ORLANDO -- Not the start the Raptors were hoping for, no doubt. Couldn't have been worse. I'm not entirely ready to write the series off. You figure Bosh, Ford, Calderon, Bargnani and Delfino all struggled big time offensively; they spotted the Magic a 20-point lead and yet they still made it a five-point game in the fourth. I'm still of the opinion that if the Raptors play well, this can be a series and then some. But that prospect is looking way more ‘if' than ‘when' right now.

Anyway, One series, Some Things v1.1:

1.  Bruce Arthur broke the story. The media were assembled, waiting patiently for the game to start when Arthur – actually listening to the pre-game introductions – heard that Andrea Bargnani was starting, turned and said: “Bargnani is starting”. At this development I have to laugh. While the notion that Bargnani will be big in this series is a no-brainer -- Bargnani is big in every game he plays in the sense that if you're giving steady minutes to a guy who shoots 39 per cent yet  but sometimes goes off and leads your team in scoring, he's either big or an anvil. So what's funny is that just the other day I made the point that while it might be easy and convenient to put the spotlight on Bargnani as perhaps the key in this series, it would be unfair to do so. And then Sam starts him. Oh well.

2.  But the image that bothers me is that now that he's starting in a playoff game he's all active defensively and energized and engaged and battling Dwight Howard for rebounding position. He played okay – even though he couldn't hit a jump shot. But why does it take that kind of opportunity to see him looking like a guy who's lost in the competition, instead of space? That would be my concern; that he gives of a broody kind of vibe and seems half interested most of the time, but then is promoted to the station to which he feels he deserves and then starts to grind. I'd feel more confident if it was the other way around.

3.  Did Bosh throw Mitchell under the tricked-out Escalade? It kind of sounded that way. There was the Raptors all-star and captain blaming at least part of the Raptors troubles on the relatively last-minute changes they made in preparation for the series. He didn't say starting Bargnani, but I guess he could have. But he did talk about new sets and new plays and new wrinkles of plays that were added and suggested that Jose and T.J. were a bit flummoxed by the new stuff.

Bosh: “We anticipated them try trying to [figure out] every play we had without running them. At the start of the game they hit threes, but we could have given ourselves a better chance on offence by running the plays we always run, the things that we're giving us success throughout the whole season. If we get back to doing our own offence and doing what got us here, we'll be pretty good. We have good match-ups against them.”

Q: Did you go to the old stuff as the game went on?

Bosh: It's not really old, the season just ended last week. We just need to go back to our things. We know what we're good at and we have to continue to play the way we can play.

Q: Can you elaborate? What was new?

Bosh: Trying to add tweaks to the offence. That kind of confused us a little bit. I know T.J. and Jose, they didn't really know what to run sometimes and if we did they we were in the wrong spots. Maybe it's the jitters of the game. Maybe them making shots like that kind of shell-shocked us a little bit and kind of put us on our heels. The next game, if we're more aggressive and do the things we know how to do and play our basketball, the outcome will be a lot different.

Q: Was that the players or the game plan?

Bosh: I think it's the players. We have to know our offence. The coach can call the play, but if run something different it's a whole different story, so I think we just have to focus and pay more attention and come out hard and with a purpose.

It sort of sounded like Bosh realized how what he was saying was coming across and tried to put the cat back in the bag, but a little late. Let's face it, with his playoff record now at 2-5, it takes little to feed into the perception that Mitchell can be out-coached. And when his star player questions the strategy and approach for Game 1 of a playoff series, it adds a giant log on the fire; and some gasoline. Fires like that are hard to put out.

4. There are risers behind the baskets at Amway with each row of seats about six inches above the next. This enables the Magic dancers to align themselves one after another in the aisle directly behind the backboard. As a result they appear to be directly in the line of sight for opposition free throw shooters. And one of the cheerleaders in particular did this little shaky thing with her torso just when guys were shooting, which I found very distracting, typppping wise.

5. That will not go down as a great game in what will likely be a career of great games, but I was impressed by Bosh yesterday. He sprawled for loosed balls; he forced contact, he played pretty good defence on Lewis on the perimeter, I thought. Was he out of sync offensively? Yes. Did he allow that to impact any other aspect of his game? Not a bit. The guy plays hard.

6. Howard should learn to blocked shots in bounds, not to get all Bill Russell and Bill Walton on him. Most guys who block shots are just happy/lucky to tip the ball, so the notion of controlling where the ball ends up is kind of moot. But Howard gets up so high and so fast that he is one of the few players in the NBA that should really think about how and where he blocks the ball. Right now it's like watching a guy play volleyball, spiking shots into the stands as if they were sets. It's crazy to expect more, but I can't help it, this guy could occasionally be tapping it to guards for outlets, I'm sure of it.