Chris Bosh scored 44 points and 12 rebounds in Milwaukee last night. No other starter had more than 13 points, and the Raptors lost to the Bucks by six. Note to the Raptors – hanging your best player out to dry like that is not a very good way to get said best player to stick around once he becomes a free agent.
1. Have you seen the lineup for the slam dunk contest this year? It may finally be time to take this horse out behind the barn and shoot it. When the biggest name in the contest is Nate Robinson – a guy who can’t even get consistent playing time for a terrible team – you know you have problems. He’s joined by a few more players no one will care about any more than him – Gerald Wallace, Shannon Brown, and the winner of a Friday contest between Eric Gordon and DeMar DeRozan. Painful. Really, really painful.
Kudos to Pitt. That certainly wasn’t the outcome I was expecting last night. I had grown to respect UConn, and I had grown to doubt Pitt. Oops. Pitt came into town playing a very rough and tough game, throwing themselves around like crazy. DeJuan Blair played as well as I have ever seen him, scoring 22 points, adding 23 boards, and generally asserting himself as the best player on the court. I wasn’t expecting that. I also wasn’t expecting Pitt to be as effective at containing Hasheem Thabeet as they were. This will certainly make it easier for Pitt to get a number one seed. As for Connecticut, I’m not sure what it means. There isn’t much shame in losing to the fourth ranked team, even if it is at home. The biggest lesson out of this one, I think, is that the Huskies are going to miss Jerome Dyson quite a bit. They just didn’t have all the offense they needed in this one.
