Thoughts from Game 1

I know everyone is pretty hysterical because of the loss yesterday, and believe me I am super disappointed with yesterday's game, but everything that I've read, it seems like no one talking about the correct issues.

Sam had a good gameplan in place, and I think the Raps did enough of defense to win it, but at the end of the day, their offense let them down. They weren't able to force NJ into the double team scramble, and the Raptors offense ground to a halt because there was no where to swing the ball. Bosh needs to force the double down, and Bragnani needs to fucking hit a 3.

Other observations yesterday:

I definitely didn't think that Bosh did enough to force NJ into the rotations necessary for the Raps to get their normal 3's. They kept a second defender close to him as a soft double, but he didn't force them to double down hard, in order to make the Nets start to scramble. That is the biggest adjustment that they have to make on Tuesday to the offense. I don't think its broken, just something Bosh has to do to adjust his game. If Bosh starts to make a strong move to the hoop, NJ will have to start to double hard, and AP (and maybe Joey) should start to get hot.

I think Jose and Ford did as well as you could have asked for. NJ was forcing TJ to be a scorer, they played him to pass, so its good to see him adjust his game, and light them up, should make it harder for NJ to decide what to do in Game 2. Calderon they played to attack the rim, and he was able to rack up a bunch of assists in the 2nd half, which was good to see. Ford and Calderon definitely present a problem for NJ because Marcus Williams is terrible. The moment he got in to the game, the Raptors made huge runs, so I think Kidd is going to have to start playing even more minutes, which should pay off by Game 3 (hopefully). Kidd is a terrible shooter, so I kind of expect him to have similar type offensive game 12 and 10 is my prediction for game 2. The Raps CANNOT have Kidd grab 10 boards, that more than anything else killed them yesterday. Carter is probably going to go off in Game 2, but RJ will be limited if that happens, which the Raptors will benefit from.

They were able to turn RJ off in the second half, so Sam was ale to make an adequate adjustment on him in the half court. I think he only scored about 9 points in the 2nd half, which is way better than the 21 he put up in the first. Nachebar played a pretty big part, but he didn't perform outside my expectations. I thought going in to the series, he was going to be a huge part of their gameplan, and he proved me right.

The X Factor is gonna be Bragnani. He had a TERRIBLE game, probably his worst game since the first few of this season. If he gets his normal 13-16 pts, the Raps win yesterday.

As bad as the Raptors played yesterday, the Nets were just as bad. I think this series is going to come down to the Raptors improving their offensive execution because I felt that they played defense well enough to win defensively (they aren't going to morph into the Spurs just because its the playoffs), but their offense really let them down.

The transition defense was atrocious yesterday, and something needs to be corrected.