3 in the Key - Raptors' Pre-Season Preview vs. Celtics
by Adam Francis on Dec 17, 2011 12:00 PM EST
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The Toronto Raptors kick off their abbreviated 2011-12 campaign with a pre-season match against the Boston Celtics tomorrow afternoon. The HQ's Sean Tepper gives his thoughts on the match, and on the broader season...
With the NBA's shortened season ready to tip-off in less than 10 days, the Toronto Raptors' first of two preseason matchups against the division rival Boston Celtics will be a lot more exciting than they should be. Unlike the preseasons of years past, NBA teams don't have the luxury of steadily getting their starters up to speed with the regular season set to start on Christmas day. On Friday, Celtics head coach Doc Rivers told the media that he will let his starters play more minutes than they usual would.
While we can expect to see extended minutes from solidified starters such as Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, Jermaine O'Neal and Ray Allen, it will be interesting to see which Raptors Dwane Casey puts out on the hardwood and how long each of them will play; especially with the team's starting line-up still very much up in the air. Whether or not they win or lose their two preseason games is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, but with that being said, these games can go a long way in helping Casey evaluate the players that he has to work with for the length of this cramped season. Here are three things to keep an eye on in this one.
1. Jose Calderon vs. Jerryd Bayless
This is one of the team's most interesting position battles because statistically speaking, both of these players put up very similar numbers. On one hand you have Jose Calderon, who in 68 games played (55 of which he started) averaged 9.8 points per game (PPG) and 8.9 assists per game (APG) while playing an average of 31 minutes a night. In his six year with the organization, Calderon has proven to be a steady hand at point guard who has enough ability to play the position, but will never be a game-changing option at the 1. On the other hand is Jerryd Bayless, who in 60 games as a member of the Raptors (14 of which he started) averaged 10 PPG and 4 APG while playing roughly 22 minutes a night. There's no doubt that at 23 years old, the fourth-year point guard brings more energy to the team's offense, but unlike his Spanish counterpart, Bayless' defensive play has received a lot of praise from both Casey and Bryan Colangelo. With the team's mindset transforming into a more defensive one, it would not be surprising if Casey elected to start the former Arizona Wildcat.
On the Boston side, despite being injured Rajon Rondo should see a healthy number of minutes, and if he does, it will be interesting to see which one of the two main Raptors' options outlined above, gets the bulk of duty against him.
2. The Raptors' Frontcourt
For better or for worse, it appears the Raptors' starting centre tomorrow will once again be Andrea Bargnani. While I'm sure that Bargnani's effectiveness will be heavily debated in the comment section below, I would like to focus on some of the other players that make-up the team's front-court. Although Casey has gone on the record saying that he intends to start Ed Davis at power forward, while Amir Johnson will come off the bench as both a power forward and center, it will be interesting to see just how many minutes each of them will play. As a rookie, Davis showed a lot of promise when he filled in for the injured Andrea Bargnani, and was equally as impressive when he came off the bench to replace Johnson. I'm intrigued to see how Davis will adapt to playing more minutes in a starting role, especially with his history of injuries, as there is no doubt that he will be an important fixture for the franchise's future and their new defensive identity.
And, as the Dinos patiently wait for the arrival of Jonas Valanciunas, the team has signed both Jamaal Magloire and Aaron Gray to fill the void for the time being. While both of these players are solid pickups from a stop-gap perspective, we'll see if either ends up logging a big chunk of minutes at the 5, or if Casey continues to feel that Bargs is the team's best option there. Not only this, but between Gray and Magloire, who ends up getting more run?
Toronto struggled with opposing team's big men last year (just revisit the "stubs" from last year) and with Kevin Garnett slated to play extended minutes and Jermaine O'Neal's battered corpse still haunting the hardwood, Toronto's big men will have a tall task ahead of them, despite off-season upgrades.
