Raptors vs Pistons … post mortem

In light of Toronto’s home-court victory against Detroit (Wed/Mar/26), two specific observations – one by Jose Calderon (PG) and one by Sam Mitchell (Head Coach) – are particularly noteworthy:

* Doug Smith, New-Look Raptors stun Pistons

(#1, by Calderon) 

It took Calderon a couple of conversations with the coaching staff and general manager Bryan Colangelo before he convinced them the move was the right one.

“Some of them, they didn’t want to agree with that, they said we have to keep doing the same thing. But after … we thought it was the best thing for the team,” he said.

But for all the talk of who starts, who backs up and who is where in what pecking order, when it came time to win the game, both guards were on the court.

(#2, by Mitchell) 

“It was easy because without Rip Hamilton, they played two point guards in the backcourt,” coach Sam Mitchell said of the Pistons, who were without their top scorer.

“It wasn’t a physical matchup problem. It’s just going to depend, if it’s smaller guards in the backcourt and we can do it, we’ll look at doing it but for the most part, no,” Mitchell said.

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re: #1
Situations like this, almost always signal ‘the Long Slow March’ toward an inevitable implosion for an NBA team. 

re: #2 
Iindividual player match-ups are what dictate coaching strategies, in the NBA, and determine, to a large extent, which teams Win and which teams Lose specific games and series. If the Raptors primary back-court in the playoffs consists of their 2 PG’s (one of whom is 5-11, 165; the other of whom is 6-3, 210) … then this team is going nowhere fast.

It is only a matter of time … before the cracks in Toronto’s seemingly secure foundation begin to re-appear in earnest.

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Tags: Jose Calderon, Sam Mitchell, Toronto Raptors