Thursday, April 24, 2008

Thursday Night NBA Pick

Nice win for the Spurs the other night. Hoping to keep the good vibes rolling with tonight's basketball pick:

Raptors -4 (WSEX), 110 to win 100

"Finally!" That's probably what you heard in the Toronto area when Coach Sam Mitchell announced that there would be changes in the Raptors starting line-up for Game 3. Most significantly, it is believed that he will start Jose Calderon over T.J. Ford at point guard. This should've happened a long time ago, but the Raptors have a lot of money tied up in Ford, and traded Charlie Villanueva to get him (at least, everybody thought Charlie had a lot of potential at the time), so it's understandable that management wanted to give T.J. every opportunity to succeed. Calderon has clearly been the better player, and facing an 0-2 deficit already, the team appears ready to give him his starting spot. Mitchell may also find a place for 3-point shooting Jason Kapono in the starting line-up, either starting him at the 2 or 3 instead of Parker or Bargnani, or maybe going small-ball by moving Bosh to the 5 and using Nesterovic off the bench. With the travel and the 2-0 cushion, I just don't see the Magic busting out to a 20-point lead after the first quarter like they did in Game 1 (or 17-point lead in Game 2). Raptors will not fall way behind early like that in front of the home crowd.

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