3. Dwane Casey
This might be the most interesting person to keep an eye on throughout the course of Sunday night's game. When the Raptors named Casey their new head coach in July, there was a lot of hype surrounding the defensive genius that made a name for himself in Dallas. Although it is only the preseason, it will be worth watching how Casey handles the transition from assistant coach to head coach once more, and how he conducts himself around his players. In addition to this, it will be equally compelling to get a preview of the defensive schemes that he has drawn up. With no franchise player on their roster, it will be up to Casey to motivate his young group and get the best out of them night in and night out.
SEAN TEPPER
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Although Casey has gone on the record saying that he intends to start Ed Davis at power forward, while Amir Johnson
Sorry that is not what he said.
DC said that Bargnani will start at PF and Amir will start at Center except against the heavyweights like Howard in which case Grey or Jamaal will start at Center. In that case DC will either give Amir the night off or have him back up Bargnani at PF and Ed will see very little time in those games.
We shall see
WolstatSun Ryan Wolstat
Talking with Dwane Casey today, sounds like who plays up front will really depend on matchups. Amir some nights, Gray/Magloire others
18 hours ago
No mention of Ed
That picture of Coach Dwayne is EPIC!.... It would make a great album cover..... amongst others
Up in the skyscrape, me and my apes, bake cakes.
any idea of any streaming feed?
this won’t be on league pass
All I want to see
is some defence from Derozan and Bargnani.
That’s it. The rest of the team seems to me known quantities, but Derozan is primed for another step forward and Bargnani has got to be motivated to no longer be the one of the worst defenders in league history.
Anyone catch Detroit last night
Brandon Knight looked solid, real real solid. His size and speed is just awsome.
No but I watched NY / NJ today...
Brooks vs Shumpert rookie matchup was stellar…
Shumpert was a steal for NY… he’s gonna be big…
"the Truth"
definately looking forward to seeing if DWill can excel at SF, im not convinced he's a
pure SF. He’s got game tho so we’ll see. Ive never seen Rubio play so i wanna see what all the hype is about.
Adelman says Williams will be playing strictly PF this year...
with Kevin Love starting at PF and switching to C when Williams comes in off the bench…
"the Truth"
lol...
Barea looks hilarious in his uniform… it looks like he mistakenly put on Darko’s uni…
"the Truth"
let's see if
the “anything but euro” movement.. is right or if they are about to get their ass kicked (well of course it will take more than one pre-season game)
Iman Shumpert and Chris Sigleton also also looked like absolute steals considering
where they were picked in the draft. Singleton is gonna be a tier1 defender.
I haven't seen Singleton yet, but he was my top hopes for Colangelo picking up a second pick last draft...
"the Truth"
You Guys Should Love This
Timothy Varner, 48 Minutes of Hell: I’m surprised Amir Johnson grades out so poorly as a defender. High foul rate, poor effort, bad build — Johnson is a good reminder that bad defenders can block shots, too.
This is the kind of BS you read on ESPN – SMH
complete article on link
Rubio is gonna be a good one
Minny is in such a good pisition right now with all these excellent young players.
I wouldn't want to be Minny
Minny is in a good position but I prefer our position than theirs. Please take into account that Williams is an unproven talent and I believe Jonas and him are a wash for now until we know more. Rubio is also unproven accept for now we know he is not big and he has not been able to shoot yet, although he has been playing professionally for years. Not a good sign. Imagine Jose Calderon with a few more fancy passes but not likely more than Jose’s assists per game and very likely a higher t/o rate. Same defence. Way less shooting. I am not excited but we’ll see and we don’t know yet.
Love is great but how great is yet to be proven. The season is long. He picks up huge numbers in meaningless games when everyone on his team is awful. Credit it to him, but Evans was “League leading rebounder” for a while last year.
Truth is they have some nice pieces and we have some nice pieces. I like our current roster better.
