Lohensports

 Baseball is back and maybe it's just the excitement of spring but I am into it this year! Before I get into the rollercoaster weekend for the Jays, quick shout out to the Raptors rookies who continue to prove that they're too good to tank. There's something to be said when they're going up against other team's second round and undrafted players and showing us they're way better. This front office and coaching staff knows how to find and develop guys. Anyway, Jays! Depending on which day you spoke to a Jays fan the Jays either completely stink or are winning the world series, gotta love the early season overreactions. Today I'm going to do just that! My Takes are All Wrong In this tiny 4 game sample size that we get to look at, I have been proven wrong on a ton of my takes! When I first saw the opening day lineup the Jays had Bo Bichette hitting leadoff. My big take all weekend was that Bo isn't a leadoff hitter, he's a great hitter but he rarely tak...

Not Mentioned: Garrett Temple: A (good vet, great interviews on the Raptors Show Podcast) Orlando Robinson: B+ (A reasonable 3rd string center)  AJ Lawson: A (Never misses a shot when RJ passes him the ball, from Brampton) Jarred Rhoden: B- (not memorable, can defend a little I guess) Ulrich Chomche: INC (barely played NBA minutes, youngest player in the league that's pretty cool) Jamison Battle: B+ 6.3/2.2/0.8 on 43/40/88 The Raptors are back to finding useful players as undrafted free agents with Jamison Battle. I've said multiple times this year that Battle is simply one of the best shooters in the league and I will say it again here. If Battle has a slightly open look, I am confident that he's going to knock that thing down, more so than anyone else on the team. While I wouldn't call it a strength, Battle has shown that he can do a little bit off the dribble when guys close out hard, typically driving at a slow deliberate pace to create space for a floater. He's...

 Ah I love a nice long saga I can drag out, plus this one is fun. Before we get into some more Raptors grades, there were some fun games on last night! The Raptors smoked the Nets in what many were calling a must lose game for the reverse standings. Every win brings us closer to not having to care about tanking anymore! As of right now the Raptors are 5.5 games back of the Heat for the playin, they're 3 games up on the 6ers and Nets, the only teams they can potentially go below at this point, meaning they seem pretty locked in to the 7th best odds. People will cry and complain about this but the last time the Raptors had the 7th best odds they jumped to 4th and picked Scottie, so calm down. With 11 games left, I see them pulling out the "tank" stuff maybe 3-4 more times before they fully feel comfortable being locked in and just let the guys play. Just quickly on the game itself, Mogbo showed me a couple little hook shots last night that I was bashing him in his grade for...

I guess some news actually did break in the NBA last night, but it was sad news and not stuff I like to write about. Damian Lillard was announced to be out indefinitely with a blood clot issue in his leg. Really sucks, especially for a 35 year old player. I've been a Bucks hater for his entire tenure there, but hating isn't fun or doable when a guy gets injured so please get well soon Dame, the NBA is better with him playing.  That being said, let's grade some more Raptors! There's some more prominent second year Raptors that need grading, we won't stop this exercise until everyone has a grade. I think I'm going to continue to order this roughly by amount of time spent with the team just cause that's how I've done it so far. Gradey is out of order, I'm making this up on the fly, whatever. Lets get into it! RJ Barrett: B 21.4/6.5/5.6 on 47/36/64 I have to start by saying that I love RJ Barrett, my favorite Raptor in a long time. Something about a guy ...

 Honestly, I am just banging my head against the wall for ideas today so I thought it might make sense to turn this report card thing into a series. We covered the rookies yesterday and after I gave Mogbo a C+ he turned in an awesome performance against the Wizards to simply not let the Raptors tank which is still hilarious. Don't even get me started though, this tanking is an epidemic in the NBA. I was telling my girlfriend yesterday that to watch the Raptors legally you need to spend ~$60 a month. Dropping all that money to watch this product where they're actively trying to lose games is a tragedy. ANYWAY, this isn't a tanking post, today lets give report cards to some second year Raptors.  Gradey Dick: B- 14.4/3.6/1.8 on 41/35/86 Pretty decent sophomore season for Gradey Dick I'd say! The year started out with rotating injuries to RJ Barrett, Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley, which thrusted Dick into a larger role than he had expected (couldn't resist.) Earl...

