Friday March 27 2009 – 11:40am Eastern (Toronto, ON)

THE BULLDOG IS BACK?

Pops Mensah-Bonsu (aka – The British Bulldog) took part in this morning’s shoot-around and should be good to go for tonight’s tilt against Oklahoma City.

Head Coach Jay Triano said Pops will be re-evaluated before the game to see if the knee has flared up again at all.  If not, he’ll be in the line up -VS- the Thunder.

FINGER WOES?

Jose Calderon should be fine for tonight as well.  Despite dislocating one of his fingers on Wednesday night (the team was calling it a “jam”) he was able to finish the tilt against the Bucks and the injury won’t set him back tonight.

Calderon admitted that it’s sore – but that he’s fine.  And Triano mentioned the fact that once the adrenalin kicks in for these guys (on the floor – during the game) things tend to not hurt as much.

SPEAKING OF JOSE

In addition to a noticeable difference in his defence over the past week or two, take a look at some of the offensive numbers Calderon has been posting as well:

* 5 GAMES *
Points 13.2
Assists 9.6
Turnovers 2.6
FG%     51.0
Minutes 34.4

He had 19 points and 11 assists against Milwaukee on Wednesday – doing a solid job against Ramon Sessions.  But the Spanish guard will have his hands full tonight against a very quick (and big) guard in Russell Westbrook.

THUNDERSTRUCK?

After beating the Raptors on December to improve to 3-24, the Thunder then lost 5 more in a row to fall to a woeful 3-29 overall.

However, while a 20-51 record is brutal, do the math and look at what they’ve done since starting 3-29.

Okay, I’ll do it for ya:  Oklahoma City is 17-22 since that point.  Not bad for a young team … in the Western Conference too.

E. Smith

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 11:41 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.