I was at this game. Now I’m usually one who buys the cheapest $4-5 ticket I can find and hit he upper deck. I cut the bottom out of my cup to use it as a megaphone and try to make as much noise as possible. Well tonight I scored some sweet tix in sec 109, 11 rows back – the first time I’ve been that close.

I could hear Grant Hill clearly calling out defensive switches and I could see the easily blown foul calls on the baseline.. but best of all – THEY COULD HEAR ME!!! haha – I gave Bosh his own PA address as stepped to the line for the first time… “Now shooting two… RRRuuuuuPPPaaaauuull!!!” Or while Amir Johnson was lining up his foul shots on the other end there was no doubt my prolonged…“Jooooohhhhnnnnnssssooonnn” in a quasi-sloth (from the Goonies) tone was heard (he missed his second attempt – and I’m 79.4% sure it was because I got into his head) :0

A few observations from my sweet seats!

• The game in my opinion was frustrating – but I loved every second of it. I give a lot of credit to Toronto’s transition Defense – it seemed like every time we looked to push the ball up court there were always at least 3 Raptors already there… I don’t know what the stats are, but it seemed like we didn’t have a fastbreak point until Grant Hill released a 3/4 pass to JRich who finished with the lay-in in the fourth quarter! We definitely weren’t running like we need to and like Gentry pointed out we looked a little stagnant at times in our slow half court offense.

• When the Raps would switch a big on Nash and a lil’ on STAT (usually Calderon) Bosh or someone else was quick to come over for weak side help… or maybe it was Amare who was too slow to take advantage of the ‘mouse in the house’. P.S. – Calderon has some fast and sneaky little hands. He was stripping the ball left and right – at point after he had stripped the ball from Amare for the second time in nearly the same amount of possessions, Amare quickly snapped a glare at him (maybe he said something too, i couldn’t see) and Calderon raised his hands in the air and shrugged as if to say, " I so sorry, I am espanish and my enlglish no good but my hands berry berry sneaky". It was funny.

• We missed A TON of easy looks. Grant Hill never got it going. JRich wasn’t his same scoring self, and the Bench (with the exception of Dudley) played pretty poorly. Dragic had a terrible night. He is definitely MUCH better when the pace is frenetic and fast and he can slither in the open court. He seems to be as much a source of stagnation as the others who were standing around when they were forced repeatedly by Toronto to play a half-court offense.

• Even with the poor shooting from key players and the lack of bench support tonight… I was surprised to continually look up at the scoreboard and see us only down by 5… then 4… then 2… then WHAT THE? We’re tied at 84!? You know it’s funny – for some reason, at the start of the second half the guy sitting in front of me turned and asked “do you think we’re going to win this one?” and I instantly replied “Oh no doubt”. It surprised me… last year at this same time I would have replied… no, all the players look like they’ve given up. But this team has something special about them. They are once again a team that we can apply the 10 by 6 in the 4th rule. Which is, If ever we are in the 4th quarter and happen to be losing the game… if we get the difference to be at least only 10 points with 6 minutes left – we can lock up a win.

This was a great win for our Suns – though I did have to bust out the Maalox for the final moments!

Hedo was able to get a clean look at the elbow….more than once