20 minutes into the Orlando Magic @ Toronto Raptors, 01/04/2009

1/3 of the way into the 2nd quarter, I am shocked by the play of the Toronto Raptors against a legitimate and healthy team.  The Raptors have been a bit fortunate with their shots so far, but more importantly, they are active, and energetic on offense, and disruptive on defense.  This looks like a whole new team.

I discounted their last victory against the Houston Rockets due to the Shane Battier injury (a much more important player in their roster than people realize) and their recent poor play.  And Rick Adelman’s consistently poor coaching allowing inferior players such as Andrea Bargnani take advantage of Yao Ming by forcing Yao to try to defend him at the three point line.

But here’s the team people largely expected the Raptors could be:  fast-paced on offense, developing easy baskets in transition as well as excellent shooting, and young/athletic defense.  Which we did not have when Jose Calderon was our starting point guard.  Now that he is injured, I expect some vulnerability coming from having to play Roko Ukic extended minutes (an interesting palyer, but young and not too strong defensively either) but a lot more energy and greatly improved defence with the extended minutes provided by Will Solomon.

Of course this may not be entirely (or even largely) due to Jose Calderon’s absence, but may be the payoffs of having Smitch out of the picture arriving a bit late.  But this is something worth watching.  We are scoring at will and forcing turnovers, against one of the top teams in the league.  And the opposing team’s point guard is NOT on pace for a career night (not a horrible night so far by Jameer Nelson, but on pace to finish the game well below his season averages).  Let’s see what happens next Sunday (and Monday) against the top team in the league, the Boston Celtics.  Especially Rajan Rondo’s performance on offense.

(Replacing Jermaine O’Neal with Andrea Bargnani in this situation seems to be an advantage as well, as we’re less inclined to try to dump the ball into the post against a guy like Dwight Howard.  But not much of an advantage.)

… and the cow goes moo