[octothorp]

To me Charlotte is the only team that's clearly worse than the Raptors. The next four or so are all pretty close in terms of skill level. I'd be very surprised if they were not in the bottom five. Although watching them right now against Boston, and it's as bad as they played at any point last season. They're going to lose a lot of games early this year before they have a chance to come together.

edit: actually looking much better in the second half... outscoring Boston's starters 11-3 to start the half. My feed is jittery and pixelated, but it looks like the reports of their offseason workouts are accurate... Bargnani defintely lighter, more athletic. Davis and A Johnson bigger, even DeRozan looks stronger, and I was pretty cynical about his offseason schedule. Defense is okay... effort is there but a lot of miscues that leave guys wide-open.

Game summary: Positives for the Raptors: outscored Boston 34 - 24 in the paint, and out-rebounded them 48-38. The bad news: 1-17 on 3-pointers. Ouch. Distance was bad last year, and it's not getting better anytime soon. Something like 5-for-35 on shots longer than 16 feet. So you put those stats together and part of the reason they had so many offensive rebounds was the result of all those long misses.
A few players who looked good: Bargnani... never thought I'd say that the defense looked better with him on the court than on the bench. He wasn't always in the right place, but when he was in the wrong place it wasn't the result of laziness. Only 4 rebounds, but his positioning was solid. The overall rebounding stats supports this. Ed Davis looks great. Needs to work on his foul shots, but if he gets 30 minutes a night, he'll average a double-double. I think by necessity, we'll see a lot of Davis and Bargnani on the court together.
A few players who looked bad: Bayless is quickly removing himself from the starting PG conversation. 4-16 with 4 assists (and two of those assists and two buckets in garbage minutes) is not what they need from him. Finishes well at the rim as always, but has tunnel vision. Aaron Grey... this guy is the stiffiest stiff who ever stiffed. Alibi was really mobile and athletic compared to last year, but when you only get four minutes and blow a routine putback, it doesn't bode well. Was wide open for a lot of time on the court, and the other Raptors were trying hard to pretend he wasn't there, like they knew he couldn't finish.