Saturday, December 8, 2012

Unacceptable, Splitting Apart Omnishambles: Raptors 99 - Jazz 131

For a brief moment in the first quarter, it was looking like dueling omnishambles, as both the Jazz and the Raptors played some truly terrible basketball. It was like both sides were trying to lose. But then the Jazz got their act together and the Raptors stepped up their omnishambles to new heights, leading to a pretty thorough blowout.

We got stomped.
The tone was set from the first possession, when Bargnani and Pietrus stood around the 3-point arc awkwardly before PiƩtrus gave away the ball. The rest of the game was that kind of shambling ugliness. Bargnani drifting about pointlessly on "defense". No ball movement. Toronto lost on the boards and rotated terribly on defense, leading to open shots for Utah.

Someone out there in Internet land quoted Tracy McGrady's famous quote from Toronto's disastrous third season, when everything fell apart and the team finished 16-66: "The ship be sinking."

That's what I fear we are on the verge of here. Less than a quarter of the way into the season, there have been too many tough losses, late-game choke jobs, and ugly omnishambles. Sometimes a team reaches a point where it just breaks. I fear the Raptors are reaching that point. Lowry is too much of a competitor to handle this losing. Other players just don't care. Too many pieces don't fit together. This team is a mess, and unless something changes things are going to get a lot uglier before they get better.


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