Go to The Globe and Mail

 

Blogs

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 1:06 PM

Belinelli, Wright likely to play tonight

Michael Grange

Some notes from shootaround: The Raptors will likely have both Marco Belinelli and Antoine Wright available tonight; both practised yesterday and participated in shootaround this morning. The Pacers will play without Mike Dunleavy, the talented shooting guard (hard to call him a shooting guard when he’s six foot nine, but not sure what else he qualifies for) who is on the cusp of returning from knee surgery that cost him nearly all of last season and all of this one so far after his breakout year in 2007-08 when played in all 82 games with the Pacers and averaged 19.1 points a game while shooting 42.4 per cent from three.

T.J. Ford was all smiles ….he’s just had a baby girl to keep little T.J. company. Ford is heading for a career low in assists, manufacturing just 2.6 assists a game or 3.8 assists per 36 minutes. For his career Ford has averaged 7.8 assists per 36 minutes. The issue? “We’ve been playing with a lineup that enables team to just pact the paint; Brandon Rush has not shot the basketball outside," said Pacers coach Jim O'Brien. "We’ve been without Murphy [Troy Murphy, the Pacers' sharp-shooting big man]; we’re playing Danny [Granger] out of position; Dahnty [Jones] is not shooting threes, so they pack the paint. If you counted every time that T.J. put the ball on the money and the shot has been missed, he probably should be averaging about seven or eight assists a game. You need to put the ball in the basket to have assists go up and right now we’re 27th in the NBA in field goal offence.”

Jay Triano said if Roy Hibbert and Danny Granger were on the floor playing centre and power forward respectively, he would have Chris Bosh cover Hibbert and Bargnani cover Granger. “Chris is pretty good at helping and guarding bigs; I thought he did a good job on Dwight [Howard of the Orlando Magic] and Hibbert sets a lot of screens and Chris might be our best screen-and-roll defender.” If Granger plays small forward Hedo Turkoglu will guard the Pacers’ leading scorer.

Latest Comments

From Deep Contributors

MichaelGrange

Michael Grange

Michael Grange brings unique news, commentary and analysis from around the basketball world