GAME RECAP: Toronto 114, New York 109

Chris Bosh and Mike James paired up to take a huge bite out of the Big Apple Monday nights as the Raptors beat the Knicks 114 to 109.

James started the game off slowly with only five points in the first quarter but he exploded for 12 points in the second quarter and 17 points in the third quarter. James went 6 for 8 from behind the arc and finished the game with 37 points (one shy of his career high of 38 points).

Following the game James told reporters, “it’s always good to play in front of my family. I had my family and friends here watching me. The main thing is I’ve been working hard, we’ve been practicing hard. I haven’t been shooting the ball well the last few games and tonight I came out and was able to knock down some shots.”

Chris Bosh took over in the fourth quarter for 16 points and finished the game with 31 points. Bosh and James combined to shoot 24 for 43 from the field and combined to score 68 points.

The Knicks were hurt by the 18 turnovers they committed but the biggest turnover of the night may have come early in the fourth quarter when Andre Barrett was pushed from behind into Channing Frye. Frye’s knee hyper-extended and the talented big man had to be carried off the court by teammates. Before leaving the game Frye had chipped in 19 points, 9 boards and 4 swats. Losing Frye to a MCL or ACL injury would be the worst thing that could happen to the Knicks this season.

At the risk if sounding like a broken record, what are the Knicks and Larry Brown thinking? They have two great young big men to build around but they rarely give those guys the rock. Eddy Curry has shown that he can get position in the post yet the Knicks guards refuse to dump the rock down into the post to him. The knock on Curry is that he only plays offense but the kid was hustling for every rebound but just didn’t get the right position in the post - that’s a lack of coaching, not a lack of heart. Curry had three dunks in the first quarter but finished the game with just four dunks and faded in the second half. Why did the Bulls go away from feeding their big guys in the post in the second half? The Raptors don’t have any beef in their frontcourt so Curry could have had his way with the Raptors tonight. Instead, the Knicks decided to play a perimeter game and they lost because of the selfishness of their wing players.

If the Knicks hadn’t given up their first round pick in this summer’s draft you would swear that Larry Brown was trying to lose games. It’s easy to see plenty of reasons for their ineptitude such as their inability to share the ball, porous defense and a refusal of the guards to feed the rock to the teams “bigs” when they are open in the post. For all the talk that Brown has received about being one of the top coaches in the game I think this season as Knicks coach, the way he ruined the Pistons season last year and the debacle that USA Basketball went through with him as a head coach should be enough to make fans realize that he’s not a great coach.

Date
Tue 03/21/06, 7:24 pm EST

Source

 * [HoopsAddict.com HoopsAddict.com]