PG: Raptors blow out the Wizards. Improve to 3-8 in December

[hyper316]

Siakam postgame said it all, something had to change. Players knew, fans knew, took 29 games for Darko to get it through his head. Also he didn't sub Barnes off as the first player in 1Q, Darko is really slow adjusting to change. other good changes were Flynn and Achiuwa getting less minutes. Just surprised all the changes that fans have been asking for happened all at once, why not make adjustments game to game?

[WaltFrazier]

Right, we didn't need Pascal's 22 points and 11 assists tonight

To be fair, against Washington we probably didn’t

It is hilarious seeing all the hype for Scottie and how amazing he is when Siakam is casually doing almost the exact same stuff for 5 seasons now and Siakam is “unnecessary”.

As far as I am concerned, outside of purposely getting worse, a below average offensive team needs its best scorer

Scottie is 22 and playing at a higher level than the 29 year old. How is this "hilarious"?
Scottie is putting up better numbers, on better efficiency, at a much younger age. It took Siakam 3 years to put up numbers comparable to Scotties rookie year, and that required having a top 3 player like Kawhi taking all the defensive pressure.

No one is saying Siakam is bad, or what he has done isn't impressive. But it doesn't matter. He got heaps of praise for what he was doing, when he was doing it. We have a freshly turned 22 year old playing better, that's why he's getting hype, because he is showing future MVP potential. This isn't rocket surgery.

It's not about which one gets more hype. It's about you saying Pascal is unnecessary, when he had a great game.

[Childs]

Watch on YouTube

[Scizzup]

Scottie being able to shoot 3's like this is crazy, no matter the difficulty imo. I still think he ends the season at 37% and on 5 a game that would be great development.

He is looking like a much better playmaking version of 05 -07 Shawn Marion.

[Dennis 37]

Also: Why do fans see the Potential in this change long before NBA coaches?

Because I truly believe the fans have at least 37% more knowledge of the game of basketball than Darko and Bobsai

You... can't be serious.

Maybe he's Surely?

[Dennis 37]

Because I truly believe the fans have at least 37% more knowledge of the game of basketball than Darko and Bobsai

You... can't be serious.

You can’t be serious thinking he’s not being serious. You moderate these forums without reading them? It is pretty clear many people think this.

The 37% was for my benefit. Anyone who reads this forum regularly knows that half the threads I am involved in, while having Potential, border on satire.

Its a Derrick Murray type of thing.

[Shakril]

I'd love to see this lineup:

Barnes / Dennis
Trent / Otto
OG / McDaniels
Siakam / Boucher
Precious / Poeltl

Siakam was feasting when Poeltl was on bench probably cuz of better spacing, and I think Jak would be better off bench with Dennis.

I liked that Darko made the lineup change.

Reward Achiuwa bad play with starting role is a strange one

Its not about Achiuwa, its all about hating on Poeltl. People who want Poeltl from the bench have 0 understanding how the game is played. They just watch the Box Score and think thats the Truth.

[Shakril]

scottie all star

I'm starting to get higher expectations where the 20 points on 16 shots, 12 rebounds, 8 assists doesn't really look all that impressive from Barnes.

Thats exactly the Boxscore Barnes should have. A little bit of everything, thats where his strength lies.
This makes it harder for teams to prepare against him, cause he can do damage in different ways.

[Shakril]

Achiuwa fit the modern game lot more than Jak

Achiuwa is not better than Jakob in any way shape or form for any style of play in any role. He’s probably the worst player in the league.

It gets Yak to the bench with Denis, that's good enough for me.

Thats horrible. With Trent, Aichuwa and Siakam you have 3 Bad Defenders and 0 Rim Protection. Yak, OG and Barnes are the best 3 defensive Players on the team and they should play as much as possible together.

[Dalek]

Siakam postgame said it all, something had to change. Players knew, fans knew, took 29 games for Darko to get it through his head. Also he didn't sub Barnes off as the first player in 1Q, Darko is really slow adjusting to change. other good changes were Flynn and Achiuwa getting less minutes. Just surprised all the changes that fans have been asking for happened all at once, why not make adjustments game to game?

it is fair and we as outsiders can make on the fly adjustments. Darko is a new coach without a big track record. He probably wanted to establish his trust with players and that probably meant sitting on things. Nurse was always quick to make adjustments and ran with so many different line-ups and it kind of made players trust him less. Darko seemed to be deliberately patient.

