THIS IS JUST BAD NOW FOR THE RAPTORS

That certainly was quite the game and finish…for the Atlanta Hawks of course.

Once again, the Raptors were involved in a game where they were up big to start, but sadly and painfully slow, faltered down the stretch and dropped the game 87-84.

Mind you, the Raptors were up against a very good home team in the Hawks, who improved their home record to 16-4 with the win, while the Raptors dropped to 8-15 on the road, and 16-27 overall. Currently, the Raptors now see themselves in 14th place in the East, and four games back of a playoff spot. With the six game slide the Raptors are now on, the playoffs look bleak.

Anytime a team goes on a five game losing streak on five separate occasions, it is pretty damn hard to imagine that team to qualify for the post-season.

This ball game was clearly a tale of two halves; the first half great, the second not so.

The Raptors jumped out to an early 22-15 lead, saw that lead get cut to 24-21, but didn’t let it get away completely, and the Raptors led by one at the end of the first quarter.

The Hawks ended the first quarter on an 8-2 run, to show some life after a slow start.

The Hawks were carried by some strong three point shooting, going 3/6, but shot just 42%. Mike Bibby, a player who always seems to burn the Raptors, scored the first seven Atlanta points of the game.

The start to the second quarter was very slow for either side, as the Raptors outscored the Hawks 4-1 in the first two minutes.

The Raptors turned up their game and started to play a smarter game, which involved driving to the basket. Chris Bosh was a picture perfect image of that, and had at least three strong drives to the rim, which resulted in trips to the free throw line.

CB4 had quite the half and game, and had 15 points and 8 rebounds at the half, and for the game had 22 and 14. That was followed up by Andrea Bargnani with a 14 point and 6 rebound half, and by Anthony Parker with a stat line of 12 points, 9 assists and 9 rebounds for the game as the starting point guard.

Those three players were shut down in the second half, and was the sole reason the Hawks pulled out a victory. The combination of Bosh, Bargnani and Parker were held to 21 points in the second half.

If you take into account Anthony Parkers’ first half numbers, he wasn’t at the point guard position for the second half and had just 4 assists in the second half. With such a strong first half, putting Parker back at the two spot looked like a mistake.

Even though Roko Ukic had good spurts, he showed his rookie play in crunch time and failed, with costly turnovers and bad shots.

During the second quarter, Atlanta’s Solomon Jones committed a hard moving screen on Anthony Parker, which wasn’t called. The Hawks scored on that play to make the score 40-37 Raptors. After that play, it just looked as if a fire was lit for the Raptors players.

To close out the half, the Raptors went on an 11-5 run, and at one point had an eleven point advantage, but led 51-42 at the half.

The Raptors were shooting at a 50% success rate, and were out-rebounding the Hawks 23-17.

The Raptors were led by a combined 29 points from Bosh and Bargnani (42 points for the game), while the Hawks had 15 from Johnson and 11 from Smith.

The defense for the Hawks stepped up in big ways and held the Raptors to 13 third quarter points, and 33 total points for the second half.

On the flip side, the Raptors gave up 45 points, and let Joe Johnson, Josh Smith and Mike Bibby control the game from there. Each of those players had twenty plus points, and combined to score 73 of Atlanta’s 87 points.

The third quarter saw the game turn in the Hawks’ favor. First it was Bibby who rattled down seven straight points again to open the quarter, and finished with 23 and three 3-ppinters.

It was an offensive struggle for the Raptors who at one point missed nine straight shots. When they finally did hit a shot, the score was 60-55 for them.

By the end of the quarter, the Raptors lead was at two points. One vital stat that hurt the Raptors was the points in the paint. In the first half, the Raptors had 24 points there, and just 4 in the third quarter.

The fourth quarter was a weird one for either side as they missed easy shots, played sloppy basketball, and hit shots when they needed too.

The Hawks got the lead back 68-67, their first since a 9-8 lead. They continued to pad that lead, and built the lead up to as many as seven points. The Raptors battled back and went on an 11-2 run, and regained the lead at 80-78.

With the Raptors up 84-82 with 1.46 left to play, the Hawks’ Joe Johnson split a pair of free throws, and after a Raptors miss, Mike Bibby was able to draw another foul and hit both shots for an 85-84 lead with 54 seconds left to play.

On the ensuing possession, Chris Bosh lost the ball and turned it over. But the Hawks followed suit and did the same thing. With the ball in Jamario Moon’s hands, he tried to play the role of hero and jacked up a stupid three point attempt and missed badly.

On the other end of the floor, the Hawks ran out and Joe Johnson hit two of his game high 28 points. That bucket sunk the Raptors as they had a fruitless trip down the floor down by three with 12.5 seconds left to play.

With such a great first half and with high percentages, the Raptors flat out stunk in the second half. By the 6.30 mark of the fourth quarter the Raptors had hit only 9/32 shots and ended up shooting 41.7%.

The Raptors did manage to hold the Hawks to that same mark, but couldn’t control Bibby, Johnson and Smith. At times, it looked as if the Raptors were going to exploit Bibby defensively but hardly did that. If they did, they would settle for jumpers instead of posting up.

The play of Jamario Moon was horrible, and had just nine points on 4/9 shooting and also took 4 three pointers, and made good on only one. His defensive effort matched his offensive output, bad. Moon let Joe Johnson do too much, and wasn’t physical with him, especially down the stretch.

With the backcourt play of Parker and Graham scoring 30 plus points the day before, they only scored 16 points in this game, and Graham took himself out of the game with three first half fouls, and an early foul in the third quarter.

Jermaine O’Neal and Jose Calderon once again did not dress due to nagging injuries. For the Hawks, Al Horford was out with a bruised bone in his right knee and his replacement Zaza Pachulia proved to be bad as he scored zero points with one rebound.

Nathan Jawai, Toronto’s draft pick from this past summer was dressed for the game, which was his first for the year.

The Raptors, who had such a bad 2008 record, have to go 30-20 in 2009, just to finish above .500, and improve by one win on last years 41 wins. So far, this year the Raptors are 4-7, which means they must now go 26-13.


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