Raptors must show PRIDE

Let’s just get to it shall we? Just in case you missed it, we’ll fast forward to the 11:39 point of the 4th quarter of last night’s game vs. the Boston Celtics (courtesy of RedsArmy.com):

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Jay Triano, Marc Iavaroni, and Alex English were the only ones who were immediately up in arms about Paul Pierce’s post-dunk posturing. The rest of the Raptors team appeared to just take it, as if they were fine with what just occurred. Maybe they were?

Could you imagine the ’80’s Celtics or Lakers not reacting to that? Or the ’90’s Pistons, Knicks, or Bulls? Or ANY NBA team from the ’70’s, ’80’s or ’90’s for that matter. That just wouldn’t fly. In those days Paul Pierce would have gotten a message one way or another.

After the game’s conclusion, during ESPN’s telecast of the Thunder/Bucks game, ESPN likened the Paul Pierce dunk on Chris Bosh (I believe it could have easily been called an offensive foul) to Deebo punking Red in the movie ‘Friday’. When the highlight showed Pierce flexing his right arm while standing over a fallen Bosh, the in-studio ESPN host quotes one of the movie’s more popular lines when Red exclaims: “My grandmama gave me that chain!”. To me that just said it all. Seriously. The Raptors were called out on international televison by the ‘worldwide leader in sports’ as being punked and bullied!

But, it didn’t stop there! Rasheed Wallace even called Hedo Turkoglu a flopper during the game, which landed him a technical foul. He went on to refer to Hedo as ‘Turkododo’ in his post game locker room comments.

On Twitter the Fan590’s Eric Smith quoted Jarrett Jack as saying postgame, “I didn’t think it was a dirty play” and Jarrett added that if he thought it was, he would have gone after someone. With all due respect Jarrett, I feel you missed the point based on that quote. You can’t let that happen to your team, TO YOUR BEST PLAYER AT THAT, and be fine with it. I’m not saying you start a brawl, I know the league imposed consequences for leaving the bench during the game, but you have to rally around your teammates and make sure a message is sent when you take the ball down the other end of the floor, and DEFINITELY when you’re back on defence.

RaptorsNBATV & Fan590 basketball analyst Jack Armstrong’s sentiments at that moment in the game were exactly right when he said “Where are the guys in uniform going after Paul Pierce?”. You can not just sit by and watch something like that happen to your team. Truthfully, what does it say when only the coaches are willing to stand up and show their disgust in a moment like that?

During the late stages in the game I saw Antoine Wright on the bench looking down towards the Celtics end of the court, with a look of disgust on his face that the Celtics were essentially laughing at the Raptors.

Antoine said it best after the game – he summed up everything that has to happen for ANYTHING to change positively for the Raptors from this point on in the season:

Let’s just hope this is the moment of awakening and that they’ll exemplify pride going forward. At this point, only action is going to turn things around. As they say, talk is cheap.