by Marcel Mutoni / @marcel_mutoni
Despite their ugly five-game losing streak, the Toronto Raptors are hanging on to the eighth and final Playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. What’s alarming, though, is that 3 of the last 5 losses have come at the hands of teams with no hope of qualifying for the postseason (and to make matters worse, the loss margin against those awful squads was by an average of 16 points.)
Armed with this knowledge, and feeling the sting from an embarrassing loss to the Golden State Warriors, Chris Bosh erupted on Saturday night.
The Toronto Sun reports:
He wasn’t throwing around theories. He was imploring everyone in a Raptors uniform to start taking this playoff thing seriously.“Just do it,” Bosh said in an expectably quiet Raptors locker room. “Act like you care. We need to do the things that win. We don’t do the things that win. I’m going down and playing offence on their side of the court and their (bench) is louder than we are. That doesn’t make any sense. They’re not playing for anything. We’re trying to make the playoffs. We’re trying to get the fifth seed but that is, like, slipping away every day.”
Once on a roll, there was no stopping him. “We’re supposed to be gearing up for playoff basketball and this is not playoff basketball,” he said. “Their bench is more active than ours is. They’re players are getting more stops. They’re getting more offensive rebounds. Everybody is doing everything. If you look on the schedule now and see Toronto, I’m sure people are checking the win box. I can understand if we lose a game going down fighting, but we’re not fighting at all.”
As the linked article points out, head coach Jay Triano shares in Bosh’s frustration, but did not hesitate to point out that Chris and Hedo Turkoglu aren’t exempted from the criticism of the team. Naturally, the Raptors went out and lost again last night in Portland, despite some changes in the rotations.
With the summer of 2010 rapidly approaching, I suspect that Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo hasn’t been getting the best sleep of late.
