Lou Williams hits the game winning 3 without fear

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With about 8 seconds left in the game the Raptors elected to inbound the ball to Lou Williams in the backcourt who then dribbled it up in iso and drained the step back 3 against Avery Bradley with 0.6 seconds left on the clock to give the Raptors a 92-89 win. Baller stuff 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoprAeCWQS8

Raptors Preseason Begins!

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Tonight the Toronto Raptors played their first preseason game against the Sacramento Kings winning 99-94. While these are only observations from one game it's already apparent that the Raptors have improved in at least 2 aspects during the offseason. 

1. The bigger the better: Many of the Raptors decided to bulk up during the offseason including Terrence Ross, DeMar DeRozan, and Jonas Valanciunas each doing so for seemingly different reasons.

     Ross was criticized after the playoff series against the Nets for being too skinny because it allowed Joe Johnson and Paul Pierce to back him down in the post leading to easy buckets. He seemed to have taken the criticism as best he could and simply responded by coming back with more bulk to deal with larger the sg/sf  in the league. 

     DeMar DeRozan made his first NBA all-star appearance last season and he seems intent on making sure he will make it back there this year. DeRozan already had enough weight on him to deal with larger apposing guards but he seems to have made "mad gains bro" over the summer in an effort to make his drives to the basket even more deadly. DeMar has shown to be a great finisher at the rim but plenty of big men can still get in his path forcing him to lean and attempt a more difficult shot. This year however thanks to his weight gain DeRozan can now finish against the stronger big men which will hopefully lead to more and-one opportunities. 

     Last season Jonas Valanciunas averaged 8.8 rebounds a game which is quite respectable for a players second year in the league but still not enough to make a title run. Jonas doesn't have many issues reading how a rebound will come off the boards but rather he struggled with stopping larger centres who used their size to push him out of the spot for the rebound. Although there aren't a lot of these behemoth type players in the league this was still an issue that led to Chuck Hayes having to play extra minutes which isn't exactly what the Raptors would like. So to combat this he's gotten a little bigger and I'm sure his rebounding numbers this season will improve because of this. 

2. Tyler Hansbrough spent the summer shooting corner 3's apparently.... I guess he just saw how much people enjoyed seeing Amir Johnson shoot 3's and he thought it would be fun if he could shoot them too. Either way I doubt he will be seeing very many minutes next season but hey it's nice to see that even the players deep into the rotation are working hard to enhance their game. 

Media Day/Training Camp: Raptors, Mavericks, and my own

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     With media day being yesterday and training camp starting today for my two favourite NBA teams I felt it would be a perfect time to make my first post since like the Raps and the Mavs I too need to hold a media day to create hype for the season and go through training camp to get myself into decent (writing) form. It's been a long time since I've written on a regular basis so this will start off really rough but I promise over the course of the next year and hopefully beyond I'll be improving with every article, video and photo I post. While this site will be covering everything baller in basketball I won't hesitate from posting baller content about anything. So without further ado here's what's going on in the world of Raps and Mavs.

 

     The pictures from the Mavericks photo shoot seems to indicate that Harris, Ellis, Parsons, Nowitzki, and Chandler will be the starting 5 to begin the season or at least the pre-season. Although personally I'd love to see Jameer Nelson, the guy who got fined for doing the 'big balls dance' after making a clutch game tying shot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN3il8GKIoY , start for the Mavs it makes the most sense for Devin Harris to start for now as he already knows the offensive plays and defensive sets from last season plus his superior defensive ability over the Dallas'  other 3 pgs can help reduce the load on Tyson Chandler who was brought to the team mainly to defend the rim. I also like hearing that Eric Griffin, Dallas' new hyper athletic wing, was the last person to leave training camp today spending extra time polishing his shooting ability with coach Carlisle which could prove to be important since a lot of players may prefer to let him shoot a jump shot as apposed to letting him do this.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qnpr99f6Aw   Anyone else thinking dunk contest? 

 

     Terrence Ross came into Raptors media day trying to prove one thing. That he's not the skinny sg/sf who had issues dealing with larger opponents last year as seen in the playoff series against the Brooklyn Nets. Raptors GM Masai Ujiri was especially positive about Ross' improvement over the summer saying, "I'm positive we'll see real growth with him." This should be a huge benefit for the Raptors as Ross is obviously talented on the offensive end https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNOXGRS_oow and now the Raps coach Dwayne Casey can leave him out there against larger guys without fear of him being a defensive liability. The start of training camp for the Raptors is a little bit more complicated as there 3 "home" preseason games will occur in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal respectively so the team started training in Toronto today but had to fly out to Vanvouver this evening. So far no real news has come out of Raps training camp because of this. 

 

     The final piece of baller news is that Martell Webster and Marcin Gortat are sexual black chocolate and sexual white chocolate from now on okay.  https://twitter.com/SarahKogod/status/516616966178893824?lang=en

Please feel free to comment on all my posts as I really do enjoy an open dialogue with any readers I may get and don't forget to follow my twitter @itsballertime since I'll be tweeting links to new content on the site along with just random baller stuff that happens on twitter as a whole. Thanks to everyone who read all of this and to everyone who will continue to follow the work I produce.

It's baller time baby!