Disaster.

Catastrophe.

Words like these are being applied to the opener of the Orlando/Toronto series and with good reason; the Raptors had an absolutely miserable and pathetic first quarter where they allowed the Magic to score 43 points and create what would prove to be an insurmountable 20-point deficit.  They looked much better thereafter, winning the last three quarters by a cumulative margin of +6, but that still left them down by 14 when the final buzzer sounded.

Was it a portent of events to come?

If it is, this series is going to be over in 4 or 5 games because the Raptors were so badly discombobulated by Orlando's defense and their first quarter shooting that they looked like a Div. III team.  

The game was pretty average in most respects for the remaining three quarters.  The Raptors played pretty well after the first one, showing positives and negatives in various respects but nothing outside the realm of reason.  Clearly then, the story of this game was the first quarter, so that will be the primary focus of this piece.

So how did this one start?  Andrea Bargnani starting at small forward.

No one in Toronto who knows basketball failed to cringe at this thought.  Let's put a guy who's a weak defender on a guy who was up for the MIP and hope it works out well.  Yup, that was one of the more savvy and carefully calculated plans I've seen in the annals of NBA coaching history.

I wonder what thought was going through Sam Mitchell's head when he decided to try a largely unsuccessful lineup from a year ago and hope it might prove to be more effective than putting his most successful perimeter defender and wing rebounder out there against a perimeter shooter...  He couldn't have been sober; he HAD to have been intoxicated in some fashion because that move only works by drunk-logic.  Sam Mitchell proved once again that he has no grasp of matchups and rotations by making this move.  Turkoglu carved the Raps apart and was one of the guys torching them in Orlando's 9/11 first quarter barrage from downtown.  

That move would be the beginning of a theme of inept coaching that characterized this game, but Sam Mitchell was not alone in sharing the blame.  

The Magic blazed away from downtown: Nelson was 2/2, Lewis was 2/3, Evans was 3/3, and Dooling was 2/2.  Those were the important shooters, and they did the most damage.  Consider that they scored 27 of Orlando's 43 first-quarter points (or about 63%). This shooting was key in their attack although it would be unwise to ignore the fact that Nelson was getting past TJ Ford without any kind of serious effort and that Lewis hit both of his shots from under the arc because no one was really capable of stopping him either.  

The Magic dropped the hammer, winning the game in the first quarter.  The Raps put the clamps on them in the second, holding them to 17 points but only managed 24 themselves, which would have been respectable in general but they were trying to claw their way back from a massive deficit, and their offense was really held in check by Orlando's defense.  Toronto peaked with a 28-point third quarter but it wasn't enough, too little too late to stop the Magic.  

There were other mitigating factors.  It is worth noting that Toronto shot less than 38% on the game and that the first quarter was hardly any different.  Toronto shot 7/20 in the first quarter and that put the nail in the coffin with Orlando shooting as well as they did.  TJ Ford looked terrible, and Bosh was useless from the floor (although he did well in getting to the line); only Anthony Parker looked good in the first.  

That would change as the game went on; Kapono erupted in the second quarter when both Calderon and Bargnani made their only significant scoring contributions and Rasho put down 8 points as well.  Ford continued to be awful in the second and so did Bosh, which somewhat hurt their ability to really make a legitimate comeback.  This had everything to do with Orlando's defense.

Their plan of attack was largely to pack the lane and give up jump shots, and the Raptors except for Rasho, Parker, and Kapono did not do a good job of taking advantage of these opportunities.  This pretty much locked Chris Bosh up, Bosh having trouble with both Lewis and Howard at various times.  He was nearly non-existent against the physical defense, much as was the case against the Nets.  He did a good job of drawing and hitting free throws but couldn't exert an appreciable impact scoring on field goal attempts, and that really hurt Toronto's comeback bid.  

Orlando coasted a bit in the middle quarters, but they were clearly heating up again in the third.  Their three-point shot faded after the first, with Orlando going 4/18 after the opening quarter, but the rest of their game was right there.  Orlando was roughly 15/26 on layups and dunks against Toronto in game one, which was a big issue.  Turkoglu, Howard, and Nelson all did excellent jobs of getting to the rim, either off of drives or for tip-ins on offensive rebounds.  Then in the fourth, they turned in back on and scored 29 points after the 25 they put up in the third.  

The big three in the fourth were Turkoglu (10 points), Nelson (12 points), and Howard (7 points), who scored all of Orlando's points in the quarter, but it was a game-long theme that the Raptors couldn't stop Orlando's core players.  One of the less promising truths about this game was that the Raptors held Lewis to 13 points and lost... badly.  Lewis is not going to shoot 5/14 (36%) the rest of this series so even if and when the Magic (say Hedo and Nelson) take a step back in terms of efficiency, Lewis is probably going to step up, and that has to be a really disturbing thought lurking in the backs of the minds of Toronto's players.  

What do they have to do to get a win?  They need to play a nearly perfect game, I think.  This series will be decided mostly in Game 2.  If the Raptors lose, this series is done in 5 games tops because the Magic will steal at least one game in Toronto, and then Game 5 should be in Orlando and Toronto won't steal that one.  If they win and split the games in Toronto, then it'll be all tied-up going into Game 5, and the Raptors can take it to 6 or 7 games. However, in order to do so, they are going to have to adjust to Orlando's suffocating defense and find a way to adjust to the significant problems Orlando presents them defensively.

How do you stop Nelson, Turkoglu, and Lewis?  

You'll notice I didn't mention Howard.

It's true that he isn't going to shoot 80%+ from the line again in this series, or at least it's highly unlikely that he'll do so given that he only did it 11 times over the 82 games he played in the regular season (and even fewer times if you look for 10+ attempts), but the Raptors aren't going to stop him in the paint, so they are best off leaving him the way the Spurs do to Amare against Phoenix and just focus on trapping the guards (including Dooling) and otherwise sending Moon out to guard Turkoglu or Lewis and sending hard doubles if they get under the foul line.  Let Howard score and stop the others; that'd be a wiser plan.

That said, if anyone was watching, Dwight Howard put down a little piece of NBA playoff history (post-'73, anyway): He became only the 12th player to post a game with 25 points, 20 rebounds, and 5 blocks and only the fifth to do so in the last decade, joining Shaq, Duncan, and Kevin Garnett (Duncan's done it twice). Beyond that, he also scored 6 consecutive points in the 10-0 spurt the Magic used to put Toronto away in the fourth, so letting him score may be a futile endeavor when all's said and done, and the Raptors also had a really damning scoreless stretch in the fourth for over three minutes.  And again, he stepped it up in the second half after only scoring 7 points in the first two quarters, including 11 points in the third and 7 in the fourth quarter.  

Orlando actually had three key stretches where they held the Raptors scoreless.  The first one was an 8-0 run in the first quarter, but then they had separate stretches of 10-0 and 6-0 in the fourth quarter.  The Raps had a 14-3 stretch in the second, an 8-2 in the third, and a 7-2 in the fourth, but none of it was really sufficient to get the Magic on their heels.  

Ultimately, there is little faith to be put in Sam Mitchell's coaching acumen since he has failed to correct the glaring deficiencies in his coaching style since coming to the Raptors four years ago.  He's gotten markedly better at plays out of timeouts and end-game scenarios, but he still has matchup and rotational issues and continues to be largely impotent about making in-game adjustments of either the offensive or defensive variety.  So given that and keeping in mind the flaws inherent to the Toronto roster, this series should be done in 5 games.