 Ok we're officially winding down the NBA season here and the Raptors are hardly giving anyone anything to watch for at this point so I think it's safe to do some end of season evaluations. I wanted to start with the rookies, for the first time that I can remember as a Raptors fan the team had 4 rookies contribute in real NBA situations. A lot of that was because the team had a stated goal of prioritizing development this season, but I like what I've seen from all of them, especially as the season has gone on. Lets grade some rookies! Jamison Battle: B+ 6.3/2.2/0.8 on 43/40/88 The Raptors are back to finding useful players as undrafted free agents with Jamison Battle. I've said multiple times this year that Battle is simply one of the best shooters in the league and I will say it again here. If Battle has a slightly open look, I am confident that he's going to knock that thing down, more so than anyone else on the team. While I wouldn't call it a strength, Battl...

 Very short one today because I am not in the writiest of moods. I wanted to get this on my blog with a time stamp so that if this prediction pans out I can come back to this with the evidence that I called it. Of course, if it doesn't pan out then this will be buried and never spoken about again, win win! I am here to tell you, after watching 1 highlight reel video, Derik Queen is going to be the best player taken in the 2025 NBA draft.  Derik Queen is not an obvious NBA fit. Standing at 6'10, 246lbs, Queen plays mostly center in college. There's questions in the NBA about a big framed center who doesn't have the length to protect the rim, typically those guys can't impact games on defense which is the most important skill for a center. What Queen does provide though is a bag that I feel is deeper than anyone in the draft. I have seen Queen face guys up from the perimeter and use his handle to create driving lanes. I've seen him demonstrate nasty footwork in th...

 This one is low hanging fruit I know. I happen to have a bit of time today so I thought I'd write the most basic article I could think of and just predict who will win each of the major awards in the NBA this season. I thought it'd also be funny to look back at my predictions from the start of the year to see just how far off base I was. With the season in it's last few weeks here, the winners are all pretty much set in stone barring some incredible comebacks, lets dive into who I think will win each award:  MVP: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander  Preseason Prediction: Luka Doncic (I also specified Luka on the Mavericks lol) Those who know me know that my favorite player in the NBA currently is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Those who know me also know that I still think Jokic deserves the MVP over him. With that being said, it seems like the media narrative has shifted completely towards Shai and I don't think that's an incorrect sentiment. Shai is leading the league in scoring ...

 Before the Raptors game last night TSN was playing a documentary about the formation of the Raptors all the way to today. I only caught the last 15 minutes of it which was recapping the championship run, oh man it was fun to relive it. While it was fun to look back, the highlights they chose to display in that doc were really strange. They first brushed right past the Magic series which makes sense. Then they quickly show the Kawhi shot and let us know what Simu Liu thought of it. They then completely skip over the Bucks series for some reason then skip through games 1-5 of the Warriors series before landing on game 6. For game 6 highlights they decided to show basically the entire 5 minute delay with 0.5 seconds left before the Raptors officially won the championship. That's right, they showed the timeouts and reviews not actual basketball highlights. It was bizarre, so many good moments that could've been used instead! Anyway, the people talking in it was cool and seeing the...

 Happy Monday! After a flurry of deals in the NFL, I quickly was able to shout out Mason Rudolph in a very brief post on here. I thought today would be a good chance to brush up on the Steelers options at QB going into next season. With Najee Harris out and DK Metcalf in, the Steelers offense is guaranteed to look different next year. The question is will it be good? Whoever suits up at QB in 2025 is going to have a lot of say in answering that. Lets look at the options:  Mason Rudolph Love him or hate him, Mason is currently the best quarterback on the Steelers roster. We saw some fun stuff with Mason Rudolph over his first tenure in Pittsburgh. In 2019 when Roethlisberger went down with an elbow injury, Mason was called upon and performed decently. As a young QB, he had a pretty poor pocket presence but a big arm that threw a pretty nice deep ball. He made some mistakes but overall didn't completely kill you out there. All of his progress was lost when he got a concussion af...

 Bonus one! Mason Rudolph is back in Pittsburgh and as of today he's the QB1. Honestly, big Mason Rudolph fan, the answer at QB wasn't going to be any of these free agents anyway so I am down to run with starter Mason Rudolph. It's a good day, welcome back QB1.

 I can't wait until next season. I feel like once a week I hop on here to vent about how much I hate tanking in the NBA. Maybe it's just because my team is participating in the nonsense, but to me it seems like this season the tanking has gotten particularly out of hand. The Raptors are at the end of the deadly stretch if you're a tank fan: Utah, Washington, Washington, Philly, Utah. Some absolutely disgusting basketball has been played in this stretch and I have a lot to complain about.  As the Raptors got into their final quarter of the season, it became evident that the goal is to lose games to improve their draft position. Early on, their strategy was to just play their starters and then pull them all in the 4th quarters and close the games with the third stringers. The Raptors starters, playing against some pitiful competition, managed to build leads up so big that the third stringers couldn't blow them. The first instance of pulling absolutely everyone resulted in...