Raptors-Bucks: Bargnani and Co. Too Much for Milwaukee

That pretty much panned out how it was supposed to.

The undermanned Bucks got taken care of early against a Raptors team that looked like it actually had a game plan, pushing the ball up the court and realizing that the Bucks had nobody to match up with Bargs.

When you look at the Raptors starting lineup and you look at games like tonight’s, you can’t help but wonder how the Raptors find themselves in the position that they do.

Sure, Anthony Parker isn’t a top flight forward, but he isn’t a punk (yet). T

he Raptors are still getting service out of him. That is what has made this season so frustrating.

The Raptors have a good enough lineup to beat the weak teams, beat the .500 teams and at least compete with some of the better teams.

I am not looking at things with rose-coloured glasses. I know there are some serious gaps in the Raptors lineup, especially with their bench, but I still think that lineup should have more wins than it does.

Tonight we also saw the Jose that we should be seeing more regularly. When Jose is ready to push the ball and get going down the court, he can be much more effective than even he believes.

I still think he needs to work a bit on going left, but he does have the ability to get around a lot of guards in the same way they seem to have the ability to get around him on the other end of the court.

I’ll take that trade off if it means Jose is going to get some help on the defensive end. Give me a PG who has a little more offense in him than defense any day.

The Raptors were finally able to get out from the runaway train that has been Charlie V. Charlie had one of those games that reminded people of why he has that tag that follows him that he just takes nights off every once in a while.

He just didn’t look like he was completely into tonight’s game, which is what you get from him sometimes when things don’t go his way. We have seen him turn things on in the second half a few times this year (even in the game where he famously Tweeted at half), but more often than not, when things aren’t going right for CV31, he shuts it down.

So, back-to-back wins. Can the Raptors actually make a mini-statement down the stretch and show people that they aren’t the chumps that they have painted themselves as for a good portion of the season? Will they just be fooling everybody? I guess we will see.