Friday January 2 2009 – 11:48am Eastern

Just finished chatting with Jay Triano, Chris Bosh, and Anthony Parker … and here’s the latest from the Raptors heading into tonight’s tilt against the Houston Rockets …

TRIANO
- Jermaine O’Neal and Jason Kapono are both game-time decisions for tonight.  Neither took part in the morning shoot-around. 
- (Come back to this space in about an hour to hear some interest comments (audio) from Jay RE: the malaise that seems to be sort of hanging over the team right now)

PARKER
- Doesn’t think the problems with the Raps come down to “effort” and/or “confidence”, he thinks it has more to do with “execution” (or lack there of) during key stretches of the game
- Defensively, the team just has to get better at what they’re trying to do — shutting down the paint shouldn’t come at the expense of giving up wide-open looks on the perimeter

BOSH
- When I asked CB4 about the “mentality” of the team right now – buying into the defence, trusting one another, and so on – he said to me (and I’m paraphrasing):  “Haven’t we been talking about the same thing(s) for 3 … 4 … 5 … 6 years?  I know I have”.  Hmmm.  Interesting.  I’ll post that audio for you later as well.

I’ve got to guess that if Kapono and O’Neal didn’t take part in practice yesterday OR shoot-around this morning … they’ll probably be a no-go tonight.  But, again, they are officially game-time decisions … once they get checked out by head trainer Scott McCullough.  

Jonesy and I are on the air at 7:00pm tonight. 

E. Smith

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 11:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.