A Date With Royalty For Raptors

Tonight the Raptors start their west coast road trip (Kings, Jazz, Lakers, Portland)

The Basics: Kings 2-1 (This is their Home Opener) Raptors 1-1 (First Road Game)

Last Time We Saw Them: The Raptors come into this game after a dominate pizza producing win over the Cavs. Andrea Bargnani led all scorers in the game with 20. Reggie Evans continued to dominate the glass with 14 rebounds. Kings played the same Cavs the next night in Cleveland and won by just a slim 107-104 scoreline. DeMarcus Cousins had 14 points and 10 boards and Evans after having to sit out the 1st game of the year looks good as ever with 21 points 7 rebounds and 6 assists. He is a triple double waiting to happen.

Key Match-Ups: Obviously when you play Sacramento the match-up that is most important is the one with Tyreke Evans. Jarrett Jack will have a long night at the office tonight. But the other match up I am interested in will be Andrea Bargnani vs Demarcus Cousins. Now they may actually switch on this and have Landry on Bargnani and Evans vs Cousins. Regardless Andrea is going to be matched up with a traditional big that will bang on the glass. It also means that same big will be forced to get out of the paint to guard Andrea. 28 points and 0 rebounds? That might be an Andrea line for tonight.

Other Things To Note: The Raptors have always been brutal in Sacramento. They are a terrible 2-12 all time at Arco Arena. This might be the most winnable game the Raptors have on this road trip despite the past history. Then you look at the Raptors overall success on the west coast which is terrible as well. Being the home opener at Arco will not make it any easier. Arco was for years one of the loudest and toughest places to play in the league. Those days have kind of gone away but if the Kings can't get people in the building for the home opener they have larger issues than a game vs the Raptors.

In Case You Missed It: Couple things from the DNB on the weekend. First we had some fun with Halloween giving some costume Ideas for most of the people we love as part of our Raptors family. Check them out if you missed them. Also if you are not an early riser you might not be aware I am back on The Team 990 in Montreal on Saturday's for another season. But if you miss it live you can catch it here every Monday.

The Extra Point: This is your big debut on Sportsnet 1. For those of you unable to get that network you are out of luck like back in the TSN 2 days. The Raptors need to find a way to fix this. If you are serious about maintaining your fanbase you need to make it easy or even possible for fans to see your team play games. This is basic common sense marketing. I don't care how much MLSE gets from TSN or Rogers it does not make up for the fact you are upsetting your loyal fans. You go to the effort of having training camp in Vancouver and travel to Montreal to build a fanbase nationally. Well T.V is your best tool to do that and having your product on secondary networks is not the way to do it. Secondary network sends a message of a second rate product. Do you really want that to be the perception of the Raptors?

Raptors White Out or Black Out

Team White WINS, TEAM WHITE WINS!!! I have to say yesterday, I was really missing the fact that I am not able to be at training camp this year. But what can you do. Vancouver is just not in the Dino Nation Blog's budget. Jay Satur from Raptors.com was there and filed a report on the particulars. I don't think you can take much of anything from an inter squad game but they are fun. They have a half Harlem Globetrotters and have semi serious feel to them. The most important thing of all these pre-season games and events is that everyone remains healthy. Just look back to last season and Reggie Evans injury in a pre-season game for proof of that. Evans never really got back on track and missed half the season.

So TSN in an attempt to obviously make me look bad, is in fact broadcasting the Suns and Raptors on Wednesday, on the main TSN as well. That being said it is still a shame that a lot of people have been shut out by the evolution of Sportsnet 1 and TSN 2 from Raptor games. I personally see it as a bad move for the Raptors. When you are a good team you can afford these type of things. When you are a team that is not expected to do well you need all the exposure you can get. Whatever TSN or Rogers cares to say the fact is Raptor fans and Jays fans have become casualties of their stupid pointless completive nature with each other. I spent some time at TSN, so it is not like I say this without any personal knowledge. Since my time there the childish competition between the two networks has only increased. What also has increased is there NHL coverage which buries basketball further and further into the background. They can say all they like they do this to provide more coverage of events but it is more about making money and to them that means more hockey. If MLSE was serious and wanted to put an end to this they could do it. Just the threat of a couple Leaf games being moved to Leafs TV would get them whatever they wanted in terms of Raptor scheduling. Eventually this like TSN2 will sort out for majority of people but while some will forget this in time...I won't.

Linas Kleiza will not be confused with Hedo Turkoglu on Wednesday. He is playing hard and led all scorers in that inter-squad scrimmage. Last year Hedo in that game in Ottawa had a seat next to Chris Bosh in street clothes watching. While I have not been as high on Kleiza as most, when it comes to effort and energy he will never have an issue with that.

The only other thing I want to point out for this Monday is about Demar DeRozan. He is really looking the part as the future face of the franchise isn't he? I remember interviewing him last season and he was really nice but his answers were short and he was not as polished. This year he seems to have more to say and says it with the confidence you gain from a year of guys like me asking him questions all the time. The big question is can the on court swag match the off court swag. That will be one of the big things I will be watching this pre-season.

Going to try to catch up with Matt Devlin in Vancouver sometime between now and Wednesday and get his impressions of what has been going on in Vancouver. Looking forward to that.