TORONTO - When Greivis Vasquez was drafted by the Memphis Grizzlies, selected with the 28th overall pick in 2010, he joined an emerging Western Conference power. Russell Bodine Jersey . At the time of the selection, the Grizzlies were coming off a promising campaign, the first for frontcourt duo Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph together in Memphis. Helmed by now former coach Lionel Hollins, the 2010-11 Grizzlies were one of the most improved teams in the league, building a defensive foundation that sticks with them to this day while finishing 10 games over .500, defeating the Spurs in the first round of the playoffs and taking the Thunder to seven games in the Conference Semifinals. Vasquez, a 24-year-old, Venezuelan-born rookie from the University of Maryland, was along for the ride. He played in 70 regular season games, backing up Mike Conley and helping the Grizzlies snap a four-year playoff draught - appearing in 13 postseason contests - before being traded to New Orleans ahead of the following, lockout shortened campaign. Memphis has not missed the postseason since. "Ive got respect for them because they gave me an opportunity to be in this league," said the fourth-year point guard, poised to make his second postseason appearance with the Raptors next month. "Thats a tough team to beat," he continued following his new teams impressive 99-86 win over the one that drafted him. "We beat a playoff team and that was a good win for us at home." Aside from new coach Dave Joerger - a former assistant under Hollins - and last years trade of Rudy Gay, the Grizzlies havent changed much. Theyre still a defensive juggernaut - ranked third in opponent points per game, just ahead of the Raptors - and they still feature the daunting interior pair of Gasol and Randolph. They still embody physical, hard-nosed, playoff-calibre basketball and the Raptors - looking ahead to their own postseason birth - took it right to them. It was another valuable test for Dwane Caseys team, not unlike the one they failed in Brooklyn earlier this week, but this time they passed with flying colours. "I dont mean this in a bad way with Memphis because I love the style of defence they play," Casey said, "but the only way you can challenge a bully is if you hit them first." "I dont think we did that in the first quarter," Casey said in reference to Torontos timid start. "We did in the second quarter and they responded. Youve got to have a physical mentality against a team like that and I thought our guys did that after the first quarter." Vasquez had a lot to do with that turnaround. He may not be the fastest, the quickest or the strongest but there are few who play the game harder. His energy was infectious, as it tends to be, when he entered the game late in the first quarter and it carried over into the second, where the Raptors ended the half on a 19-6 run. About 30 minutes later he changed the game again, this time for good. With the score knotted up at 80, midway through the fourth, Vasquez knocked down a 27-foot pull-up three. As the Grizzlies came up the floor, he picked off a pass and went coast-to-coast for layup. It was the biggest sequence of the night, ironically initiating a second 19-6 run to close out the victory. "Obviously physicality is going to be the big factor [in the playoffs]," said Vasquez, who finished with 17 points, five rebounds and six assists Friday. "We play physical, we punch teams and we let them know that its not going to be easy for any team to come to our house and beat us like that and thats what we did tonight." Usually relegated to 17-22 minutes per night, mostly playing in the understudy role to starter Kyle Lowry, Vasquez logged 28. With the Grizzlies playing small in the backcourt, Casey was able to pair Vasquez and Lowry for over eight minutes in both the second and fourth quarters. With the two point guards sharing the court for 19 minutes, the Raptors scored 23 points more than they allowed. Playing alongside the other, both Vasquez and Lowry were at their best on this night. Lowry - who totalled 22 points, seven rebounds and 12 assists - was able to play off the ball and spot up for jumpers, while Vasquez could get in the lane and facilitate with more space. For Vasquez - as he realizes - the obvious benefit to spending more time on the floor with Lowry is spending more time on the floor, period. "I think we should do it more often if you ask me but Im not the head coach," Vasquez said. "[Coach is] doing a great job leading us to win games. Obviously Coach Casey is an outstanding coach and today he gave me a chance to come off the bench and play with a rhythm and I got the job done." Vasquez, a starter in New Orleans last season, has seen sporadic playing time since arriving in the trade from Sacramento. Generally, when he has played more he has played well but the opportunity for playing time at the position is scarce. It is what it is, as Casey would say. Lowry is playing at an extremely high level and pairing them together is something that can only work in long stretches if the matchup permits it. "When I play