Raptors Recap - The "Bargnani's the best" Edition

Hey another win! By my count that makes 3 of the last 4 with a VERY winnable one coming up at home tomorrow. Yes the loss to the Bucks should have been a win but if they can get a W tomorrow this team will be right back in the thick of things. They may even be riding high enough to get a split on their back to back with Boston, who have not played well at all lately.

After watching the game last night 2 things became clear to me.

1. Andrea Bargnani is improving. He is confident, showing emotion (hello fist pump after his 4th quarter three), Blocking out his man under the basket, taking the ball to the basket with a purpose and even blocking shots.

One play in particular to me at least showed that he is learning and improving. One drive he had a full head of steam going to the basket and instead of trying to force up a shot or run right into his man for a charge like he would have done last season he dumped the ball off for an easy raptors layup.

Sure he's not rebounding as much as most would like but if he can give them what he did last night every night I think most people would be happy with that.
The only question I have is can he do this coming off the bench when the 21 million dollar man is healthy again?

2. Will Solomon played well until the fourth quarter and then reverted back to his bad decision making. He has a tendency to force things too much and it almost cost them another win. The raptors went scoreless AGAIN in a 2:40 stretch with about 5 min to play and that was because Will didn't look to get the ball to Bosh or even Bargnani. On a couple of possessions he drove into the paint and was stripped of the ball and another he took ill advised jump shots. The Raptors are lucky that Mike James missed a couple late shots during that stretch or it would have been a much closer finish.

All in all a good road win for these guys. I'm actually looking forward to seeing them Friday against the Grizzlies.

On another note congratulation has to go to Jamario Moon. His wife gave birth to a baby Girl yesterday. The best line that I read all day yesterday was from a post on RealGm. The post read:

"Congrats to Jamario on his new baby. Its nice to see that he took it to the hole at least once this season"