Returning from the badlands of Utah: B-Huge

Remember that Georgia Tech team in the early 90s that had the Lethal Weapon 3 combination? You know, Kenny Anderson, Dennis Scott and Brian Oliver? Well now the Raptors have claim to their own version as Vince Carter, Donyell Marshall and Jalen Rose all scored 20 or more points tonight. Actually the Raps have a Lethal Weapon 3.5 as Chris Bosh's game is maturing rapidly.

Bosh started out quite slow tonight as Zydrunas Ilgauskas dominated him early but the kid didn't let it get him down and made some very key rebounds and baskets late to finish with a tidy 14 points and 7 rebounds. There was very little to complain about as Jalen Rose ended up having the team's worst shot percentage (7 for 17) even though he pretty much dominated everyone in the 3rd quarter when the Raptors made their run to a nice lead. The team shot 48.8% as a whole.

Raptor fans also got their first look at LeBron James tonight. He put up some nice numbers (18 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists) but he missed some crucial shots down the stretch that cost his team. Once this kid starts to stroke his shot consistently then the Cavaliers will really become a threat.

Of course the biggest reason why James is playing for the Cavs is that they were terrible last year with only 16 wins. Considering that 3 of those wins came against the Raptors I guess we should be overjoyed that we won tonight. Maybe it's because Grunwald signed away the Cavaliers' secret weapon Milt Palacio. Speaking of the Cavs/Raps connection, it looks like the famed Lamond Murray for Yogi Stewart trade ends up being a switch of bench-sitters for both teams... oh wait, we gave them a first-round draft pick too.