DALLAS – Another horrible start has Dwane Casey thinking it might be time to shake up his starting lineup (more on that later on Thursday).
Aside from that start, it was a good bounce-back effort from the Raptors, but the hole was just too large to crawl out of.
- We’ll start with Vince, then the positives, then the negatives.
- There are a lot of things one can say about Vince Carter. One of them is the man loves to put on a show when the lights are brightest. Raptors fans know that well (aside from Game 7 against Philly). Toronto was buzzing apparently with the (old) news that Vince didn’t really want to be traded back in the day (he was just pouting about a few things that could have been worked out with some effort) and he wouldn’t mind coming back to the team to finish his career. Knowing all eyes were on him, Carter had one of his best performances in years, stuffing the stat sheet in a Shawn Marion-esque manner, important, because the Matrix was out due to an injury.
Carter had some huge plays early and some even bigger ones later, including a couple of threes and one emphatic block on DeMar DeRozan.
Afterwards, Carter had a few things to say:
I guessed correctly. More than anything, I just tried to stay in front of him and as he was making his move I just tried to stay by him. Feel good? That I can still get there? Like I said, I just guessed correctly. If he would have gone left, he would have got me.
He’s more confident. I think that’s the biggest thing. You can tell when you play against a guy in his confidence and he was confident in his moves. He was confident in his decisions that he made and I think that just comes with repetition, and of course, years,” Carter said of DeRozan.
- Which leads to a positive. DeRozan contributed across the board for the first time minus Kyle Lowry. He was solid and carried the team, along with Amir Johnson and Andrea Bargnani, at least offensively. Bargnani’s defence still wasn’t there, but he did grab nine rebounds and looked more engaged, though there still were frustrating lapses like the time he didn’t even pretend to go after a rebound, leading to a Dallas offensive board.
Amir Johnson’s play also was superb.
- The negatives were the failure to come out ready to play and the continued struggles of Landry Fields, who is shooting around 20% for the season and seems to have no confidence.
Jonas Valaniunas got into some foul trouble and was quite frustrated, but looked OK when he did play. He was still talking about the Kevin Durant dunk before the game and said “maybe I need to dunk on someone tonight.” That happened in the first quarter when he threw one down on Chris Kaman.
