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1. So the difference between hockey and basketball is …. pretty big. In the build-up to the Flyers-Senators game Sunday night the theme of revenge and retribution was standard stuff, given it was the first time the teams had met since Steve Downie tried to decapitate the Senators Dean McAmmond in, you know, an exhibition game. I didn’t see any interviews where the players were putting out bounties or anything, but no one was rolling their eyes when reporters asked about it. The game itself, judging from the summary, was fairly routine – a couple of fighting majors, nothing more. But there was a legitimate expectation that a wrong would be righted. That’s hockey, right Todd Bertuzzi? Roll back to Friday’s Raptors-Hawks game and the difference couldn’t be more stark. Not only did you know there was going to be no extra stuff in teams’ first meeting since Al Horford nearly decapitated T.J. Ford , you felt like a caveman for even thinking about it. Granted Horford’s slap to Ford’s head was much easier to write off as an accident or error in judgment than Downie’s hit on McAmmond, but it was just kind of interesting that from where I sat no one on the two teams seemed to give it a second thought. Horford laid out Ford with a reckless foul at a pretty meaningless point of the game and Ford has been out going on six weeks and no one so much as gave Horford the cold shoulder. What would Bobby Clarke think?
2. Josh Smith obviously got off to a pretty impressive start on Friday night. He had 14 points on six-of-7 shooting by the time the first quarter was half over. But he also had, by my crude count, at least four deflections. Deflections are a stat that most teams chart to track defensive effort, though it’s not an official stat. Most coaches are pretty happy when their team gets 30 or so deflections for a game. Smith was on pace for that many on his own. And though Moon pretty much neutralized him offensively in the second half, Smith still dished the bulk of his seven assists, an aspect of the game I didn’t realize he had. I remember one NBA insider described Smith as a talent with “scrambled eggs for brains” but in his fourth NBA season at just 22 years old, the ceiling on this guy keeps rising. Not bad for a 17th pick.
3. Late in the fourth quarter of the Raptors-Philly game, Mitchell looked down the bench at Anthony Parker as asked if he had some legs. The veteran guard had been sitting the bulk of the period as the Raptors made their unlikely come back attempt on the backs of Jamario Moon, Juan Dixon and Bosh. Kapono was out there too, but wasn’t getting much done as the Sixers simply ran him off the three-point line, confident he couldn’t make them pay for being to aggressive. I guess Parker’s legs were okay (and what is going to say, really? “No coach, I don’t have legs, don’t put me in.”) because in he went. And don’t you know, who does the ball find, wide-open, with about 30 seconds left and the Raptors down by four? AP. And where does that three-ball end up? Way short. One play is never decides a ball game, but that was the ball game, really, in that the Raptors never had a chance after that. You could tell Parker was completely bumming too. In the timeout after he was sitting on the bench with that look on his face: “How could I miss that?” No legs, that’s how.
4. The good news is the Raptors have two days off before they face Boston on three days rest, and Parker, as much or more than any Raptor, seems to thrive when he’s had some time to recover, which is about the only evidence you can find that he’s going to be 33 on his next birthday, not 23. In games with two or more days rest this season Parker is shooting 55.1 per cent from the three-point line, compared to 47.7 per cent overall. Parker’s worst shooting numbers – from deep at least – come on the second night of back-to-backs. He’s connected on 44.1 per cent of his threes on those occasions, which ain’t bad, really.
5. Today is Martin Luther King Day, and so in honour of the great man, we give you a digression with Sam. It’s been a while, I know, and this is a departure from previous digressions, on topics as diverse as on why people drown; why there’s a double-standard for fighting for basketball players and hockey players and what makes a good cake. There was a pretty good one the other week where Sam was trying to suggest that the media have turned him into a cold-hearted cynic, but that got ruined when I soaked by tape recorder with my own spit up. But the other day Sam was asked what MLK meant to him, and as a black man who born in the deep south when the civil rights movement was just gathering momentum (1963), it was clearly a subject that the man could warm to. Stay tuned, I’ll have it up soon.
