Jose jose jose jose......jose....jose jose

Have no fear Raptor fans, Jose Calderon has arrived at the 2007 Euro Championships. With a decisive 81-69 victory over Russia, Spain's very own Jose Calderon had a team high 17 points with a solid 7 for 11 shooting (3 for 6 3pts) with 4 assists. Let's cover the other players here before talking about Jose. Garbo had a solid 11 points, 3 boards and 2 steals in 27!! minutes. Remember with Garbo, he is a player who delivers outside the stats. The glue guy with the solid b-ball I.Q. Sure it would be nice to see him putting up 20 and 10, but that is not his game. The important thing to watch with Garbo is his minutes, because as long as he stays healthy, he will be going into training camp close to 100% instead of needing the entire month of October to just get back up to speed. Pau Gasol on the other hand is the go-to guy for both Spain and Memphis, and tonight against Russia he was still solid although he did share the work load. 13 points, 9 boards, 2 blocks, 2 assists and a steal. Pau Gasol might not have been the high point man for this game, but he is still the main man on Spain. His Memphis teammate Juan Carlos Navarro played in only his second game of the Euro's and posted a solid 15 points in 19 minutes. Seriously, don't pencil them in for a championship or anything silly like that, but the Memphis Grizzles will NOT be the same team as last year. On the Russia side, well Kirilenko played against a top level team and did this.... 6 for 8 shooting, 7 for 8 from the line, 4 boards, 1 steal, 1 block and one assist. 21 points all together. Let's ignore the 4 turnovers, Hell of a game for Kirilenko and Utah must be filling up the cups at the local sperm bank right about now.

Speaking of filling up the cup, our boy Jose Calderon scoring 17 to lead the team is a huge difference then the small numbers he has had in most other games. 2 reasons IMO...

1) As much as we love Jose Calderon, we must be realistic here. On the Raptors, would we rather have Jose or Pau Gasol? Jose is the man! Re-sign the guy. But Jose/Bosh/Bargnani or Gasol/Bosh/Bargnani? Forget positions, Andrea could play small forward, it doesn't matter, the Raps would win the east. So on Spain's team, they do have other options. We talk about how great Tony Parker and Kirilenko and Disco Dirk are playing, but they are the only options on the team. Jose is one of many, that's why Spain is the world champs. Jose might have a big game, then Gasol will, then Rudy Fernandez. They are a deep team.

2) Even though Spain has lost a game already, they were already into the second round when they lost. They are already going to the Olympics next year. They have yet played against the top teams in this tournament (until today at least). The stats during the semi-finals and finals, that is obviously the most important. Jose puts up 15 points and 5-6 assists those two games and we are thinking "what a great tournament". So bottom line is let's be patient for our Raptor boys.

So far Rasho is kicking ass, Jorge is playing minutes, Bargnani has improved every game and Jose got the job done tonight. All things considering, so far this has been pretty good for the Raptor players.