not that much worse than eating it from Biendris.

2. Adjusting to the officials. Personally, I thought the officiating was horrendous, but I still think the Raps should have adjusted to it, and started to flop around on defense. This one is on Smitch, he has a team full of Euros, he needs to take advantage of their soccer training.

3. Jermaine O'Neal's focus. Man, JO needs to keep his shit together. He was too thrown off his games by Tim Donaghy (wait, he's in prison? who was that on the court then?). Still JO came back to provide the Raps with some much needed muscle late in the 4th, and Andrea took them home in OT.

All that said, what a game from Andrea. Let's hope he can keep this up.

2 comments:

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

Andrea! That's my boy!

Archi said...

Were you there last night? I was drinking and chanting with the Supporters in 311, the energy in that building was incredible.

I'm with you on the impressiveness of Andrea and Bosh as well.

Maybe I'm still excited from last night, but the team showed flashes of being the best all-around Raptors team I've ever seen.