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Gregg Popovich is widely considered to be in the "Holy Trinity" of unassailable NBA coaches — the other two members are Phil Jackson and Jerry Sloan — but his decision to bring Tim Duncan off the bench yesterday for just the second time in his career was baffling, to say the least. When you choose not to start two of your three best players — those being Duncan and Manu Ginobili — you're essentially telling your opponent that you don't think their starters will build an early lead against guys like Keith Bogans and Theo Ratliff.
After the Raptors beat the Spurs 91-86 last night, here was Popovich's explanation for bringing Duncan off the bench: "He's played a lot of minutes. He played more than we wanted last night so we just wanted to have him in the fourth quarter rather than the first. Not too much happens in the first quarter of NBA games." Considering that the Raptors had built a 31-19 lead by the time Duncan finally entered the game at 9:57 of the second quarter, I can't say this line of reasoning makes a lot of sense to me. If the Raptors don't build that early lead, they probably don't win this game.
Of course, we all know that Popovich has a funny way of devaluing the meaningfulness of regular season games with a long-term goal of keeping his players "fresh" for the playoffs. I guess that's why Duncan's minutes per game haven't gone over 35 since the 2003-04 season (he's averaging a career-low 31.8 MPG this season) and why Ginobili has only averaged over 30 minutes per game once in eight seasons. I suppose he believes this is part of the reason the Spurs have won four titles since 1999.
But enough about the Spurs. The Raptors came out of the gate strong yesterday and held on to win with excellent defence and free throw shooting. Toronto shot 24-for-27 from the line compared to San Antonio's 16-for-27 mark, and Andrea Bargnani did a very good job defending Duncan one-and-one and causing him to shoot 8-for-22 on the day. Bargnani's fans have insisted all season that he can be a very good man defender, and he certainly lived up to that reputation last night.
The big story with the Raptors' recent success (aside from Bosh's franchise scoring record — while I'll get to at the end of this post) is their vastly improved defence. Granted, they pretty much had to improve since they couldn't have gotten any worse than how they performed in the first 20 games, but John Hollinger wrote today that in the 15 games after they gave up 146 points to Atlanta, the Raptors have only given up 102.9 points per 100 possessions — which would rank 13th in the NBA over a full season. It's safe to say that, with this personnel, having a middle-of-the-pack defence is the best we can hope for and should be more than enough to have a winning record with all this offensive talent.
Hollinger goes on to suggest that the Raptors would be better off if Jose Calderon backed up Jarrett Jack when he returns from his hip injury, which is something most of us having been thinking for the past couple of weeks. Calderon still has value as a shooter off the bench, so hopefully he'll embrace that role for 15-20 minutes per game when he's back in the lineup — whenever that is.
As usual, Chris Bosh was the Raptors' best performer last night with 22 points and 15 rebounds, and he passed Vince Carter for the Raptors' franchise scoring record with a jumper from the top of the key late in the third quarter. I don't know if there's any symbolism in Bosh claiming that mark from Vince, but somebody was going to do it eventually so I'm glad it was Chris. While he may never be more popular than Vince was in his prime (until Chris leads the Raptors to a championship, I suppose), Bosh has been a model of professionalism and consistency throughout seven seasons in Toronto, and this season he's taken another leap to a level where most people would probably agree that he's cracked the Top 10 list of players in this league. Plus, as you'll see below, it's getting hard to support the lingering criticisms that he doesn't perform well in clutch situations. As always, this chart tracks the last two minutes of the fourth quarter or all of overtime, with neither team ahead by more than five points.
No Turkoglu? No problem. Bosh scored four points on a layup and a couple of free throws within the last two minutes of the last night's game. I've never bought into this "Bosh isn't clutch" criticism so many people have repeated over the years. Whatever happened in the past, it certainly doesn't seem to apply this season. 
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