Jonas vs Williams is even in my books right now but I love Jonas’ potential
Rubio vs Bayless I like Bayless way more
Demar vs Love ok, Minny wins by a lot here right now, but Demar can catch up I believe cause Love is at his ceiling and Demar has more upside and might catch all the way up…
AB vs Beasley a draw
JJ vs Jose draw
Ed, Amir, JJ, Jonas, Demar, Bayless, Jose…if you are thinking championship roster we have more pieces that could win with us in the next five years IMO. I could see any one of these players finding their way onto to a contender and winning a ring in the next five years. Most are role players, (well right now they all are), but if three of these players turn into great players and one or two become allstars, then the sky is the limit.
That is seven players plus we add a player next year and pick up 2 in trades or however…then we have a contender. I believe
Do you love the fact Bayless was traded 2 times in one year or the fact he cannot take the starting job from an overpaid backup. please make sense if you are going to compare players as Rubio may not be a starting PG but Bayless is far from a finished product and he has 2 years of NBA experience. Some of your other comparisons just make no sense. How can you compare JJ Barea to Calderon? JJ helped Dallas win a ring. Love and Demar don’t even play the same position and I am not sure that Demar has a higher ceiling than Love does. Plus, remember that yes love put big numbers up on a crappy Minny team but Demar failed to do that on an equally crappy Raptor team.
based upon what?
unless you tell me you have been watching Rubio for a long time, I will appoint you to the “Anythign but Euro” movement
Bayless vs Rubio
We will have to wait and see with Rubio. He may be a good player but I think he is overhyped from his Euro Stats and what scouts have said. I have nothing against him personally and I am excited to see him play but I don’t think he will ever live up to his #5 Draft selection. He should be fun to watch, and I hope I am wrong because if he is the player some people think, it will be great to watch.
Bayless averaged 18 pts as a starter last year and can play good D.
Love and Demar are not really that comparable but Love is their one proven star. We don’t have one. Comparing him Andrea seemed like a waist of time. I am only suggesting that if Demar continued to improve he could get much closer to Love’s level. I don’t mean to suggest his ceiling is higher but simply that he can close the gap and has more room to improve than Love who I think is firing on all cylinders. Minny wins that comaprison right now by a lot. Hopefully Demar can close that gap.
JJ and Jose are comparable in terms of their value to the team. When you get so excited about JJ playing a solid role in the playoffs and how that makes him better than Jose remember what Hedo did against LA. Look at their year long stats or career stats and you will see that Jose is better. They shot the same last year (Jose was marginally better, but Jose had a terrible shooting year for his standard) and JJ scored more per minute but had a much worse t/o to assist ratio. If Jose had been the backup point guard on Miami they would have won and then would you over evaluate Jose as well. BTW, I like both players and think they are close in terms of value.
I love Kanter’s and Jonas’ game and they are both Euro. I don’t like flashy guards who are marginal shooters and play weak d. That is the current opinion of Rubio that is held by many. The Euro thing is silly, I don’t care.
Def rap I gotta disagree abt Raps vs MINNY
I saw Rubio play for the first time last night (seen lots of highlights tho) and thats all I needed to see to tell you Bayless can’t even begin to match this kid’s talent. Not even close.
I’d take all-star K Love over all of our PFs. DWill is a more superior talent than everyone on our roster (showed lastnigt) even tho I can’t say I’m a fan of his.
Wes Johnson is solid if not spectacular but no doubt a starter in the NBA unlike most of the youngsters on the Raps.
I’d take Beasley at SF over J Johnson anyday. Never understood the hate for Beasleybec he’s a useful player from what i can see.
Wayne Ellington is a super sub who can knock down the 3. Maclom Lee I suspect will surprise a lot of ppl with his abiity to get to the rim. Jose Barea and L Ridinour are both better than all our pgs.
Minny is better positioned imo, hands down. I love my Raps but hey Minny got some great players; that Rubio is gonna be a fantastic PG i the NBA.
Gonna disagree with you on Beasely, but other than that you’ve made some solid points. I also think Rubio is a big “wait and see” for me. Hard to get excited about a guy who has been playing professionally for years against marginal talent in Europe and has failed to shine there.
