December 3, 2007
Hump Day is now Monday
Jay wrote this today:
We’ve said it before, Kris Humphries gets his PT because he knows what he is supposed to do. He even said it in his post game interview. All he has to do is go in there, play hard defensively, rebound and run the floor. Sounds simple and to some degree it is, but it also isn’t as easy as it appears. We have seen a lot of guys lose track of players, completely miss assignments, play too soft on their opponent, but you can rarely catch Hump falling prey to any of those options.
Strange as it was that Hump led the Raptors in scoring, what I liked the most about his game came in two separate instances in the second quarter with the Raptors already pulling away. The first was near the start of the quarter, where Hump stayed active on the boards, in a flurry altering a couple of shots. This led to a miss opportunity by the Bobcats, a Raptors rebound, the ball being pushed quickly up the court, to a waiting Jason Kapono for an easy 3 from the corner. Hump’s effort in the paint on the defensive end not only denied 2 points, it also led to 3 the other way. 5 point play.
The second instance came about halfway through the quarter, where Hump got the ball and immediately took it right at Okafor. No hesitation whatsoever. He pretty much took a good block from Okafor, but there was some contact, which gave Okafor his 3rd foul. That’s good aggressive interior basketball. That play put Okafor in a precarious situation, forcing him to be a little less aggressive defensively, as he could not risk getting a fourth foul going for a block.
To loosely quote Romeo Crennel, Raymond Felton “WAS WHAT WE THOUGHT HE WAS!” A slow footed PG who just won’t stop shooting even when he is cold and has bad looks. 0-8 from the field, 0-1 from 3, 3 assists and a -9. Wow. You almost have to try to end up with a line like that. You could almost hear Okafor saying, “Dude, one time, try me down here. One time!”
If the Raptors didn’t learn anything from Hump’s performance tonight, then they can learn from the bad/good night from Gerald Wallace. Wallace was not good from the floor tonight, going 4-13 along with a couple of 3’s, but he did manage to get to the line, knowing that he had to keep attacking the basket. He went 9-10 from the line, picking up 9 points without the clock moving. That is extremely important when your team is getting pasted. The way back into games like that isn’t from just jacking 3’s (although that helped at the start of the second half), it is from getting to the line and putting points on the board with the clock sitting still.
Good Lord was Jason Richardson terrible tonight. If you are able to ignore his 3-17 and are even able to get past his 3-9 from 3 (what the hell is he doing jacking up 9 3 pointers in a game?), certainly you can’t ignore that schoolyard prayer of a circus shot three minutes into the second quarter. Jason Richardson wasn’t only brought into this team to provide some scoring, he was brought in to be a leader. The Bobcats need Richardson to be a leader, a guy who can show them about winning when you are an underdog and pulling crazy junk like that early in a game just doesn’t cut it. That is the kind of stuff that says to a team that you put yourself above the team. That you think you can make a miraculous shot to turn things around. That’s not being a leader, that’s just being selfish.
Is it about time to start wondering why Jose isn’t getting some calls? Given, he does tend to wipe out a lot after making layups (although not as often as before) and gives a lot of little quick looks to refs after he thinks he has been fouled, but I’m starting to think that he is getting roughed up a bit. Maybe the refs still don’t view him as enough of a vet to get some of those calls. We’ll have to see as the season progresses.
Just a quick note…am I the only one who notices how high Jose dribbles the ball? Then again, he did do his Fred “Curly” Neal impression tonight with that dribble while he was spinning on the floor. Priceless. All we needed was Jamario to steal a woman’s purse.
Okay, final thing here. An inside source says that the reason D-Mart didn’t jack up a 3 to try to get the fans pizza wasn’t because he is a class guy and didn’t want to show up the Bobcats, but because he figured it was just that much more pizza that he could grab after the game. They just can’t make it fast enough for the guy!
Next up, the Suns.
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