Boob-No-More

As I mentioned in another thread, after tonight you've played 11 play-off games in the last two years. You haven't out rebounded your opponent once in those 11 games, and you've been out scored in the paint in all 11 games (by an average of 14 PPG). Your two biggest weaknesses come play-off time are rebounding and interior defense. You gave up an average of 37 points-in-the-paint last year against the Nets, and and average of 43 points-in-the-paint against the Magic this series. That's WAY to many easy baskets for the opposition. You simply can't give up 40 points-in-the-paint game after game and expect to win a play-off series - especially when you also get out rebounded game after game. Bargnani doesn't help either of these areas. In fact, he's a huge part of the problem - when you try to play him at center.

BNM

Mr_B

Just curious how many Raptor games have you watched?

Boob-No-More

While that may explain his lack of offensive rebounds, that's seven TOTAL rebounds in a five game series. On defense, he's playing under the basket and still getting almost no rebounds. He is currently the worst rebounding starting center in the entire league, by a very wide margin, and the worst rebounding 7-footer I can think of in the last twenty years. You can't attribute that all to hanging out on the perimeter on offense. His defensive rebounding stinks just as bad.

BNM

Boob-No-More

Every one in this series, although I admit I missed the first 2.5 quarters of game 4. Every one last year against the Nets and a handful during each of the last two regular seasons. Why, did I miss all the games where Bargnani was a total rebounding stud?

Seriously, in the games that really matter, the play-offs, it's painfully obvious that the Raptors two most glaring weaknesses are poor rebounding and weak interior defense.

BNM

lucky777s

Raps cant stop penetration at any position.
Raps don't guard the 3pt line well at all.
Raps don't guard power bigs well at all.
Raps don't rebound well at all.
That is pretty much every defensive category there is.

What would help all those areas? A Dwight Howard type of player who has the power to fight bigs and the length to change or swat shots on penetration, which discourages penetration to begin with.

That was the difference in this series. Magic have a power game on O and a defensive force in the middle on D. Everything else is pretty equal. These teams are quite similar in fact. Bogans, Dooling, Hedo, Rashard, are slightly better wings than Parker, Delfino, Moon, Kapono while at PG Nelson, Arroyo are slightly inferior to Jose/TJ. The power game of Dwight is more effective at both ends than the finesse game of Bosh. The rebounds and blocked shot differential were huge.

Not sure why everyone is amazed at Nelson's shooting. The guy was an amazing college player at St.Joe's - a winner and a leader with a great stroke. Guy makes some of the worst TOs you will ever see from an nba point guard but so does TJ. I could live with Jameer being our backup PG.

And if we lose Delfino this summer I would love to pick up Dooling. Liked what he did for the Heat off the bench in their playoff run and was impressed at how he attacked the basket for the Magic this series.

But top priorities have to be a defensive force in the middle, along with a legit starting wing who can create in the crunch.

ballocks

nothing new here, the same ol'- which is good or bad depending on how you look at it.

the one thing that stood out to me was chris bosh down the stretch. i even got choked up. if there's anyone in the world who wants this team to take the much-ballyhooed "next step", it's obviously chris bosh. more than anyone here, more than anyone anywhere- and by a mile.

i feel like the team and coaches let him down all year. for a squad with supposed depth, he looked like he was on an island from game 1 to game 86. the pieces may be there but nobody showed the drive to put them together ('drive' being the operative word). part of that is his job, but most of it is not.

i didn't know how the guy was going to make it through the last 90 seconds, to be honest. he looked like he was going to collapse. i'm proud of him. next year will be better, chris.

peace