blogsketball

Thanks to some intricate playoff scheduling working out in my favour, I’ve got Sunday off. That means I get to plop myself down on the couch and watch three of the four playoff games that are on TV (only in Canada would you have a NBA playoff game sitting on the table, in the Detroit-Philly series, and no network picks it up).

First up is game 1 of the Raptors-Magic series in Orlando. Rod Black, Chuck Swirsky and Leo Rautins are on their respective m-i-c’s, while my main man Paul Jones works radio. Good choice, TSN. Let’s get into it.

First quarter

In what can only be described as a basketball act of terrorism, the Magic come out firing to open the playoffs, shooting an all-too appropriate 9/11 from the land beyond in the first quarter. Jameer Nelson, Rashard Lewis, Keyon Dooling and Mo Evans pretty much declare jihad on the Raps to get things going.

TJ Ford came out and forced up five shots, hit one and played zero defence. Hopefully Jose Calderon plays the rest of the way.

A bright spot for the Raps: Dwight Howard only scored four points in the first quarter. The downside is he blocked three shots. One each on Bosh, Bargnani and Rasho.

Bosh and 1 and Howard blocks Bosh’s next shot attempt after like 5 fakes. Shard trey. It’s 35–20. F*ck.

The Raps have their worst defensive quarter in playoff history. Howard’s jump hook makes it 43–23 at the end of one.

Second quarter

Bargnani has the right idea today. He’s going to the hoop as much as he can. He gets rewarded at the start of the second when he dunks over Adonal Foyle, who is definitely not the interior presence that Dwight Howard is. Howard’s back in with 8:41 to go.

The second quarter could have been a lot worse than it was for the Raps. Orlando’s outside shooting cooled off (it had to, this isn’t a video game) and the Raps are hanging around. Rasho and Jason Kapono both had good second quarters and helped cut into the lead. That’s a bad outlook to have if you’re the Raps though. It could be a lot worse.

60–47 Orlando, HALFTIME

Third quarter

I love how when an Orlando player gets whistled for a foul, they play that “We’re about to fight” music from Kill Bill.

Three free throws from the Raps in the q’s first minute makes it a 10-point game and that’s where it hovers around for the third quarter. While the Magic look away from Howard on offence, the Raps inch closer to erasing a lead that was as high as 24 in the first half. Howard picked up his fourth and fifth blocks in the quarter, and Anthony Parker has led the Raps with 17 points. Chris Bosh has four fouls in the fourth quarter. He sits.

85–75 Orlando after three.

Fourth quarter, AKA BOSS LEVEL

The music to start the fourth is appropriately, the Superman theme.

It’s Jason Kapono who comes out with the heroics to start the fourth. His three ball cut the lead down to nine. After some Anthony Parker free throws made, and a pair missed by Howard, Kapono hit again to make it a five-point game. Then the real supermen showed up, in the form of Dwight Howard and Hedo.

By the time Chris Bosh checked in with 8:08 left, Orlando had pushed the lead back to 11. They rattled off 14 unanswered points and put the game out of reach, with Howard’s o-boards and dunks leading the way.

Orlando got lucky (in a sense, anyway. Good shooting is good shooting) with their nine treys in the first quarter, but they were impressive in the fourth when their lead had shrunk down to five. They’re the better team in this series. Like I said earlier, I won’t be surprised if this is a sweep.

114–100 Orlando, final

Orl: Howard 25 points, 22 rebounds 5 blocks
Tor: Parker 24 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists