Toronto Raptors @ Atlanta

[tontoz]

The newspaper reports that official Eric Lewis may be the culprit as he started the clock with a mechanism on his belt. Mitchell said he thought Ford's shot was good and one of the officials ruled it as such, but it was waived off on the replay.

"I thought it was an early [start on the] clock," Mitchell told the newspaper.

A league spokesman told ESPN.com's John Hollinger after the game that referees can't review whether a prematurely started clock caused a shot to come after the buzzer. They can only review whether the shot actually beat the buzzer. That would make any Raptors protest difficult to win since the refs followed the letter of the law in disallowing Ford's shot

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=280402001

[will]

There are a lot of Raps fans who keep blaming this on the Hawks score keeper(s)

Obviously, there are many prepubescent teens who are just going through puberty and emotions are running high.

[RockTHECasbah]

We blame the previous loss on the score keeper, the current loss on the referee

[conleyorbust]

As for the game, we won but we are forgettign about the biggest mistake by Woody of the season. Having Chillz on Ford was absurd, and having him cover him on the inbounds was even more ridiculous. The Raps knew Chillz can't get past a screen to save his life, and they made us pay.

I know, I thought we were doing offense/defense substitutions. Chill got wasted on a weak screen then he stopped moving and just looked around for a second. Shouldn't West have been in on that?

You keep posting? Lol, anyways... if the NBA is not fair, then perhaps Stern needs to resign, and the league needs to re-write/reinforce what they claim to be "league rules". What's the purpose of the game without fairness and honor?? If you guys got fined last time, then surely the league needs to do something to their employees for breaking/violating their rules.

If all the NBA cares about is "looking good", then the NBA is on the same plane as MLB... how sad.

What world do you live in buddy, Stern should resign because of this? Refereeing in the NBA is all about subjectivity, if you want to live with more accountability via being able to review every questionable call, you are going to have to live with Bosh being docked a couple FTs every game because refs give him the benefit of the doubt. It has a lot to do with the NBA not wanting to look bad, it has even more to do with setting a stupid precedent because there are dozens of "questionable" calls every game and a quite a few blatantly wrong ones.

As far as the rest of the game. Joe played so well but you could see he was tired towards the end when his shots were front-rimming and he was making unforced TOs... sucks that he has to play that many minutes so often. We got lucky that Smith turned into a superstar towards the end of the game, he switched onto Bosh and really shut him down like few others can. He was also making some great passes from the top of the key and when he decided to attack he either took it all the way in or passed it out, none of those hideous pull-ups that barely draw rim.

Bibby was awsome on offense and got torched on D, we knew that was gonna happen when we got him.

[tontoz]

Only a Woody coached team could give up and uncontested layup with .05 on the clock.

Childress adds to his long list of late game brain farts, including his choke job on the ft line not long ago.

Smith should get some credit for the defensive job he did on Bosh in the second half. Except for gambling for steals too often he kept Bosh in check fairly well.

JJ and Bibby combined for 54 pts (8-17 from 3) and 23 assists. Whew!

[Harry10]

Only a Woody coached team could give up and uncontested layup with .05 on the clock.

Childress adds to his long list of late game brain farts, including his choke job on the ft line not long ago.

Smith should get some credit for the defensive job he did on Bosh in the second half. Except for gambling for steals too often he kept Bosh in check fairly well.

JJ and Bibby combined for 54 pts (8-17 from 3) and 23 assists. Whew!

Smoove still has consistency problems, but if you look at the record, Smith always steps up against Bosh and generally out plays him in their meetings.

[HoopsGuru25]

I think that was a team/communication error more than Chil's fault. It looked like it was 3-2 zone and Chil just let him go by him. It was clear that Woody didn't warn the team about the lob because Chil and Smith acted like Ford wasn't even there when he cut to the basket. I think Chil should have probably yelled something to get Smith's attention if they were in a zone.

[High 5]

Last night was a good night. Hawks dominate 4th quarter/OT to win their 5th straight and the Braves dominate the Pirates. Toronto really is a bad match up for us, though. Defensively at least. They have a lot of the 3pt shooters and quick, talented PGs. Those are the two hardest things for us to guard. The 3pt shooting thing is just playing dumb, though. We left them open all night. Fortunately they left us open a lot too.