regular minutes it allows me to have a presence in the game," he said. "A lot of times its really, really hard coming off the bench and just being effective or having a presence in the game real quick." For the most part, the Raptors have had success playing Lowry and Vasquez together this season, keeping in mind its only been done in favourable situations. In 346 minutes with the two point guards on the floor, the Raptors have outscored their opponents by 102 total points, per NBA.com/stats. With Casey looking to manufacture some rest for Lowry over the final five weeks of the season, playing him off the ball more often could be the solution. "Its easier for me," said Lowry, asked about playing alongside Vasquez, "because weve got a guy who is going to look for me and who can make the play. He gives me a chance to rest and hang out and shoot open threes. When hes playing like that, were a pretty good team." Vasquez and Jonas Valanciunas - who scored a season-high 23 points - both came up big for Torontos offence with Memphis elite perimeter defence locked into DeMar DeRozan and Terrence Ross. The Raptors two wing players shot a combined 6-for-16 Friday. Patrick DiMarco Jersey . Joel Embiid was nearly unstoppable in the paint in the second half, and Naadir Tharpe seemingly couldnt miss. Andre Holmes Jersey . And follow TSN.ca right through Deadline Day for all the updates. From Pierre LeBrun While Anaheim GM Bob Murray said earlier this season he was not going to trade Jonas Hiller despite the fact hes an unrestricted free agent on July 1, some sources have told TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun that Murray might be willing to move another goalie. http://www.thebillsgearshop.com/Bills-Marshall-Newhouse-Draft-Jersey/ . LOUIS -- St.TORONTO – Before Wednesdays series finale with the Red Sox, TSN.ca sat down with two Blue Jays veterans to get their thoughts on the August collapse. One is Adam Lind, one of the longest tenured Blue Jays, whos seen this before. The other is R.A. Dickey, in his second year in Toronto, whos been a part of two Blue Jays teams that havent lived up to expectations. But first, heres Episode 19 of The Baseball Podcast. The Toronto Stars Richard Griffin, Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com and I discuss the Jays August swoon, Jose Bautistas future in Toronto and more. Listen here: Now, todays conversations: R.A. DICKEY TSN.ca: I want to ask you the shortest and simplest question but it might be the most complicated answer: whats happened here? DICKEY: Well, I dont know if its a past tense question. TSN.ca: Whats happening? DICKEY: Yeah. I think its hard to identify. I think some of its probably the nature of the game. You know, its such a streaky game. Ive said that for a long time and we havent been able to arrest, for whatever reason, we havent been able to arrest the downward spiral that weve been in presently. Thats some of it. Some of its that we havent been pitching as well - Im talking about myself - as well as Im capable of pitching. We havent been playing very fundamental baseball recently. A lot of those things add up to you being in a place where you dont enjoy the result. Weve still got a little over a month left and anythings possible. TSN.ca: I look at your first inning (Tuesday) night and I think to myself, May, every hit-and-run ground ball found a hole for you guys when it was going well. You strike out the lead-off hitter. Josh (Thole), whos been brilliant handling you this year, with the unfortunate passed ball and then Pedroia turns it into the two-run home run and youre just thinking to yourself, why not at this point? How do you internalize that on the mound? Youve obviously got to push ahead and focus on the next hitter but you must, in that moment, be thinking, what next? DICKEY: Theres a trap there. I mean theres a trap for every professional baseball player there that says, ‘Here we go again. Youve really got to take a moment, collect yourself and say Im not going to give into that mentality and I tried to do that the best I could and, thankfully I was able to put up five zeroes after that against a pretty good line-up. That line-up is a pretty good line-up on paper, more so than it was a month ago. Youve really got to be locked in. I felt I was able to get to that place where I was able to repeat my delivery and throw good knuckleballs and maybe I should just pretend, as I start the game, that Ive already given up three runs. I think I might have some better results. It seems like thats been a pattern, at least over the last couple of months, is Ill give up early runs and then have some shutdown innings instead of having shutdown innings the whole time. Its heartbreaking on one hand that you fought so hard and youre fighting so hard to stay in it and yet you dont see the results that you hope for, because you know youre so close and how hard it is to be one of those eight teams to make the postseason, you know how hard that is and to be so close is tough. TSN.ca: Stay with me on this: nothing really happens at the deadline and there were some players, some veterans, in