Hope Stone is ok all his botched layups and dunks make a whole lot a sense now with this coming into light I hope hes alright.
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Memphis @ Toronto: DeRozan's continued Growth and God Father IV
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i gotta say... i'm really impressed with demar so far. watching him, you can see he's trying to take good shots. letting the offense come to him more. his 3 point shooting still isn't up to snuff and i'm not going to bother talking about his defense, but he's trying to be more effecient, and i really appreciate that.
rudy on the other hand...@sweatpantsjer
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Although last season's preseason record looked good too, this year there is noticeable chemistry with the starting unit. I don't really care that we're 6-1 so far, as most of those wins came with deep bench guys playing heavy minutes.
But our starters look to be in mid-season form already. It's amazing how beneficial one summer of continuity can be. Hoping it carries over to next week.
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i just assumed that of the ten thousand preaseason games for the raptors, this would have been the surefire loss. pleasantly surprised but obviously no crazy hopes up for the regular season, especially with the random injuries to basically half the team.
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I was going to add this in to provide some sober context but there is a silver lining. Guess who the Raptors played in their penultimate preseason game last year? The Memphis Grizzlies. Beat them 120-106 too. But, the silver lining is that the Grizz played mostly bench guys. Still, funny coincidence. Naismith lives!
Then again, take a look at our last preseason. Winning sched. Lots of hype about derozan. Impressive lowry. Even bargnani was a rock star. Hmmmm. Bring on the real season. Time to see if there is any actual gold in them there fool's gold
http://www.nba.com/raptors/schedule/2012Last edited by Jclaw; Thu Oct 24, 2013, 12:21 PM.
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Jclaw wrote: View PostI was going to add this in to provide some sober context but there is a silver lining. Guess who the Raptors played in their penultimate preseason game last year? The Memphis Grizzlies. Beat them 120-106 too. But, the silver lining is that the Grizz played mostly bench guys. Still, funny coincidence. Naismith lives!
Oh, and Bargnani grabbed ONE rebound, our defense looked like garbage, and most of our points were in transition (on the video). The only bright spot seems to be the assist-to-turnover ratio, which is not surprising when you compare our backup PG that year to this year.
That's not to say I'm taking our success this year out of context. Not by a long shot. But our starters have looked really good on both ends of the court (especially defense), and I'm seeing some crucial improvements to some key players there. With good health and solid effort (contract year for Lowry and Gay should REALLY help there), this year's starters are VASTLY superior to last year's. Fields (last year's version) and Bargnani starting?! **Puke**
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Jclaw wrote: View PostI was going to add this in to provide some sober context but there is a silver lining. Guess who the Raptors played in their penultimate preseason game last year? The Memphis Grizzlies. Beat them 120-106 too. But, the silver lining is that the Grizz played mostly bench guys. Still, funny coincidence. Naismith lives!
Then again, take a look at our last preseason. Winning sched. Lots of hype about derozan. Impressive lowry. Even bargnani was a rock star. Hmmmm. Bring on the real season. Time to see if there is any actual gold in them there fool's gold
http://www.nba.com/raptors/schedule/2012
Last year's team was way slower with Andrea on the floor -- you don't really notice how bad his footwork is until you compare it to Val or Hansborough...
Also, tough to compare a game that the Grizz never were in and a game that the Raps starters had to claw back to win against the Grizz 3rd team! I'm not sure if there's a serious drop in coaching, the starters for Memphis had a late night (it is pre-season) or what, but they never were into the game, meanwhile Raps are trying to sort out the bench so Raptor player are playing to earn minutes - who knows, but the 2 games are considerably different.
Also, no hype this year -- I like that.
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Update on TSN: http://www.tsn.ca/nba/story/?id=434933
Valanciunas and Hansborough practiced today. Those two and Stone are expected to make the trip to Milwaukee for the final preseason game. Lowry's status should be known later today, or tomorrow latest.
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