[mdenny]

Siakam postgame said it all, something had to change. Players knew, fans knew, took 29 games for Darko to get it through his head. Also he didn't sub Barnes off as the first player in 1Q, Darko is really slow adjusting to change. other good changes were Flynn and Achiuwa getting less minutes. Just surprised all the changes that fans have been asking for happened all at once, why not make adjustments game to game?

Man...that siakam post game interview sounded like he is NOT a fan of darko but I could be wrong in interpreting it.

[HumbleRen]

Siakam postgame said it all, something had to change. Players knew, fans knew, took 29 games for Darko to get it through his head. Also he didn't sub Barnes off as the first player in 1Q, Darko is really slow adjusting to change. other good changes were Flynn and Achiuwa getting less minutes. Just surprised all the changes that fans have been asking for happened all at once, why not make adjustments game to game?

Man...that siakam post game interview sounded like he is NOT a fan of darko but I could be wrong in interpreting it.

Nah, that’s been the vibe all season, starting from day 1 on training camp.

Siakam doesn’t think Darko is a serious coach and Darko talks about Siakam like he isn’t going to be here after this year.

[Boogie!]

Achiuwa fit the modern game lot more than Jak

Achiuwa is not better than Jakob in any way shape or form for any style of play in any role. He’s probably the worst player in the league.

Hyperbole much? Precious is not even worst player of Raptors and you are putting him as worst player in the whole NBA

Precious honestl5 is a terrible basketball player. He belongs in the gleague. He has no redeeming qualities. He hasn't improved on anything since he's been in the league. He's never outhustling anyone, he's never in the right spots, he has no reliable skills where you can say at least he brings this consistently night in and night out. The only reason he's getting pt is because masai loves him and wants to unlock his potential. Unfortunately you can't teach basketball iq.

I often contrast him with boucjer because people love to lump them in together. But think of how many times you've seen boucher cut at the basket for an any layup or draw a loose ball foul just by fighting for rebounds, or outhustling somebody for an offensive rebound or drawn an offensive foul. Now think of how many times achiuwa has done this? Honestly I bet you couldn't think of one time. He just doesn't have any basketball acumen. He's the worst of what you complain about with boucher, with none of the redeeming qualities in terms of hustle and Motor and resilience. And the worst part is he's probably the best overall athlete on the team with the best physical profile. He's got similar measurements to someone like Barnes, with more explosiveness and hops and yet he somehow is still the worst player om the team. The guy sucks, if you don't see it, I don't trust your evaluation ability.

[HiJiNX]

We played the Wiz, the worst defensive team in the league. As I said, we all wanted to see changes but this game proves nothing.

A 1 game sample size is not proof of anything. I was driving the “replace Schroder with Trent” bandwagon and I’m happy with changes in process but no one should be claiming any type of success yet.

If one game can’t be used as a sample to say that the new lineups/rotations will have a positive impact wouldn’t it also hold that we can’t use one game to say the new starting lineup sucks?

Granted, the new starting lineup didn’t look good out there, but to me it looked more like unfamiliarity than ineptitude. But maybe it is ineptitude. We need at least five games to do some assessment, though.

Agreed 100% about using 1 game sample sizes. I only pulled that number as a counter to show that using this game to claim the changes are a success is jumping the gun. Basically, we can’t claim “Dennis to the bench is a success” but ignore “starter net rating” if posters want to claim the lineup changes are a success after 1 game. We shouldn’t take anything away from this game outside of its good Darko is willing to experiment with different lineups. If this lineups will actually work is tbd.

Agreed.

[HiJiNX]

We played the Wiz, the worst defensive team in the league. As I said, we all wanted to see changes but this game proves nothing.

A 1 game sample size is not proof of anything. I was driving the “replace Schroder with Trent” bandwagon and I’m happy with changes in process but no one should be claiming any type of success yet.

If one game can’t be used as a sample to say that the new lineups/rotations will have a positive impact wouldn’t it also hold that we can’t use one game to say the new starting lineup sucks?

Granted, the new starting lineup didn’t look good out there, but to me it looked more like unfamiliarity than ineptitude. But maybe it is ineptitude. We need at least five games to do some assessment, though.

I think the thing to be happy about, is that we are seeing continued change by Darko. People saying "FINALLY" are a bit silly, considering he has been making a multitude of changes over the last 6-8 games, but everyone hand waived it away, or ignored it outright because the SL didn't change.

We should be happy changes are being made, but victory laps after beating the wiz is just silly. At the end of the day, this roster is still booty cheeks, and no matter of shuffling around will not turn them into anything other than play in fodder at best. This shows that if we get a proper roster in place, Darko might actually be able to do something with it. That is something I take some solace in, and would be happy to see.

