3 In The Key - Toronto Raptors Game Day Preview vs. Charlotte

by Raptors HQ - Vicious D on Dec 30, 2009 8:30 AM EST in 3 in the Key Comment 7 comments

I'd love to see the Raptors put this look on Stephen Jackson's face by the end of the game.

The Raptors take on the Bobcats in what should be a match to avenge a loss earlier in the year. However, where the Raptors need to even up a series against a middle-of-the-road contender, this match up may prove to mean much more towards evaluating the Raptors as the Bobcats are precisely the kind of team the Raptors must work hard to beat.

If the last series of games were fairly boring to you because they represented the Raptors beating the marginal talent of the NBA, then good news!

The Raptors play the Charlotte Bobcats today.

All throughout the past few games, I've been extremely guarded in my appraisal of the Raptors. After writing previews and recaps for about a week and a half, the conclusion is pretty simple:

This Raptors team can beat bad teams fairly easily.

And while as a fan, it's nice to see our team do well and kick those "lesser opponents" of the NBA, the Raptors are still a team that exhibited troubles against a recovering Pistons team. Therefore, the Hornets, with their rebounding prowess and physical players, should be an interesting match up for the Toronto Raptors. Tougher opponents mean tougher challenges and it's these challenges that will force our Raptors team to grow.

It will also answer some questions about Jarrett Jack, the resurgence of Hedo Turkoglu, and the abilities of our bench.

So with tonight's anticipated match up, the three keys will be in areas that I believe the Bobcats will challenge the Raptors and what I'm most interested in seeing is how the Raptors take a punch and fight back against Charlotte.

1) Box Out, Fight For Rebounds
Against a team that has Stephen Jackson as a guard, you are probably going to have a lot of trouble winning the rebounding battles. What that means is that the guards are going to have to come in and assist. I'm looking for Jarrett Jack to have a fairly strong rebounding game and he'll need to battle Raymond Felton who is averaging 3.4 rebounds per game. Asking DeRozan to guard Stephen Jackson may be too much, so I am hoping that Triano will consider playing Sonny Weems on Jackson for most of the evening. Then, I can't begin to tell you how worried I am about Gerald Wallace, who is averaging almost 12 rebounds per game this year. The Raptors may not be able to win this rebounding battle, but they can at least attempt to minimalize Charlotte's second chance point opportunities.

2) Active Hands
Charlotte is a league worst in turnovers per game with 17 per game. The Raptors need to make life very difficult for them by continuing to be aggressive in the passing lanes and to not shy away from tearing the ball away from the Bobcats. With the Dinos having one of the lowest turnovers in the league (4th), they must exploit this weakness for their gain. Good teams scout their opponents and attack their weak spots while reducing exposure of their own weaknesses. It's time the Raptors started to show some qualities of being a good team.

3) Make the Bobcats be "average"
Our Raptors team has been very good at keeping opponents below 100 points during this current win streak. They cannot allow Charlotte to become another team that shoots above average against them. Being third-last in the league in points per game, the Raptors simply need to make sure they play enough token defense to make sure that the Bobcats have no way of making the magical 100 points mark which is the difference between a sure win and a tiring loss. The Bobcats are not exactly the most gifted offensive club so the Raptors should not allow them to impersonate one.

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Statistics

All season statistics can be deceiving (for example those one for the points made/scored upon) as they do not reveal any useful trend information, is there a way (website) providing statistics as a moving average(s)? That would allow to more precisely pin point trends and compare last game information against the monthly/weekly/last xx games trends and get useful infos out of it. For example it may or may not interesting saying that seasonally the Raps have the worst defense if for example, last month or last 10 games they have performed like (I am making this up for the sake of the reasoning) the 5th defense in the league.

by renato on Dec 30, 2009 9:27 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I don’t know if there’s a website that gives a specific trend like that. That kind of statistic can also be misleading, because just look at the Raptors and the opponents they’ve faced the last 4 games. Broadcasters will probably be able to throw that stat out to people because people in the Raptors organization have access to more stats than us in the public and they can also do more crunching of the numbers since I’m sure they have people who can crunch numbers in that way for the team.

Kinnon "Vicious D" Yee
Author - RaptorsHQ.com Twitter @RapHQVicious

by Raptors HQ - Vicious D on Dec 30, 2009 9:33 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Agreed. Trends are only useful when you take them in context. It doesn’t matter if the Raptors had the 1st overall def the last 5 games if 4 of the 5 teams they played average only 85 pts per game (just as an example). Trending data is much more useful over a much longer sample, say for our purposes years. Although the Raps have made changes every year the last few years, you can still get a sense of whether this franchise is headed somewhere by studying trends in different stat categories. I have no idea what those stats say but I bet they are not pretty.

by McGateway on Dec 30, 2009 10:06 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Stats are all misleading if you do not take them into context (and hence with a pinch of salt) . I do take your argument that looking like a fortress on defense because of having plaid against weaker teams does not tell necessarily you much.. sometimes.. or maybe yes if the defensive breakdown is due to (for example) lack of communication on D (and hence less dependent upon who is attacking you), then you would expect numbers to be comparable in a more meaningful way. Now I do not want to be swamped by numbers but I do believe one wants to have more data rather than less.

by renato on Dec 30, 2009 11:05 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks

To all for the well-wishes yesterday – didn’t get a chance to chime in to the discussion but hopefully I’ll be out of here soon.

Not sure I’ll be able to see tonight’s game (unless I find a TV somewhere in the hospital that has TSN2) but in any event, hoping the Raps new line-up gets them off to a good start and the defence is tight enough to allow the offense to do its thing.

Would be great to enter 2010 one game under .500.

by RaptorsHQ - Franchise on Dec 30, 2009 10:50 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Crazy Schedule and Its Lingering Affects

This schedule is like over eating for years, yes I know the season is only 2 month old but walk with me on this, and then going on a crash diet.

From playing 3 to 4 games in 5 nights more than once and averaging more than a game every two days for the the first 8 weeks plus of the season the Raptors are now playing about 1 game every 3 – 4 days.

Yes they get more practice and rest, but practice and rest are just that. Practice is not playing under game conditons. If it were there would be all-stars who now never get off the bench during regular games.

The Raptors game playing cycle is all out of wack. They have gone from an exhaustive game and travel schedule to a weekend YMCA pick up game schedule.

For those of you who have ever tried to diet think of those days that were the hardest. The initial days and even weeks are the hardest physically and even mentally. After a while the human body can adjust to all kinds of conditions, including living in places like the Arctic, Antarctic, Malaysia, the Sahara, etc. But take someone who has never lived in any of those places and move them there and they will suffer like hell for months and even years.

Athletes play best when they can go through a regular routine between games and when they know their role for each game. When either of thoses varies for all the players on the team it negatively affects their performance.

Does this mean that professional players making millions a year have an excuse for poor play? Of course not. Professionals are supposed to suck it up and give a good night’s showing whatever the adverse conditions may be.

The Raptors have done what they needed to do the last four games and that is win and play pretty solid defense for the most part. As long as that keeps happening I wouldn’t be squabbling about the details, at least for now.

by Buddahfan on Dec 30, 2009 2:56 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Great comparison – the schedule is so out of whack this year for the team. We notice it on this end as while the first two months were essentially spent writing strictly game-day previews and recaps, now there seem to be lots of holes for discussion pieces.

by RaptorsHQ - Franchise on Dec 30, 2009 4:51 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs