Skills Versus Experience

Listening to the Inside The NBA team of Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Reggie Miller last night , it was apparent they viewed Toronto as an easy opponent come playoff time. ' The Raptors are inexperienced and they should not go past the 1st round of the playoffs ' the 3 said something like that individually during the show. It reminds me of what Barack Obama's detractors said about him. That he's not experienced enough to run for president. ' Wait until you spend enough time as a Senator and on foreign policy ' suggested one of these critics. Does the American people agrees with them ? You can sit down , Sanjaya. The 1st term Senator from Illinois is running neck to neck with Hillary Clinton based on the latest polls. I guess the the thing to do is just to ignore the ' lack of experience ' tag and just play . After all , it's not the 1st time Simon , I mean , Barkley is off in his predictions.
Someone said that skills will prevail over experience. That's only true with excellent teamwork. Just as long as the Raptors play their unselfish kind of basketall , they will be alright. Aside from that , the Raptors are not totally bereft of playoff experience. Rasho has plenty of NBA playoff experience of championship kind as a member of NBA champion San Antonio Spurs. Juan Dixon and TJ Ford were members of Washington and Milwaukee's playoff teams respectively before joining the Raps. That's not counting the overseas experience of Anthony Parker and Andrea Bargnani as members of Euroleague champion teams- Maccabi Tel Aviv and Benetton. Jose Calderon was in Spain's team that won the World Basketball Championship team last summer. So you see, the Raptors have plenty of experience . Especially if the most playoff experienced Raptor of them all , Mo Pete , permanently removes the blindfold covering his eyes and starts playing good basketball again !