Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The Italian Job

When the moon hits your eye...

11/15 from the floor, 2/3 from beyond the arc, 28 PTs, 5 RBs, 1 BLK

That was Andrea Bargnani's line tonight and if it wasn't for a flubbed wide-open dunk, he would have had an even 30. Il Mago looked like the first overall pick we all expected him to be. He did everything tonight. Drained threes, drove the paint, was tough on D and even had a nice up and under move on Lebron. We all saw his growth last year but this is the year he puts himself on the map.

...Like a big pizza pie. That's amore.

Now here's the Luigi to Bargnani's Mario; Marco Belinelli. I had no idea how talented this guy was. Here I was, thinking he was a one-dimensional shooter like a Jason Kapono (but actually shoots threes instead of those ugly one-handed runners) but I was completely wrong. He moves without the ball, hits step back jumpers and can dunk. That slam he threw down today was sick, wicked and nasty! He also led the Raptors with a +19 tonight. Impressive guy to have coming off the bench.

The Raps were impressive tonight, no doubt about it. Nobody expected them to smoke the Cavs tonight but let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's still 81 games left and there' still stuff that needs to be worked on:

-Calderon needs to find his game. After a bad preseason, his first regular season game wasn't exactly memorable, shooting 1/6 with only 5 pts
-Bosh needs to lay off the jump shots. He sets the tone on offence and when he throws up jumpers, the whole team seems to get trigger happy
-The team as a whole needs to stop throwing up jumpers early in the clock. We aren't the run and gun Phoenix Suns, stop up and run a play
-Perimeter defence needs to tighten up. The Cavs were 9/22 from beyond the arc due in part to a poor job closing out shooters in the second half

I expect the team to be even better as players start to gel. Looks like Toronto can be excited about basketball again.

PLAYOFFS!!1