Playoffs Game 2 GT - Tues, April 22nd /7:30pm /TSN / NBATV

[DG88]

Post practice videos are up
http://www.nba.com/raptors/video

[Death Knight]

Are you even serious right now? Umm it was his and almost everybody sans lowry,hans,and hayes first playoff games. A bad game is expected. Ofcourse you play your all star as many minutes as possible. Wtf are going on about? It seems like you just wanna argue to argue. Use some common sense.

You wanna play him 37mins okay, but what he does on the floor in those 37mins is what I'm talking about when I said he hurt the team. He took bad shots and played bad defense with poor rotations.

He played decent defense, and some real good defense on JJ when he was guarding him. JJ went 1-5 during that time. Another reason you play him is because of the attention he draws on the floor. It will always give you the advantage of someone sagging off. That's his job to penetrate or find the open man which he will since the jitter game is over with. But he is far from useless. But like DG88 said him, ross, and amir had bad games for various reasons and we were still close to being the texas 3 step nets. We aren't gonna fumble the ball as much as we did game 1. I expect this series to go the distance with us blowing them out tuesday.

You certainly have more faith in this team than I do that's for sure.

[Yorkex]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogBWFQU9IEQ[/youtube]

Coming from a Nets fan and yet so called Raptors fans fail to see what he saw from OUR team.
He sums up the game for those that missed it - we gave the game away.

[Camboflage]

DeMar DeFrozen better step it up.

One of my favourite Raptors and i'm glad he watched the tape and realized all the mistakes he made. Not even just missing shots, but just not being aggressive and pretty much shying away from the spot light. I thought he loved the analytical three, how do you miss both of them sheesh.

Is he bout that life? Win game 2.

[Throwback24]

Death in the family last night boys.. Wont be at the game on Tuesday yellin my heart out.

Ah man. I hope all is well with you. Come in for a hug man.

[Death Knight]

http://stats.nba.com/featured/sportvu_defensive_matchup_notes_2014_04_20.html#tor-bkn

Paul Pierce was primarily defended by Patrick Patterson and Amir Johnson throughout the game. He had success against Patrick Patterson going 3-for-5 from the floor and 1-for-1 from three.

In his first career playoff game, Jonas Valanciunas was able to find score successfully versus the experienced Kevin Garnett, shooting 4-of-7 from the field for eight points. Williams and Livingston were able to penetrate against Greivis Vasquez, recording five and three drives, respectively, when matched up with Vasquez.

So wait weren't people crucifying DeMar's D on JJ yesterday, stats tell a different story.

Trust me, there's plenty of hate for John Salmons around here. You're a mod, you should know. The consensus is that Salmons shouldn't even get any plenty time whatsoever. He is so bad that we're calling for Fields instead.

BTW, what stats don't show is off the ball defense, rotations, screens, cuts, pick and roll defense, defensive rebounding and helping on the boards, etc... 1 on 1 defense is just 1 aspect.

[edgehead411]

Really what went wrong in game one?

Offense was completely stagnant aside from Valanciunas in the first quarter.
Ross' foul trouble
DeRozan having an awful game
Amir being a non-factor
Shot clock malfunction definitely had an effect on the offense (as it did for the Nets)
Getting to the line 0 times in the fourth


These are all things that have happened during the season. Everything is fixable. Not a time to Panac

[Asif16]

Still depressed from yesterday. Didnt talk to anyone after the game ended yesterday or today.

Game 2 really cant come soon enough. We better win.

[Yorkex]

Lowry on D Will , Demar on JJ and Ross on Livingston

We need Ross in the game

[nitrous]

If we can move Salmons and Fields this season, we have money to make this team a real champ contender.

[AkelaLoneWolf]

First playoff game jitters, it happens to the majority of first timers. It wasn't like DeMar was the only player who didn't play well. Ross was bad, and Amir disappeared as well yet it's DeMar that gets the brunt of the blame. There are adjustments that need to be made and they'll be made. Now that they got a taste of what the playoffs are like they should be better prepared.

When things go well, everyone wants to give all the credit to the all star demar. When things go bad, it's not just demar, lets point the fingers at others as well and share the blame right? Come on..........

And Ross doesn't even qualify to be in the discussion, because he barely played.

