Nets finish up Raptors in 6 games.

I didn't watch the whole game, in fact I only caught the last ten minutes or so of the fourth quarter because I was live blogging the Braves game, but it was still a very exciting ten minutes that I watched. The Raptors held in there throughout the fourth quarter and with a little over 3 minutes the took their first lead of the game since there was 2:44 left in the third quarter. They took the lead on a pair of made free throws and pulled ahead 93-92. The teams went back and forth and finally with 12 seconds left, Lawrence Frank called the Nets final timeout with Toronto leading 97-96.

I don't know what play Frank called during the 60 second timeout, but it was perfect. It seemed sort of like a backdoor screen to Jefferson, but Jefferson took the pass on the baseline from Kidd and did a spin move and layed it in for the go ahead points. And then after a Toronto timeout the Raptors showed their unexperience and threw the ball away to non other than Jefferson to end the game. Jefferson led the team with 21 points, Vince was next with 20 and Kidd was very close to another triple-double 18 points, 15 assists and 8 rebounds.

The Nets face the the Cleveland Cav's in the 2nd round. The Cav's swept the Washington Wizards who were without both Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler.

Raptors force game 6 in New Jersey

New Jersey- 96
Toronto- 98

The Toronto Raptors avoided elimination last night against the New Jersey Nets. But it came at costly price, both of their point guards, T.J. Ford and Jose Calderon, were both injured in the game. And it isn't known if either one of them will be able to go in game 6, which is good news for us, seeing as how Calderon had a career game and Ford has been wearing our guards out, running 100 miles per hour and running everywhere, non stop. But if both of them do miss the game, then I guarantee the win, they would then be forced to start either Juan Dixon, who is more of an undersized two-guard or Darrick Martin, who makes me giggle cause he has a chubby head. Ford was taken to the hospital as a precautionary move, he collided with Vince Carter just minutes into the first quarter. He fell to the ground and was down there for a while before being helped to his feet. Team officials are calling it a "stinger", and was taken to the hospital for a few tests He returned to the arena and was sitting on the bench late in the fourth quarter. Tests showed no serious problems but Ford still complained of soreness after the game. Calderon was also taken to the hospital after the game to have his ankle looked at. He rolled his ankle in the final minute of the Raptors win last night and was limping pretty bad. The results and severity of his ankle is still unknown.

The Raptors starters were great, all of which, excluding Ford, scored in double figures, with Calderon leading the way, coming off the bench, with 25 points. Calderon also added 8 assists. Chris Bosh was held to only 25 minutes due to early foul trouble and 11 points. Andrea Bargnani and Anthony Parker both had 18 points and Morris Peterson contributed with 17 points including 3-3 from the three-point line. Toronto used the Net's technique, by jumping on the Nets early and often and taking high percentage shots. They had 15 point leads throughout the game and their biggest lead was 20 points.

The Net's fell behind early and weren't able to make a comeback until it was relatively too late, they kept fighting but at the end it wasn't enough. The Net's had big games from Vince(of course) and Richard Jefferson, but other than those two, they didn't get much offense from anyone else, even Jason Kidd was held to 11 points. Carter led all scorers once again with 30 points and Jefferson had 23 points. The next highest scorer was Bostjan Nachbar, who had an atrocious night from behind the arc, he shot 0-7 and that included what would've been the game winning shot at the buzzer. The next game will be game 6 this Friday in New Jersey and I have a request to Net's head coach Lawrence Frank. Please, please, please start Josh Boone over that worthless piece of.....Jesus help me restrain myself....Jason Collins. He is the worst starter in the NBA, he can't score, he can't rebound and he can't defend. Boone scored 8 points in just 9 minutes of play as compared to Collins 0 points, 2 rebounds and 2 turnovers performance(??) in 17 minutes of play. PLEASE BENCH COLLINS!

New Jersey still leads the series 3-2.

Sam Mitchell takes the Coach of the Year award.

The Toronto Raptors head coach, Sam Mitchell, outlasted Jerry Sloan and last year's winner, Avery Johnson to win the NBA's Coach of the Year award. Sam Mitchell became the sixth coach in Toronto's history to an NBA's best, 20 game improvement in just one year. The Raptors finished the season winning 47 games(27 last year) and clinched the third seed in the Eastern division but it sure is a shame that they are gonna lose to my New Jersey Nets, and they already trail 1-0.

"It's a great honor," Mitchell said. "It floors you. You're thankful. Words just can't express it."

Sam Mitchell received 49 first place votes and 394 total votes, the Utah Jazz head coach, Jerry Sloan, received 39 first place votes and a total of 301 and came in second.
"We recognized him for it this morning, " forward Chris Bosh said. "But the thing I love about him is he said it was a team effort."

The Raptors next game is tonight against the Nets(which they will lose) at 7:00 PM ET on NBA TV.