@movernie
Well, last time Jeremy Lin came to Toronto was on Valentines Day, when he sparked the huge come from behind victory with his last shot in the game at the 0.5s mark to seal the victory for his New York Knicks, also prolonging his Cinderella feel-good story in the NBA, winning many hearts of the NBA fans around the globe.
So, this time, Linsanity returned to Toronto for Part 2 of a rematch between the Raptors and Knicks at the Air Canada Centre. However, Lin possibly played one of his worst game so far this season. He only registered 6 pts, 4 assists and 1 rebound in 25 minutes of play. Nothing to be bragging about. The entire Knicks squad struggled for the entire game, missing three-pointers after three-pointers. The entire team only made 5 three-pointers out of 28 attempts, a poor shooting night behind the arc.
Speaking about Jeremy Lin, last time when he came to Toronto, he received lots of cheers, especially from fans who were jumping on the bandwagon. The cheers created such a stir in the media about the lack of home court advantage when playing in Toronto. This time around, you could hear cheers from Jeremy Lin’s fans, but also there was a strong opposition fans who booed Jeremy Lin everytime he touched the ball, I think the loyal Raptors fans were trying to send a message to other non-raptors fans that there should be a level of respect in supporting the Raptors team. I totally agree with the home court support and I totally believe that our fans should respect our Raptors teams and cheering them on. However, I disagree on booing on a player such as Jeremy Lin who totally was a feel-good story and did nothing wrong or said anything harmful to the Raptors that deserved the verbal abuse. Nevertheless, the Raptors won the game by the score of 96-79. DeMar DeRozan scored a team high of 30 points but had to leave the game with about 3 minutes remaining in the game due to ankle problems.
You see, I really like Coach Casey so far this year, he delivered his promise to make his players play hard in every game. However, I do think there are still room for Casey to improve on his coaching skills. In this game, the Knicks had pulled off its starters, all but giving up the game with 3 minutes remaining. Casey should have pulled off the starters when they were leading by 17 points. Remember, they still have to play the next night against the Chicago Bulls. If Casey have pulled the starters, DeRozan wouldn’t have been injured. Anyhow, it’s already happened, but I hope Casey would make his late game substitution better and having set-play better when the game is on the line.
Special shoutout for this game was the fact that my good friend, Oriana killed the performance by singing the national anthems at the Raptors game. She had a wonderful voice and I am very happy for her to have this gig.
Also, special shoutout to Gail who provided her wonderful photography at the courtside seats. There are alot of Lin fans on my facebook, twitter and my blogs and all the photos I am shown you right now were provided by her. Greatly appreciated her time and effort and her time of taking close up shots of Jeremy Lin. Photo credits @gilfingled
