Rockets Play Raptors In Second Pre-Season Game

Tonight the Rockets play basketball again after last playing...um, a while ago. A time before Wembymania ripped the fabric of spacetime. A time when Draymond Green hadn’t yet sucker punched a teammate on video, and the Warriors got mad that their spin BS looked ridiculous.

Since it will soon be impossible to watch or consume sports without gambling sitting directly on your head, I’ll mention that the Toronto Raptors regular season win total “over” is one of the safest bets of the last decade.

Toronto seems a team made to win in the regular season. It’s a bunch of 6’8” guys who can do a little of everything. They play good defense, and Nick Nurse is a clever coach. Of course he is, he was part of a Rockets coaching farm system that also produced Chris Finch.

The playoff problem with Toronto is, I think, that it’s a team that’s good at everything, but has no one who is great at scoring. In the playoffs, when every defense is playing hard, you need a great scorer who can overcome that sort of defensive attention in order to win. The clever stuff that gets baskets in the regular season breaks down, and individual scoring brilliance is usually required (the 2014 Spurs being something of an exception).

There are no individually brilliant scorers on Toronto, as I see it. Barnes might prove an exception, but so far we don’t know.

In the meantime, Jabari Smith, and Alperen Sengun are out tonight. Nothing serious we’re told.