Friday, February 10, 2012

The Toronto Raptors...

...are not good. I mean, really, really not good. OK, I'm just a casual NBA fan, but I watched a Raptors game the other night at a sports bar in downtown Toronto, and I noticed the following things:
  • I was the only one watching the game.
  • I had no idea who anyone - and I mean anyone - on the Raptors was. I mean, OK, I had vague memories of Ed Davis from his one season at UNC, but I thought a DeMar DeRozan was the sort of car Lamont Cranston drove. And a quick check reveals I don't know who any of the guys on their D-League affiliate are, either. Lots of directional Kentucky schools there, that's all I'm saying.
  • They do a lot of running around and being surprised at where their teammates end up on offense. Look, I'm not the sort of guy who can sit down and diagram the subtleties of the Triangle offense, but it's pretty clear when the guy with the ball looks up, looks at where his teammate is supposed to be, gets a look of "what the hell?" and then starts looking around wildly to make sure they haven't all left the court like there's three seconds left and they're playing Florida State, something's gone wrong. 
  • That happened about half the time. The rest of the time, they stood around and watched the aforementioned Mr. DeRozan, who did his noble best to win the game all by himself.
  • When the Washington Wizards make it look easy to dissect your defense, you don't have a defense.
I know their best player's out. But it's rare to see a professional sports team not owned by Peter Angelos or coached by one of the Ryan brothers that looks that genuinely disorganized in play, whose players look so surprised to see what their teammates are doing, and whose genuine effort get frittered away in a million different directions. I'd love to see them do well, if for no other reason than that their logo has fossils in it, and I'm all about any kind of fossil that blogging under the name "Murray Chass". But damn, right now, it's hard to watch.

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