I don't even know how it was justified for DeMar to take 18 shots per game during the season when he shot 43%, that's despite the fact that he gets to the line a lot and is a non 3pt shooter. He better not try to force his game for game 2, it'll only make things worse for the team.

We didn't lose the game because of DeMar solely. Why was Ross a non factor? Because he got himself into foul trouble early and some of those fouls were avoidable. There were other factors that caused us to lose the game. Just like there were other factors that help us win games.

lol dude are u seriously putting ross on a similar footing as demar?
demar is an allstar and a supposed cornerstone of our core. ross is a second year player on a rookie contract who hasn't even entered his prime yet.
tbh, i think if those refs hadn't been calling touch fouls on him all day, we would've won that game.
remember the run nets went on in the 1st quarter after ross left the game and salmons came in.
in the fourth, we were making good defensive stops, and after ross left with his fourth foul, we lost momentum again.
ross presence and absence had more of an impact than demar did. and that's just sad.

[Death Knight]

If we can move Salmons and Fields this season, we have money to make this team a real champ contender.

We don't need to move Salmons. Just don't pick up his option, done. Fields................

[AkelaLoneWolf]

If we can move Salmons and Fields this season, we have money to make this team a real champ contender.

salmons is gone after this season.
we have hayes and fields who are expiring contracts next year
and nowak's contract runs two more years.
next year essentially we'll have hayes, fields and nowak who collectively earn about $18M choking up capspace.

[AkelaLoneWolf]

lol dude are u seriously putting ross on a similar footing as demar?
demar is an allstar and a supposed cornerstone of our core. ross is a second year player on a rookie contract who hasn't even entered his prime yet.
tbh, i think if those refs hadn't been calling touch fouls on him all day, we would've won that game.
remember the run nets went on in the 1st quarter after ross left the game and salmons came in.
in the fourth, we were making good defensive stops, and after ross left with his fourth foul, we lost momentum again.
ross presence and absence had more of an impact than demar did. and that's just sad.

So the constant doubles and triples demar saw yesterday were they not because of his presence? The game plan was to get the ball out of his hands because he can score,i don't understand the stupidity some of you possess.

and yet we never reaped the benefit because he either coughed up the ball, passed to the wrong person or took a very difficult contested jump shot.
now don't get me wrong. i am sympathetic towards demar; its not easy playing the first time in the playoffs but let's not try to tiptoe around the fact that demar playing well would've made the difference between a win and a loss. The fact is that even through the regular season, demar has never really made his teammates better. he's had his moments with on and off passing, but they've been inconsistent at best. he's faced challenges before and conquered them, and i give him kudos for that but he's gonna have to learn pretty fast if we are to win this series.

[And1+2]

The real question: Why has Deron Williams not been fined yet for that flop?

[DG88]

lol dude are u seriously putting ross on a similar footing as demar?
demar is an allstar and a supposed cornerstone of our core. ross is a second year player on a rookie contract who hasn't even entered his prime yet.
tbh, i think if those refs hadn't been calling touch fouls on him all day, we would've won that game.
remember the run nets went on in the 1st quarter after ross left the game and salmons came in.
in the fourth, we were making good defensive stops, and after ross left with his fourth foul, we lost momentum again.
ross presence and absence had more of an impact than demar did. and that's just sad.

Wow this post.

First you say that Ross's importance shouldn't have been a factor compared to DeMar's, then you go on talking about how not having Ross on the floor hurt us. Well duh!!!!! The fact is that every player on this team is important since each player helps another teammate on the floor. DeMar's presence helps Ross get better looks, and Ross's floor spacing opens the lane up more for drives. DeMar isn't LeBron who can do everything on the court. He's a not a bonifide superstar player, but he's one of our scoring source. And asking a player who's a good secondary scorer to be the primary scorer is a tall task in of itself because of the defensive attention only gets higher. We all knew coming in the the Nets primary focus would be DeMar because he's our leading scorer. He had an awful game, but we all expected that to happen in his first playoff game. Going after a player who you expected to have a bad Game 1 playoff debut is completely asinine.

[for_tdot]

Lowry on D Will , Demar on JJ and Ross on Livingston

We need Ross in the game

We also need Derozan and the bench of the raptors to step up. Salmons aren't u supposed to playing well?? It's the playoffs and ur our vet.