Comments on: An Open Letter To Raptor Fans

By: Al

Al — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:22:48 +0000

Hi Tim, nice article, as usual.

Think that people usually forget that teams play too many games in 5 months, they overreact a little too much.

Or maybe is a new journalim style, dunno.

I wonder what’d happen if some of them instead of Raptors fans they were Knicks fans … don’t know it their hearts could survive.

By: Tim W.

Tim W. — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:29:18 +0000

Ya, I’m starting to get fed up with some of the people there, as well. Either people seem WAY too connected with every little high and low, or they don’t seem to have any hope what-so-ever. I’m a big Raptor fan, but I don’t live and die with them. I’ve got a life and far too many other things to worry about to get worked up about every loss. It occurred to me that a lot of them are like Larry Brown. He was famous for going into the GM’s office one day and demanding to trade for a player one day and then demanding he be traded away the next. He’d be the perfect coach for Raptor fans, because they could relate to him.

By: J

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:23:41 +0000

You’re totally right in your assessment of Raptors fans. In fact, that’s why I’ve pretty much stopped going to RR. When even a 50-win team loses 32 times a year, that’s just way too much time to spend being miserable, and the Raptors aren’t a 50-win team.

By: Tim W.

Tim W. — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:40:21 +0000

Sleepz,

The first 20 games there was switching going on, but it was a reaction, rather than a strategy, which is why it didn’t work. Triano and company realized this and decided to make it a strategy to switch, which would cause fewer late switches since the defenders would know beforehand what they were supposed to do. If you know you automatically switch, you can anticipate it.

It’s one reason why I don’t put much blame on Triano, since he’s trying to come up with a strategy to deal with players who are not strong defenders. Most of the time it works. Last night it didn’t. If other teams start exploiting it, Triano will have to adjust it.

By: Tim W.

Tim W. — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:20:40 +0000

Hey, I’m not denying that Hedo played badly and if I was coaching, I probably wouldn’t have made that decision, but Triano went to the more veteran player during crunch time. Can’t argue with that. And while I’m well aware he does not shoot as well in crunch time as his reputation suggests, he does do other things that help the team win, most of the team.

Hell, if Hedo had made a last second shot to win it, everyone would be talking about what a great coaching move it would have been.

Just because it’s not a move you would make and just because it failed, doesn’t make it a bad move. It ended up being the wrong one, but as I’ve said, I’ve seen the exact same move by Hall of Fame coaches before and watched them backfire (and not).

I just think that a lot of fans are overreacting WAY too much. Now on RR, they’re trying to lynch Calderon. The guy had a great game, but was caught in a mismatch at the end, and suddenly he needs to be dealt. When the Raptors were winning, everyone wanted to keep him to run the second unit. And keep in mind that Jack had an awful game last night so without Calderon, it doesn’t come down to overtime.