In any case all this proves is that you CAN build talent through the draft and this is exactly the path Toronto should be taking.
It's close
I didn’t suggest we were way better.
It depends a lot on Williams and Rubio, and I am not sold on Rubio’s effectiveness, but I could agree he has talent. We will see if he is effective.
If you take Jonas and Williams as a trade off, both teams are close. The reason I probably prefer the Raps is I have more familiarity with our roster, I have to admit that, but I think we have more useful pieces moving forward as well. Either way, both teams are in a wait see state and I hope both succeed.
“I’d take Beasley over JJ any day” Maybe, but he comes with great risk. He’s actually close to AB in my mind in terms of value. The thing you see about these two teams is that they have a lot in common. Lots of questions.
Ridnour and JJ are not better than Jose. All three of those players are close to the same value. I like all three. Barbosa is right up there as well, he is an energy player of the bench (former 6th man award winner) , we will see.
One thing that swayed my position;
I like our bigs way more.
Amir, Ed, AB, Jonas, Gray and Magloire
Love, Darko, Miller, Nikola, Randolf
One thing to consider and it’s a bit frightening if you are Minny, AB outrebounded (total rebounds of course, not rebounding rate) everyone on the Minny team last year.
JJ was able to be aggressive on D with the Mavs last season cause he had a lot of help behind him and D. Stevenson was the stopper and JJ was asked to bring in some Offence and just be energetic and to take risks on D…we will see if it makes a difference having the Matrix and Chandler on D to help out. Will Darko and Williams offer the same support?
by defensive rap on Dec 18, 2011 2:38 PM EST up reply actions
Love
AB outrebounded the entire Minny team except for Love of course. I made a typo, sorry. It was obvious what I meant, i just said it poorly.
by defensive rap on Dec 18, 2011 2:40 PM EST up reply actions
Recap
Driving the bus: Ed Davis
Under the bus: Aaron Gray
hahaha
So, maybe we can play D?
I am adding Forbes to the list of Raptors to watch. Great court awareness, he might be quite a sleeper. He has the talent and his path to the NBA so far as made him hungry and humble. Hungry, humble and talented…..good.
Bayless needs to settle down but we need to be patient with him.
Amir was quiet but had 5 offensive boards and made a few big hustle plays that don’t show up on the stat sheet but inspire his side to play harder.
Ed is bigger and looks more comfortable. He has NBA level talent, no question.
Jose needs to find his range but was solid with the ball as per usual.
Gray looks big and tough. Magloire looks tough. JJ looks athletic, 4 blocks in under ten minutes…
Barbossa will get it going, and then he will be gone anyways.
And Demar looks substantially improved on both ends of the court. I look for big things. His Defensive awareness was much better. He now has a three
Now, we lost the game and we didn’t look that great, but there was a change in attitude. They are different and I want to see how it pans out.
At one point late in the third AB went to pickup a guard on a switch and he forced him far away from the top of the circle by hustling and moving his feet and using his body. Then he ran back hard to the basket and grabbed a rebound over several other players. It was the best play I have seen from Andrea in a long time. He also tried much harder than in the past. It was noticeable. I loved it.
For those of you who don’t believe in Andrea (I am one of those), this game if nothing else should make us intrigued to see if this was a one off or if maybe Andrea is just a “Late Bloomer.” For the first time in a long time, I wanna see him play next game. And I know he will have better shooting nights. He was going inside more and he was trying. If his journey is going to continue with our team, we need him to play better and try harder. He did that today, and I would like to see him continue on that path.
Wow what a positive feeling for a loss. Right now it’s not Ws that matter, it’s habits and culture. If they keep up this style of play and effort on D and shoot that poorly we will have a team for the future and a high draft pick next year. That’s what I want.
No more layups. Go to the rim against Toronto, pay the price. We would like to give up the least uncontested shots at the rim in the NBA this year.
Gray was just awful out there. I've seen him play a lot better than that.
My observations were:
Ed Davis should start. Talk abt an automatic double double guy
Bargnani’s 4 for14 and missed lay up at the end was disappointing.
