Paul Jones

Paul Jones is the voice of the Raptors on the FAN 590 and writes regularly for Sportsnet.ca.

Kevin Durant and the Thunder had their way with the Raptors defence this past week.

Alright folks, I’m back from my Olympic celebrations and just a few things before we say goodbye to the five big rings for a couple of years.

Personally, I’m more of a Summer Olympics guy but it was great to have the Winter Games in Vancouver and Canada put up an impressive performance at home.

On Sunday I caught the gold medal hockey game from Oklahoma City. The Raptors players were well aware that it was happening, the prestige and more importantly, Canadian pride, that is associated with a gold medal.

Jose Calderon gets on the team bus and comments what an exciting game it was as the Raptors headed for the arena in Oklahoma at the end of the second period.

Yes, it was a very good timing on the call of departure time by team travel secretary and equipment manager Kevin DiPietro.

More evidence that all of North America was hypnotized by the gold medal tilt:

We arrive at the arena and every police officer in the building is in the front hall as the Raptors walk into the joint. Why? That’s where the TV is and they were glued to the game.

* In walking to the locker room from the bus, Andrea Bargnani asks Jim LaBumbard, a duel citizen of both Canada and the U.S., if the game will be on in the locker room.

* The U.S. scores a goal in the dying seconds of the third period after pulling their goalie in favour of an extra attacker. I didn’t see it, but I knew it happened since I had just finished my interview with Kevin Durant and seconds later there is a loud cheer in the arena.

* Hedo Turkoglu is pulling the leg of the Canadians in the locker room during the overtime chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A," while looking like a kid singing the chorus of YMCA by making a "U" with bent arms in the air, an "S" by doing a bicep flex with one arm above the waist and the other below the waist and, an "A" by placing his arms over his head as if they were the roof of a house.

* Raptors assistant general manager, Canadian Marc Eversley, runs out of a courtside lounge when Sidney Crosby scores the winning goal as if he just made a game-winning, buzzer-beater running off the court, leaving my broadcast partner Eric Smith to apologize to the Americans.

* And finally, Jay Triano’s pre-game media availability is delayed until after the hockey game ends and the first question asked by a local reporter is about the hockey game and not basketball.

The two games by the Raptors on their recent trip were real stinkers. The team did not have fight in them in either Oklahoma City or Houston to come back from the deficits they created. Following last night’s game in Houston, head coach Jay Triano talked about the lack of ball movement and "selfish" play as guys tried to do too much on their own. True they were missing Chris Bosh and Jose Calderon, who sat out the game with a laceration on his right elbow, and Hedo Turkoglu who sprained his left ankle on a drive in the second quarter, but there was no sense of urgency in the team’s effort.

Toronto’s defense looked more like it did in the first 20 games of the season than it has in past 35. Toronto has now lost four straight games and has allowed 30 or more points in the first quarter in all four, yielding 34 points per first quarter, while averaging only 26.5.

It’s the start of a new month and while the schedule was manageable over the past 30-35 games, it becomes more difficult again in March. The opponents this month include a West Coast swing against the Lakers, Kings, Warriors and the Trail Blazers with key conference games in Miami and Charlotte, while Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Utah and Denver will visit the Air Canada Centre.

Perhaps that is why Triano bristled when a question about resting and trying to win games was mentioned in the same breath as the "P" word, playoffs.

Needless to say, it’s going to be a tough test the rest of the month and right now, Toronto is beat up and not playing well. But as it has been said before in this space, never underestimate how close a team is to turning things around and getting things going when fortunes appear to look bleak, or how precipitous the fall can be when things seem to be going well.

Hey, just four games ago Toronto was sitting seven games above .500 for the first time in two years.

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The nice part about Monday night was hanging out in the hotel bar with University of Houston head basketball coach Tom Penders. He has been the head coach at a number of NCAA schools including Columbia, Rhode Island, Texas, George Washington and Fordham, where he hired a young assistant named Jack Armstrong.

Yes, that Jack Armstrong, former head coach at Niagara and now TV analyst for the Toronto Raptors.

Penders is the guy that popularized the "jump stop" as an offensive weapon. He said he learned it from watching Earl (The Pearl) Monroe when they played together in New York. According to Penders, there was a time that he had to break it down for officials who insisted that it was a travelling violation before they truly understood it (where are you Mike Katz, Canada’s King of the jump stop? – you would have loved to have been in on the chatter).

With the Raptors broadcast crew, Matt Devlin, Eric Smith, Armstrong and Toronto Star reporter Doug Smith present, there were also some amazing stories about legendary coach Al McGuire and his national championship win in Atlanta in 1977. Other names coming up over the course of the night (allow me to date myself and say if you know these names you can belong to our club of hard core "hoop-heads" of a certain vintage) included: Dean Smith, Jerry Tarkanian, Carlton Owens, Tom Garrick, Jim McMillan, Maurice Lucas, Hank Raymonds, Rick Majerus, Bernard Toone, Jerome Whitehead, Bo Ellis, Butch Lee, Lew Massey, Cedric Maxwell, B.J. Tyler, Earl Campbell, Guy Lewis, John Calipari, Norm Van Lier, Dud Tongal, Ed Bona, Lou Carnesecca, Walter Berry and T.J. Ford, just to name a few.

In truth, I could fill this entire space with great basketball names that came up during the course of the conversation.

So how is Penders’ team doing? Well, the Cougars are (14-13) increasing Penders all-time record to 629-424 (.597) overall. Keep an eye on the Cougars as they have the nation’s leading scorer in 6’4" senior guard Aubrey Coleman, who is averaging 25.9 points-per-game.