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I fully intended to watch last night's Blazers-Rockets tilt because I wanted to see how Artest fits in with his new team and I always enjoy watching Brandon Roy and Ghostface Przybilla. Unfortunately, I have to get up at 6am every morning (it comes with living in Oakville, working in Toronto and having two young children) and I started to dose off late in the first quarter so I realized I wasn't going to make it and called it a night. Naturally, if it was a Raptors game, I would have made some coffee and fought off the Sandman.
When I got to work this morning, I opened up my email and was greeted by this email from my blogger-in-crime, Holly MacKenzie: "I AM SO DAMN FIRED UP OVER THAT OVERTIME. Holy, Brandon Roy. Amazing happened indeed." With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I found this clip of Roy sinking a 31-foot, game-winning shot with the clock expiring in overtime. So, yeah... fuck me, I guess.
The Raptors' opponents tonight are the 3-0 Atlanta Hawks — who have two guys playing absolutely out of their minds right now in Joe Johnson (28 PPG, .618 TS%, 28.0 PER) and Josh Smith (14 PPG, 10.7 RPG, 3 BPG, 3.3 SPG). In his blog, Michael Grange wrote: "Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh are comparable for their impact on a game." You certainly can't argue that point in terms of this season, but let's see if J.J. can keep it up. I have a hard time believing that he's suddenly morphed into a superstar in his eighth NBA season.
The Links
Two noteworthy potential small forward upgrades are reportedly on the market: Gerald Wallace in Charlotte and Al Harrington in Golden State. OK, the Harrington situation is clearly more than just a report since Al is this close to going Sprewell on Don Nelson.
Naturally, Raptors fans are throwing together absurd trade proposals involving Andrea Bargnani, Jason Kapono and Joey Graham in hopes that Bryan Colangelo surfs Raptors message boards for ideas. But let's be real. Bargnani is not going to be traded so he's off the table. Plus, Al Harrington has been overrated his entire career — he doesn't do anything particularly well and his career PER of 14.0 confirms that he's an average player, at most. As for Wallace, even if you ignore his three concussions and the $38 million over four years left on his contract, you're not going to convince me that the Raptors are going to have the best offer on the table with yard sale offerings like Graham, Kapono and Humphries. Now if you want to make the case that the Raptors should have traded T.J. Ford for Wallace (as was rumored to be on the table) and kept Rasho as their center — I wouldn't throw that argument out of RaptorBlog Court at the moment.
Jermaine O'Neal can't figure out from game film why he can't convert his scoring opportunities. Who wants to be the first one to point out to J.O. that game film probably won't reveal to him that he's lost a step and was never a very good shooter to begin with?
Sam Mitchell explains the key to Atlanta's defensive success so far this season: "If you watch them, they keep everybody in the paint, and they're going to force you to shoot outside shots to try to take away points in the paint." Since the Raptors lead the NBA in three-point shooting by a wide margin (.508 to New Orleans' .459), let's hope the Hawks try that strategy tonight.
Rip Hamilton finally speaks out about losing Chauncey. I predict he'll get over it pretty quickly when he gets used to playing with his new running mate.
Liberty Ballers is a little irrational about the Sixers' slow start.
Chauncey Billups is rocking No. 7 in Denver. I hear there's another big-time Denver sports figure who used to wear that number.
Enjoy the game tonight, RB peeps. 
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