Sinking (and Stinking)

Anybody have a lifeline they can throw our beloved Toronto Raptors? Last night’s 109-98 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers means 5 straight defeats, a horrid 1-9 record in their last 10 games, 1 game from being out of the playoffs entirely and, most concerning, an increasingly evident lack of desire to keep this shinking ship afloat. Let’s face facts people, this team stinks right now.

The only real semblance of life (and productivity) is coming from (an 80%) Chris Bosh, a fiery Jarrett Jack, an exuberant Sonny Weems and a tenacious Amir Johnson. Conversely, Andrea Bargnani, Demar Derozan, Marco Belinelli and, especially, Hedo Turkoglu could all be legitimate candidates to be cast as the leading role in the next Weekend at Bernie’s flick. Colour me surprised that this combination isn’t yielding favourite results.

In an ideal world, the Raptors would finish with the 7th seed and face the Orlando Magic in the opening round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs. Anything less/more would mean a match-up with the likes of Cleveland, Atlanta and Boston – not good. You could say that the Raps are currently displaying “sinkage”, but “shrinkage” is what has transpired when they’ve taken on the aforementioned 3 Eastern Conference powerhouses. That’s right, I’m talking about George Costanza, hiding like a scared turtle when it gets into cold water, style shrinkage! Should this match-up come to fruition, I have little-to-no faith that they’ll suddenly spring to life <insert Viagra/Cialis joke here>.

Hey, it could be worse. Let’s count our blessings that we aren’t in the Western Conference. The current 8th seeded Portland Trail Blazers are 16 games over .500% and even the most biased Raptors fan would concur that the Blazers are unequivocally the superor team. Shoot, we were man-handled by the lowly 18-47 Golden State Warriors. At least they can look forward to continue building their young team with someone like John Wall, Evan Turner, Cole Aldrich, Wesley Johnson etc. this summer.

With that in mind, I can’t wait for Thursday. I can finally start watching basketball where both teams leave it all out on the floor instead of this sink/stink-fest we’ve had the displeasure of bearing witness to! By the way, I’ve got the Buckeyes beating the Blue Devils in the National Championship game. Evan Turner is everything that Demar Derozan is not – at least so far.

Until next time, friends.

Blog – 1 year, 10 months ago by mattzilla to Basketball. 515 views, 2 comments.