Yeah I’ve been critical of Darko but to see him make changes to the rotations and experiment with stuff the past few weeks, it’s been encouraging to see. I actually think he’s a smart guy but doesn’t know how to be the leader in the room yet. That’ll come in time I hope. He’s learning how to tailor his plan to what he has rather than what he wants his players to be. Still, the D gotta get better haha.

I think one thing we all need to acknowledge is how different this team looks in terms of play style on offence than it did for the first ten games of the season. We are waaaay better on that end. If we had some smarter players who could shoot we would probably have a good offence.

[HiJiNX]

Watch on YouTube

So it does sound like Barnes plus bench was a way to train him to be on ball more and now he’s graduated to developing in that way with the starters. Makes sense.

[YogurtProducer]

To be fair, against Washington we probably didn’t

It is hilarious seeing all the hype for Scottie and how amazing he is when Siakam is casually doing almost the exact same stuff for 5 seasons now and Siakam is “unnecessary”.

As far as I am concerned, outside of purposely getting worse, a below average offensive team needs its best scorer

Scottie is 22 and playing at a higher level than the 29 year old. How is this "hilarious"?
Scottie is putting up better numbers, on better efficiency, at a much younger age. It took Siakam 3 years to put up numbers comparable to Scotties rookie year, and that required having a top 3 player like Kawhi taking all the defensive pressure.

No one is saying Siakam is bad, or what he has done isn't impressive. But it doesn't matter. He got heaps of praise for what he was doing, when he was doing it. We have a freshly turned 22 year old playing better, that's why he's getting hype, because he is showing future MVP potential. This isn't rocket surgery.

It's not about which one gets more hype. It's about you saying Pascal is unnecessary, when he had a great game.

Pascal still does the hardest and most valuable thing (Scoring), at a higher level than Scottie does anyways.

I totally understand being excited for the future, but Siakam is far from unnecessary right now

[hyper316]

All that telling Flynn to smile and Darko ends up benching him LMAO

Gave him so many chances in the last 4 years. Comes into garbage time and turns the ball over 2 times in less than 1 minute. No hope

[Scase]

To be fair, against Washington we probably didn’t

It is hilarious seeing all the hype for Scottie and how amazing he is when Siakam is casually doing almost the exact same stuff for 5 seasons now and Siakam is “unnecessary”.

As far as I am concerned, outside of purposely getting worse, a below average offensive team needs its best scorer

Scottie is 22 and playing at a higher level than the 29 year old. How is this "hilarious"?
Scottie is putting up better numbers, on better efficiency, at a much younger age. It took Siakam 3 years to put up numbers comparable to Scotties rookie year, and that required having a top 3 player like Kawhi taking all the defensive pressure.

No one is saying Siakam is bad, or what he has done isn't impressive. But it doesn't matter. He got heaps of praise for what he was doing, when he was doing it. We have a freshly turned 22 year old playing better, that's why he's getting hype, because he is showing future MVP potential. This isn't rocket surgery.

It's not about which one gets more hype. It's about you saying Pascal is unnecessary, when he had a great game.

He did not have a "great game", he had an ok game. And his contribution was barely needed.

The raptors led by 9 at the half despite Siakam putting up 6 points on 3/7 shooting. He had a "good" 3rd quarter, mainly because he just played all 12 minutes. OG had a great game, Siakam was just "there".

He was absolutely not needed to win this game.

[Scase]

Scottie is 22 and playing at a higher level than the 29 year old. How is this "hilarious"?
Scottie is putting up better numbers, on better efficiency, at a much younger age. It took Siakam 3 years to put up numbers comparable to Scotties rookie year, and that required having a top 3 player like Kawhi taking all the defensive pressure.

No one is saying Siakam is bad, or what he has done isn't impressive. But it doesn't matter. He got heaps of praise for what he was doing, when he was doing it. We have a freshly turned 22 year old playing better, that's why he's getting hype, because he is showing future MVP potential. This isn't rocket surgery.

It's not about which one gets more hype. It's about you saying Pascal is unnecessary, when he had a great game.

Pascal still does the hardest and most valuable thing (Scoring), at a higher level than Scottie does anyways.

I totally understand being excited for the future, but Siakam is far from unnecessary right now

Siakam is averaging 0.6PPG more than Scottie, on worse efficiency. He objectively, this season, is not doing it at a higher level. Hell, if anything he is doing it at a significantly lower level, as he's a threat from one place on the court, while Scottie is a threat from the 3pt line all the way to the basket.