Raptors Recap - The "two in a row" edition

The raptors had a nice weekend beating the Bulls with a 20-4 run in the last 6 min of the game Friday in Chicago. They then took care of business at home yesterday against a truly awful Kings club.

The Raptors welcomed back Jose Calderon who lit it up against the Bulls and Kings. It doesn't look like he missed even a game. Andrea Bargnani continues to impress me. He has really settled into the roll as the starting center and is shooting the ball better than I can ever remember. He's getting to the rim as well and yesterday got to the free throw line 10 times. Chris Bosh seems to have returned to his early season form as well. JO was also quite good off the bench yesterday with a double double.

Its nice to see Triano give Jamario the quick hook for missing defensive assignments. Moon has been pulled early into quarters in the past 2 in favor of Joey Graham who has played well. AP has also found his game since being moved to fill in the backup PG spot. He seems to have a little more pep in his step and has done a really nice job handling the backup duties.

I really hope this is a sign of things to come for this team. If they can get the next 2 they'll have some confidence going into the game against the Magic on Sunday.

The trade for Shawn Marion still looms large over this team and I expect if JO continues play well I expect the deal to go down sometime this week.

The thing that a lot of people don't realize about the cap space that Marion's contract provides is that they don't have to use it to sign a free agent. Under league rules a team that is under the salary cap can make a trade for a player of that value without taking back the same value in a contract. There will be teams looking to shed players this offseason and BC can either sign up a free agent or make a trade to get what they need.