Sam Mitchell Analysis

[WaltFrazier]

Once during a game I was at the Raptors were facing a critical defensive possession. A fan behind Smitch yelled at him he should take out Juan Dixon, since hes not a good defender. Sam quickly subbed him out and put joey Graham in. i was thinking this sure made Smitch look dumb, that he needed a fan to tell him to take out the undersized Dixon there, but recently I was thinking it showed humility on his part to understand the fan was right, and correct the mistake.

How do you know Sam didn’t already have that substitution in mind? Doubt coaches are taking advice good or bad from any fans during a game.

I'm reminded of a story about the great HOF Knicks coach Red Holzman. One of the early 70s Knicks was coming back from injury, let's say it was Cazzie Russell. Red didn't put him in, and all game a leather lunged fan kept telling, c'mon Red put Cazzie in. Over and over, as Holzman ignored him. Finally near the end buzzer, Red turned around and hissed at the fan, he's sick you stupid schmuck.

[yellowknifer]

I was watching the game against the Hawks when Jalen Johnson got injured and Mitchell was like oh that is nothing they will pop it back in and he will be back in the game. He was out for the season. Feel bad for the young man as he had a real shot at being an All-Star. Love his game. I would probably flip Barnes for him.

Jalen is a beast in the making. I would too. Scotty has let me down this year in a big way. I don’t think Atlanta would do it though. Scotty has dropped his value with how he responded to increased opportunities this year. Maybe he was never going to be a great scoring threat, but I think his in game and on court demeanour has been terrible at times. He’s a great defender and you can’t teach his tools, but he’s a huge liability on offence and I don’t think it can be hidden. He consistently finds himself with wide open looks and in great position in the paint. He consistently fails to convert.

[mdenny]

I attended games screaming at Kevin O'Neill that he shouldn't be starting Michael Curry. He didn't listen to me.

I know the answer to this question. Curry was a tremendous team defender. Did alot of little things that went unnoticed. And Kevin's raptor teams were the first good defensive teams we ever had. I think we were amongst the top 5 in points against with him as coach.

Damn team was like watching ppl crawl in mud. But I remember being relieved that we finally had a good defensive team and to see what that was like as a fan.

Curry was 35 at that point and not as valuable as he once was on the defensive end. Definitely no where worth starting him.

And as another poster mentioned, we were top 5 in points against because we walked the ball up court and ate up the shot clock with terrible offense. We were the slowest pace and worst offensive that season.

It was the first time in our franchise history that we had good defense. Using time of possession was part of that sure back then for every time. The Isiah Pistons used to eat clock too. That was part of the game.

I was happy that we finally saw another side of basketball for our team. We were hard to play against for the first time.

I'm still sick and tired of all the casual ball fans in toronto that like the flashiness and the open court dunks. We still have a very low level educated fan base for ball. Our fanbase is disproportionately prone to hype.

I know way too many ppl that argued the derozan for kawhi trade was bad at the time. Some of that was ppl just loving demar's character which I get. But some of it was also ppl having no idea how good kawhi was.

[mdenny]

Only 1 player for the offensive glass and 4 back. It's supposed to may a horrendous team decent but it didn't. Such a terrible on court product. Oh the darkest of days.

What it did is left us losing the possession control game on the offensive end, in an era where high-volume offensive rebounding was still a fairly important part of the game. We were actually 8th in the league in 3P% that year and shooting it at a decent volume relative to the rest of the league, but were brutal at drawing fouls, second-worst on the offensive glass, 3rd-slowest team in the league, we pulled a terrible mid-season trade for Jalen Rose, who was a merciless waste of skin. We had injuries. We had the shell of Alvin Williams' knees. Bosh was a rookie. We EVER started Milt friggin' Palacio.

That was an awful, awful season of basketball.

Yeah, we were 7th in team defense as a -2.5 defense... but we were a -5.9 offense. We were so bad on the offensive end that our D was irrelevant, which is why we were a 33-win team. It was horrible, horrible basketball.

And yeah, I cannot stress enough how bad Jalen Rose was, omg I hated him.

That's just crazy. That season we were posed to do something until jalen rose got injured. We finally had a team identity with high basketball iq.

Up til that point....we actually had some winning chemistry. it was the best team our franchise ever had. We were pulling out ugly wins even though the entertainment and flash value went down. I disagree very strongly with you guys. And that defensive rating you cited was impacted by the end of season collapse after Jalen's injury. We were a top 5 defensive team before that.

In my perception of raptor history....that was the first time we had a real team. The first time we weren't a joke to play against.

[mdenny]

I attended games screaming at Kevin O'Neill that he shouldn't be starting Michael Curry. He didn't listen to me.

I know the answer to this question. Curry was a tremendous team defender. Did alot of little things that went unnoticed. And Kevin's raptor teams were the first good defensive teams we ever had. I think we were amongst the top 5 in points against with him as coach.

Damn team was like watching ppl crawl in mud. But I remember being relieved that we finally had a good defensive team and to see what that was like as a fan.

That's just controlling pace. Only 1 player for the offensive glass and 4 back. It's supposed to may a horrendous team decent but it didn't. Such a terrible on court product. Oh the darkest of days.

Our 2020 team did the same thing in foregoing offensive rebounds. It got us the best regular season in franchise history. Before covid hit....I literally couldn't believe what our team was doing. We were going out out on west coast road trips and DOMINATING. And that was after everyone wrote us off because Kawhi left.

Also...it's extremely reductive to boil the whole defense down to that. While saying "Michael Curry shouldn"t have got starter minutes". You didn't need to play Michael Curry simply to not go after offensive rebounds. There's obviously alot more to team defense than that.

In nurse' 2020 case...the primary focus was on switching schemes and collapsing into the paint. Foregoing offensive rebounds was more like a tweak he added after he saw the success of our half court switching.

[tsherkin]

That's just crazy. That season we were posed to do something until jalen rose got injured.

He was SOOOOOO bad. Not particularly bright on the court, horrendously inefficient, dreadful shot selection. The team "offense" did him no favors because KO was a clown, but Rose was never a particularly good player. I think he had any utility to us because we were so bad that any activity was going to push us forward. Kinda like Jordan in Washington, only far worse.

[onions17]

I yelled at Smitch to sub Darrick Murray in to keep the three point streak alive. He listened.

And it stayed alive.

Love every time seeing that Darrick Murray has lived on, pretty sure that legend spawned almost 20 years ago by now

[Westside Gunn]

Do we still have that poster who met sam mitchell but couldnt high five him because the poster had a frisbee in his hand?

The randomness of that one was too funny

[Clay Davis]

My favourite Smitch story:

Remember when he used to get so excited he would actually jump out off the sidelines and step on to the court during the game?

I posted on RealGM that he better not do that during the playoffs or he could get called for a very inconvenient technical foul in a key situation.

Then, magically, he immediately stopped doing it.

Remember when Doc Rivers did it and it was okay in our play-off series against Philly? What strange rizz on dat...

[Westside Gunn]

I attended games screaming at Kevin O'Neill that he shouldn't be starting Michael Curry. He didn't listen to me.

Did you ask him to play Lamond Murray? I remember he was back from his prolongued foot injury and a lot of fans wanted to see him in action. Always DNPed