Well, the honeymoon is officially over folks. While that loss to the Heat was painful, there's even more fun on the Texan horizon. We get a Dallas team tomorrow on the wrong end of a home-and-away back-to-back who will be looking for revenge and is a mere 11-1 at home. That's followed up on Wednesday by a San Antonio Spurs team that is finally rounding into form after a shaky start, has won 6 in a row, and has a little known guy named Tim Duncan playing for them who we have absolutely no defensive response for. Did you get all that? I was on a bit of a roll there. You might need to go over it again. Read it and weep.

Fortunately, we do get New York and Orlando at home to finish the pre-Christmas schedule, so the team could (should!) still be above .500 when they get their 4 day break. They would be well advised to stay out of the stuffing and figure out how to stop teams that can penetrate. Hey, that gave me a great idea! Why don't we 'stuff' the lane? Why don't we play a little zone defense? I heard a rocket scientist talking about zone defense the other day, and it sounded really, really complicated, but pretty useful. Better in this case than KO's "always switching" defense, which is great for defending jump shooters but a clear bust against faster teams who can drive around a mismatch. But hey, what do I know? I'm no rocket scientist after all.

Despite Donyell Marshall being the victim of a number of those drives, at least he scored as much as he gave up, so his role was a wash. He'd look great in a zone defense, wouldn't he? Okay, okay, I'll let it go! Jalen Rose, however, had 5 turnovers and never really asserted himself at either end of the court. Every fan in Chicago is nodding their head in vindication, but let's not over-react... yet. Toronto fans have too much angst to let it go for long, though. The rumblings have already begun about getting another rebounder on top of the two stiffs riding the pine right now, and of course we can't forget about Michael "Jordan" Bradley whose return is sadly still a ways out yet. But you have to think that we could be getting more gang rebounding from our backcourt, when Alvin, Jalen and Vince combined for only 8 boards against Miami.

As for Vince Carter, he definitely disappointed a few people riding him in fantasy leagues today, but that seems to be the way it goes for him the game after a big scoring night. Then there was the Achilles tendon thing, which ain't gonna help us come tomorrow either. I'd be tempted to sit him out, throw the Dallas game, and see how he's doing Wednesday. San Antonio at least still feels like a winnable game, if we've got a healthy Vince and TD gets in foul trouble. I know, it's a stretch.