7 Straight 3s

 Needed a short one today with work of course being annoyingly busy so I thought I'd go over the Raptors beating the Suns last night. I am BIG time in the minority, but I am having so much fun watching the Raptors try really hard to win these games and I am really enjoying the tank stans panicking every time they pull one off. Last night was incredible though and I had to get into it. 

7 Threes

The Raptors outplayed the Suns the entire game last night. The Suns play the laziest basketball you'll ever see. They have nobody interested in playing any kind of defense at all. They start Nick Richards who grabs rebounds and finishes dunks but mostly spends the entire game looking disengaged, especially on defense where the Raptors just had a free lane to the rim all night. KD, Booker and Beal can all score but they each took turns creating for themselves and rarely got the team going. It genuinely looks like they don't care about the team anymore, a sad franchise. Anyway, despite all of that, the Suns managed to battle back from a double digit deficit to get it to 2 points with the clock dwindling in the 4th. Then Boucher hit a big 3, then Quickley, Quickley, Barrett, Barrett, Barrett (4 point play) then Boucher again to cap off 7 threes in a row to put the game away. To put it in perspective, the Raptors are not a strong shooting team this season. They average 11.7 3 pointers made per game this season which is second last to only the Orlando Magic for fewest 3s per game. They hit 7 of them consecutively to close out the Suns. Even as a tank stan you would have had fun watching that one. 

Schedule Lightening Up

The Raptors remaining opponents have a combined win percentage of .393. It is by a large margin the easiest remaining schedule in the league and really poses a threat to the Raptors tank if you care about that kind of thing. I've said time and time again that I think Masai will find us a gem regardless of where they pick so winning doesn't bother me. Also as a person actually watching these games it is just funny to me to see the very vocal tank stans cry after each win that they didn't watch. Anyway, lets break down this schedule and see where the Raptors might end up. 

The Raptors play the Celtics at home tomorrow and the Pacers on the road on Wednesday. Both of these are tough games that the Raptors likely lose especially if Jakob Poeltl remains out. After this, the Raptors have 3 games against above .500 teams for the entire rest of the season and those 3 teams are the Pistons who they should play tough, the Warriors and the Mavericks who are super banged up. They have a stretch in March where they face the Jazz, Wizards, Wizards, 76ers, Jazz. If that's not 5 straight wins then Masai made the call to bench some contributors, because yikes. I'm saying after the next 2 games, if the Raptors come away with 2 losses, they have 23 games left with zero games being a major challenge. Unless they start inventing injuries, I can see the Raptors going 15-8 in that stretch pretty comfortably. That would mean only winning all of their games against the Wizards, Jazz, Hornets, Nets, 76ers and Bulls plus 2 more peppered in there. That would leave the Raps at 33-49 on the year, a .402 win percentage. I know this isn't what fans want to hear, but the Bulls in 10th right now have a .386 win percentage. I am warning tank stans now, if the Raptors don't pull the plug here, the playin is certainly on the table. 

That's that for today! Busy one. I know people think it's bad for the long term of the team and whatever, but I really wanna see a play in push if only just so I can see the tank stans lose their minds. The draft lottery is stupid anyway. Go Raptors!