DeRozan 50% shooting including 2for2 from 3pt land was good.
Calderon is a back-up at best and is past his prime
James Johnson plays excellent D, especially from the weak side but offered nothing on O
Butler has nothing to offer and shouldn’t even dress for games
Bayless played hard and you gotta respect that; looking forward to seeing more from him
Amir Johnson played his usual hustle game which is always appreciated
Forbes looked okay; need to see more
Magloire may have more to offer off the court than on
Barbosa is still a low percentage chucker who makes some amazing plays
Better energy and attitude from this team tho. I liked what I saw today. No doubt this team lacks talent and star power but still nice to see good effort and energy out there; I can respect that for sure.
AB
His shooting is not the issue for me. It’s never been. He shoots well, even if his numbers are a little low. He shot poorly today. I can live with it once in a while and we all know it will happen, but if you have seen him play in the past the issue is D and if you watched today he tried harder on D. After bashing him so much I feel it is important to recognize people when they make an effort. He made an effort today. Way to go.
People used to justify his time on the floor because he went 11 for 26 from the floor and had 28 pts and 3 rebounds, 1 asst and 4 t/o’s. I did not agree and hated when he played that way. So I can’t now use that stat against him after he did the things I want him to do better. The shots will fall. I liked what I saw on the Defensive end for the first time from Andrea. Keep it up.
After bashing him so much I feel it is important to recognize people when they make an effort. He made an effort today. Way to go.
Is he 8 years old or an NBA-level ball player?
by RaptorsHQ - Defensive Stance on Dec 18, 2011 4:35 PM EST up reply actions
NBA level player?
Good question.
Does he act like a kid? Yeah, I think he acts like a kid. He reminds me of a goal suck in hockey and only worried about his own points and not the team result.
Today, he didn’t “hang out at the centre line when the puck was in our end…” he played both ways like a man. Maybe the kid reference is accurate. Maybe he is becoming a man.
And to answer the first question, only men belong in the NBA.
by defensive rap on Dec 18, 2011 4:56 PM EST up reply actions
Gray
He is big and young and tough and is an adequate stop gap centre.
One of two outcomes
1. he plays well and fits in as a backup centre for a few years
2. he plays poorly and leads to more losses this year and a higher draft pick next year.
Lots of talk about the raptor bigs (as per usual centering on our favourite Primavera sponsor, maybe Casey has changed his diet), any thoughts on the raptors wing position? A side from Derozan it terrifies me. All the players have serious flaws that limit their ability to contribute and I know most of them on stop gaps it will be a long year….
Butler, primarily a jump shooter lacks athleticism which limits his off the dribble game and defence.
Barbosa, really just a 6th man who can score.
Forbes, never given a shot and may be solid but there is a reason he didn’t make an impact on other teams. Yes sometimes they just need a chance but more often than not they are what you think.
Weems, probably done for the Raps.
Kleiza, not sure he will ever be the player he was before and even when he was healthy he wasn’t a big time player.
James Johnson-Can make an impact on D but very limited on O to garbage points. Definitely a role for those types of players but his on the ball D isn’t lock down its his weak side D. Obviosuly the most potential.
The wing outside DD (who will be a star and possibly our goto guy, been saying that for a while) terrifies me more than spending the new year with the in-laws. As much as I want Drummond (24pts/8brds/5blks today) Harrison Barnes would be a perfect fit. A once a 5-10yr potential talent vs a perfect fit. I still want Drummond but Barnes is not just a consolation prize but a great NBA player waiting to happen.
Potential/Talent vs Need. I say you draft Talent, look at the Portland Trail Blazers. They have lost Oden and Roy yet still will be a playoff team and really pushed Dallas in the first round. Draft well and accumulate talent you can make good deal and not have your hand forced by stars. I really hope Raptors can add another pick in this draft in the lottery, as teams in the lottery and even just the first round can get talent. Late first round picks this year are really lottery picks in other years.
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