There’s Plenty Of Blame To Go Around
We can’t play defense because we don’t know how to play defense. There’s little anybody can do to teach us defense because defense doesn’t work that way. There’s no prosthetic for laziness and indifference which is what we’re seeing on 80% of the possessions. I’d subscribe to the “defense needs time to gel” argument if there was something there that could actually gel, but when you have two poor defensive players in Turkoglu and Calderon out there with average or below-average defenders like Bosh and Bargnani, 30th in the league sounds pretty reasonable. If it doesn’t, consider we’re playing a defensive scheme that is stretching the hell out of our players. Let’s leave defense alone, I’m used to the team letting me down there, what about our offense? Our 9M/yr PG let Steve Nash off the hook, our 10M/yr free-agent signing was invisible for 3/4 the game, we were 5% from three, and were reduced to one-on-one play. That is unexpected.
via At least November’s over – Raptors Republic – ESPN TrueHoop’s Raptors Blog.
I’ve elaborated recently how Bosh-Bargnani is flawed, but that doesn’t mean I pin everything on Bargs. He’s up a board, which isn’t enough, but it’s been rising.
There’s a lot of talk about effort with the Raps, and I think that’s definitely part of it, now. But I still feel that the core problem is that the team has no clue what’s going on on defense. They don’t just look confused, they look scared, panicked, as if they have no preparation in how to respond when the other team has the ball. And as much as Toronto fans blame the players, RR does a good job of pointing out that Triano’s got a big hand in this.
Remember, Triano was an interim coach that lasted. Interim coach. Disappointing season. Bosh possibly leaving. Everything’s spelling out “rebuilding year” for the Raps heading into 2010-2011. They’ve got to rebound right away to avoid that. Figuratively. And literally. You know what I mean.
Oster-Tags: Andrea Bargnani, Chris Bosh, Jay Triano, Toronto Raptors, willsomeonepleasebeamentortothedinosaurs
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