Who is fact checking these Raptors articles?

Okay, I don’t want this to be a post about the pitiful Toronto sportswriters, but I gotta say, at least with the NBA, the Toronto sports-writers are downright pitiful. These guys are supposed to be getting paid to write about the NBA, so how hard is it to at the very least get the facts right? Writing a boring article is excusable, but getting some important facts completely reversed is just ridiculous.

I’ve noticed this a lot lately especially before the season started when they were writing about the spots remaining on the team roster. They kept saying there were three guys competing for one remaining spot on the roster (Jamario, Juan and Luke) when in reality there were two spots and three guys. If that was confusing to me, a fan of the game, I can imagine a casual reader would probably have stopped reading two sentences in.

So when I read the gross misrepresentation today in the Star, I thought I had better get my thoughts out there. If you read the “Run ‘n’ gun” story about the Warriors in today’s Toronto Star Doug Smith mentions the Warriors as being the highest scoring team in the league and he cites them as averaging 116.3 points per game (and giving up 109.3 points per game):

“How do you prepare for them?” Mitchell wondered about the Warriors, who average 116.3 points per game but give up 109.3 per outing. “They’re not going to run but two or three plays. As a coach, you like to be able to prepare.

Immediately I was confused because I thought the Utah Jazz were the highest scoring team in the league. With a 1-6 record I was perplexed at how the Warriors could be scoring that much more than their opponents and have only won one game. Hmm, did they win one game by 40 and lose the rest by one point? Were they counting last years stats? What gives?

I didn’t have to look very far to see the errors in Doug Smith’s ways…directly to the right of the article is a game preview showing the Warriors GIVING UP a league-worst 116.3 points per game, but scoring on average 109.3 points per game. Ahhh, now that makes sense.

I know the story was probably written late last night and with all the big events happening today, maybe nobody read it over, but man o’ man…that was just un-acceptable. The average score was a critical fact for the theme of the “Run-n-gun” story. Now 109.3 points per game is still a run-n-gun team, but it is a lot different than 116.3 ppg. Dougie boy, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Sidenote: I checked some more papers, and the Sun reported that the Warriors are indeed the highest scoring team in the league, so I’m trusting that two papers wouldn’t get that fact wrong. After the Raptors held the Jazz to 92 points in the loss on Wednesday, their ppg must have dropped.

Jamario

Merrio, Marrio, Tomaaato, Tommatto…it doesn’t matter, this kid can play ball.

Moon is looking good, but the true reason for this post (besides being impressed with Jamario’s performance at last night’s game in their loss to Utah) is my attempt to use the NBA.com’s widget. Sadly this widget that would have shown his up to date stats directly on this page does not work in WordPress.

I’ll have to settle for an action shot and some news about Jamario from around the web.

He’s starting to make some waves (and bad puns) in the NBA circles, the folks at NBA.com have him at 6th in the rookie rankings and did a long, but not very funny, writeup of him in this weeks rookie report. Here’s an excerpt:

After seeing the 6-8, 205 pound forward put on an impromptu dunk-a-thon during layup lines while covering the Raptors game against the Celtics in Rome during Europe Live last month, a couple things were clear to me at the time:

A) This guy should be in the All-Star Slam Dunk Contest
B) Nothing against Andrea Bargnani, but I’m looking at the most exciting rook north of the border since he-who-must-not-be-named
C) When I do eventually give him love in the Rookie Rankings, I’m going to make like a Denny’s menu author and title the column “Moon Over My Rankings” in his honor

The slightly edgier dudes over at ESPN.com’s daily dime actually have Moon ranked 4th just below Harford. Although in NBA.com’s defense, their rankings didn’t include his game last night. Here’s what they had to say:

4. Jamario Moon, Raptors: Moon defends, hustles and can finish. He may be the small forward Toronto’s looking for.

All good stuff. Now if the rest of the team can bring it like Jamario is, we will actually win more games than we lose.