Raptors Grab Your Road Warrior Beers

The thought of taking on a lukewarm New Orleans Hornets and a red-hot Chris Paul isn’t overly appealing to me right now.  David West and Emeka Okafor have looked so lost on the defensive glass early this season that there’s reason to believe they’re both due for a sharp spike in rebound totals.

The Raptors are going to need another strong performance on the boards from Andrea Bargnani and a breakout performance from Jose Calderon to keep the rising Hornets at bay.  Jay Triano’s uptempo offensive plans have suited this team well through the first four games, for just about everyone other than Calderon.  I can’t argue that it’s great for DeRozan’s development to “start”, but his minutes have been severley limited and it might be time to insert Antoine Wright.  Calderon has historically looked sharper with a defined running mate.

This is just the second road test for Toronto after last Friday’s puzzling loss to the Grizz, and New Orleans is coming off of Wednesday’s impressive overtime win over Dallas.  This mini three-game Southwest Division road trip doesn’t get much easier in Dallas tomorrow and San Antonio on Monday.  You might want to stock-up on road rockets seeing as seven of their next eight contests are Western Conference visitations.

Friday Fantasy Notes:

The clock is striking bench for DeMar DeRozan.  Jarrett Jack has logged a lot of minutes at the two early this season, and he’s moderately owned in most formats.  It looks like Antoine Wright may be the add here (he certainly is for me in the Fanball.com Bloggers’ League, lookout), but Marco Belinelli has been sharp off the bench in limited duty, too.

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If you’re a struggling NBA fantasy owner, in bullshit league and looking to crawl out of the basement, then I suggest the ol’ “freeze-out a threat” tactic applied by league commissioner TaWano Raptors of the “Gentlemens Club”.

Tags: Antoine Wright, Fantasy Basketball, Jose Calderon, New Orleans Hornets, Toronto Raptors