I Had a Dream...

It was 9:10 am when I awoke to the vibrating phone on my table top.
“Hello, Deb?” The voice said. Still seven-eighths sleep, I replied with what I hoped sounded like: “I’m sorry?”
“Is this Deb?”

I’ve heard of my voice being compared to many things… but a woman named Deb was not one of them.

“I think you’ve got the right number.”

Birds were chirping outside my window – In the middle of January - Martin Luther King Day.

I went back to bed, and finally arose exactly 22 hours after the Raptors tipped-off against the scorching hot Knicks - a team that hadn’t lost in 2006; a span of 6 straight impressive wins.

People had asked me if I thought the Raptors could pull this one out, and I honestly didn’t know what to tell them. Both teams had been playing their best basketball in a long time. But I also never bet against the home team – never.

But never would I have thought this contest would be as one-sided as it was…

Raptors 129, Knicks 103

Let’s run down the shopping list of Raptors’ records now:

- Largest margin of victory this season (previously 24).
- Most points scored in franchise history (previously 128, twice)
- First time the Raptors have scored 30+ points in every quarter
- Jalen Rose scored 18 in the 2nd, which is the most in any quarter by a Raptor this season (Mike James -who sat this one out with back spasms – previously had 17), and finished with a season-high 31.
- Morris Peterson finished with a season-high 28.

I sincerely hope I’m not forgetting any, but the list is pretty long, so hopefully you’ll excuse me if they blur together.

I got to sit courtside for this baby, and needless to say, I will never forget it… partially because of the unfortunate image of Eddy Curry (I didn’t realize he was that big) wearing tights will forever be stained in my brain.

Chris Bosh scored 23 points, while Jose Calderon ran the team to perfection, with 13 points and 10 assists (great article about Jose’s revenge against Brown and Starbury right here: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/story/383167p-325270c.html)

After the game it was off to the Raptors’ locker room, where we swarmed Jalen Rose… I tell you, basketball players are like the anti-strippers. With hordes and hordes of media surrounding them, they are forced to get dressed in front of all these people – let alone TV cameras and microphones. The only difference is, we’re not slipping singles in their boxers – they get enough of those from the league.

A lot of the talk with Rose was surrounding the fact that he had just torched the team that has been scouting him feverishly for the last couple of years. When one reporter asked him if it was a coincidence, he responded with this:

“No coincidence at all. I’ve just been practicing hard, playing hard, and today was a game when everything just fell into place. Obviously with Mike James being out, I knew that there would be more opportunities for me and other guys to step up, and I just tried to play my part.”

With that already being asked, I noted that his 31 points came in just 23 minutes – he had 21 at the half, in just 14 minutes of PT…

“Yeah, it was a quickie… Fortunately I was about to knock down shots, stay aggressive, and my teammates were doing a great job of pumping me up and telling me to attack the basket and knock down my shot when I get the opportunity to score. And God-willing, the shots were falling.”

After Rose was down, I literally did a “180,” and Mo Pete was good to go… Well, actually he was still putting up his dress shirt. I asked if he wanted us to wait until he buttoned up, and he said now was a good time. So I stepped in and asked the first question.

“It was a pretty big game for both you and Jalen… both season-highs.”

“Well we’ve been practicing the last couple of days, and I knew it was coming. Jalen had two great practices and you know, it’s good to see him playing well, and see him coming around.”

…”Mo, I don’t know if you know, but that was a franchise high, scoring 129 points… let alone shooting 59% against a team that had won 6 straight…”

“Oh wow, you know what? During the game, you don’t really think about it – you just take shots and today they did seem to fall more. I just gotta give credit to our team. You know, we’ve been working on our shooting, doing everything we can… but defensively, we’ve been getting at teams. And that’s where it started. If you look at – every time we have good games, we get a couple of steals, and couple of easy baskets, and Chris gets a couple blocks. That’s the kind of things we need, if we want to turn the corner.”
==

That ended up getting stretched out a bit. Which is good, I guess, seeing as how I covered practice the day before and nothing exciting came out of it.

All the talk was about Mitchell looking up to Larry Brown, and learning from the most recent member of the 1,000-win club (only Pat Riley, Lenny Wilkins, and Don Nelson had reached that milestone), while playing under him in Indiana.

==
A few days before that… Wednesday, if you’re keeping track… was the game against the Bobcats. I think you could call it a game, even though it was uglier than your third-cousin Geoffrey’s inbred puppy.

Raptors 95, Bobcats 86

The Raptors had 33 at the half, so considering that, post-break was much easier on the eyes… but that’s because Charlotte was without Brevin Knight for the final 24 minutes (back spasms).

Chris Bosh had 29 points (20 in the 2nd half) and 10 rebounds. Mo Pete chipped in with 18 and 11.

I was covering the Bobcats’ locker room in this one, and after talking to Coach Bernie Bickerstaff, I spoke to Gerald Wallace (15 points, 7 rebounds) about their depleted roster: (Charlotte was without: Emeka Okafor, Sean May, Kareem Rush, Brevin Knight, and Jake Voskuhl).

“Gerald, I think it’s safe to say you guys have been bitten pretty hard by the injury bug…”
“Oh man, we’re past being bit – I mean, we’re savaged now. We’re walking without legs right now.”

This is also a team that had just come off a huge double-overtime win against the Rockets. With that, and then this, he’d played 92 minutes in 2 nights.

“Did you feel the effects of fatigue at all?”
“Once you put the ball up, and the referee blows the whistle, then I’m ready to play. As long as I’m out on the court playing and running and sweating, then I’m feeling good. It’s just the after-part that hurts.”

==

The Raptors are now on the road, which gives me a week-off (I’ll call this my holiday period). I’ll do a quick re-cap after it’s all done, and then hopefully it’ll all be back to normal.
I leave you now with the closing words from the birthday boy - Dr. Martin Luther King – when he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, of 1963:


“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"