by Mike Ulmer
--raptors.com
April 14, 2008
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The cheers were still echoing about the locker room of the Toronto Raptors when coach Sam Mitchell stepped up to the microphone.
“Now we know,” he said.
“Orlando.”
The Raptors 91-75 victory over the Miami Heat, combined with a dramatic last second, 91-90 Cleveland victory over Philadelphia puts Toronto in sixth place in the Eastern Conference with one game to play.
That means a date with the third-place Orlando Magic (50-30) in a best-of-seven playoff series expected to begin Sunday in the Sunshine State.
The Raptors will undertake a road game in Chicago that is bound to include plenty of time for Kris Humphries, Primoz Brezec and the merry band of caballeros at the end of the bench.
This is the matchup the Raptors wanted. The alternative was the Detroit Pistons who are, from the Raptors perspective, as appealing as hemlock.
The Raps played the Magic three times this season. They lost both games in Orlando but trimmed the Magic 127-110 at Air Canada Centre, February 10.
Chris Bosh played in two of those games and bagged 40 and 26 points nights and Bosh does little to refute the notion that he can score on monstrous Dwight Howard.
“Sometimes I’m a mismatch problem for him,” Bosh said.
“He’s guarded me in the past and I’ve tried to use my quickness around him. Unfortunately, for him, he caught me at bad times when I was shooting the ball really well.”
Rasho Nesterovic, the author of a 20-point night against Miami, said there would be much more to the matchup than Bosh against Howard.
“It’s not one guy, it’s the team. They’ve been playing pretty good lately. We just have to play much better if we’re going to beat them.”
And that’s the hitch, really. As coach Sam Mitchell has said, it’s not who the Raptors play, but how, although those two elements are often inextricably linked.
Guard T.J. Ford saw in Orlando a team not unlike the Raptors.
“We’re going against a team that probably has about the same amount of experience as we do,” he said.
“We want to go into the playoffs with a lot of confidence, a lot of swagger.”
“We beat them once, they beat us. Record wise they’re a better basketball team,” said Mitchell. “For us to have a chance, we’ve got to go to Orlando to win a game and take care of home court. It’s going to be a tough climb. I’m sure our guys will step up and play well.”
The Raptors now stand 41-40. That means that at worst, they will finish with their consecutive season of .500 or better. Last year’s club went 47-35 and won the Atlantic Division title before falling in six games to New Jersey in the first round of the playoffs.
