With a mini lull in the schedule between Sunday's win over the Kings and the Wednesday's home tilt with the Hawks, the Raptors held their 16th annual Red Party gala at Muzik in Toronto on Monday.
The $275 a pop affair benefits MLSE's charitable efforts and allows fans the type of access to their favorite Raptors usually reserved for media, groupies and greedy extended family members only.
Our corporate masters at Rogers sponsored the event, which raised $250,000 for the Team Up Foundation which, according to the team, will invest $800,000 in "facility improvements" including the refurbishment of Variety Village Centre's court and the St. James Town community court.
Clap. Clap. Well done all involved.
We would have been in attendance ourselves, if not for a scheduling conflict with Monday night's new episode of The Bachelor. What can we say? It's appointment viewing.
Maybe next year.
But for those of you dying to see what we missed out on, the fine folks at raptors.com slapped up a photo gallery (our subjective highlights below):
- Andrea the Giant towering over an unidentified beauty
- Reggie Evans puts the red in the Red Party
- After checking out this pic, it's easy to see why young Bayless loves it here.
- We love Matt Devlin, but he might be slowly morphing into Rod Roddy
Eric Smith, who missed last night's episode of The Bachelor, posted some pics of his own at his Fan590 blog.
The "P" word
Over at the National Post, Noah Love reminds us of the frightening fact that despite a Maple Leafs-esque .351 winning percentage, the Raptors are still in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff hunt (shivers running up spine).
Drooling over DeMar
One of the few reasons to keep tuning in every night to this sqiad has been the continuing development of DeMar DeRozan, whom Hayley Mick of the Globe points out is the fifth-best scorer among NBA sophomores at 14.8 points per game.
That's nice, now deal him
At the beginning of the season, Jose Calderon couldn't hit a jumper to save his life.
He's been playing great ball of late, but he's become so fragile we're starting to wonder if he's got the feet of a 7-foot Chinese centre. Anyway, as Doug Smith points out, since the Jarrett Jack trade, the gritty Spaniard has been fantastic when he's made it to the floor, averaging 12.2 points and 9.7 assists while shooting 51.4 per cent from the floor and 48.9 per cent from three.
Those are dynamite numbers.
Translation (given our history with injured gritty Spaniards): Deal him now!
Also be sure to also check out...
Our brothers in blogging arms, the lads at Raptors HQ
Also, our man Paul Jones was on PTS Tuesday and has the latest on the ongoing Carmelo saga. Wake us when the deal's done...