advance of that who were clamouring for a move or moves to be made. My interpretation of that is, ‘We need a little more to make us better. You could interpret that as thinking, were not quite good enough at this moment, but if we get something or some pieces, well get there. Do you run the risk at this point of that becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy? Guys who wanted the moves, they dont happen, then you look at the August results and it reinforces what you believed about who you guys were in late July? DICKEY: Yeah, you know, I think you certainly could deduce that. Thats a good hypothesis, I think. I mean, because, and look Ill be the first one to say that Im sure the front office wanted to make moves, but for whatever reason it just didnt, it couldnt make it happen. Whether it was financial reasons, whether it was not the right prospects or youre not willing to give up Stroman, youre not willing to give up Sanchez, whatever the reasons were, Im sure they wanted to make a move to make us better. They just couldnt find a good match. Sure, everybody in here wanted help. I think thats natural, just like everybody on every team thats competing is looking over their shoulder thinking, are we going to get another bullet in the gun? Thats a natural thing. Itd be foolish to say that nobody cared about it. Of course, they cared about it. I feel like we have a professionalism - and still do - the professionalism in here to forget that didnt happen and forge ahead. Im going to choose to believe that that didnt have an adverse effect on the culture of this clubhouse and what we produced on the field. Im going to choose that. Other people may say differently and you can certainly, as someone on the outside looking in, deduce that it does seem that, if you look at it, around that time we started to tank. I choose not to believe that. Its a combination of a lot of different things. Whether its not playing as fundamentally sound as we did early on; not getting that break that you need in baseball; not pitching as well as were capable, both in the rotation and out of the ‘pen; theres so many different things, not hitting home runs in August. Its those things and not the other for me because those are tangible things. TSN.ca: Part of it, I guess, from your perspective, you could look and say, we fell way behind in Chicago on that Sunday and almost came back and won; (Tuesday) night you were down early, you held them and the offence chipped away and you went to extra innings. Andre Reed Jersey. Even though it would appear it because youre 6-16 in August, youre not giving up in individual games. DICKEY: No, no. Anybody that thinks that is not a true competitor and hasnt experienced that part of it. You would never give up. To your earlier point about the trade deadline and nothing happening there, allow me to give you a brief insight, Im not ever out there thinking on the mound, ‘Crap, we didnt get something done, Im just going to throw in the towel here while Im pitching. That is asinine. Thats why Im saying I refuse to believe it was that. Once you get on the field, all that crap goes away, I mean it does, it melts away. Its you and the game, whoever youve got out there and its about execution, its about pitching well, its about getting big hits, about playing good defence and fundamental baseball regardless of who you have out there or whats been done or hasnt been done or what this persons saying or that persons saying. All of that melts away for me as a professional when I get out there in the dugout. TSN.ca: So wed agree the results in August have not been good enough. Youre not winning. How do you, when you come here every single day, tell yourself as a group or as an individual that were good enough to turn this thing around? DICKEY: Well, you look backwards and you see what we were capable of and you know that if you look around its pretty much the same team outside of Brett Lawrie. Its like anything, when you want the confidence that you can do something a lot of times, you have to look backwards in the rearview mirror and look at what youve already accomplished. I think thats what we know were capable of. Every time I go out to the mound and I dont have a great outing, I look back at all the good outings Ive had and say thats what Im capable of and that helps me push ahead to the next outing and try to get better from that. I think thats how we do it. I think we remember how good we really are and try to get some of that swagger back and some of that confidence back and start attacking guys. Like I said, we still have a good number of games left to at least make it interesting. ADAM LIND TSN.ca: I think a while back, Adam, you saw a light at the end of the tunnel and now its almost September and you could just tack another year on to the calendar and it would be like other years. LIND: The difference between other years and this year is we believed. I think everyone believed, whereas in other years, we just kind of hovered around .500 for the most part. It was just so late in the season. I mean, at the deadline, we were still probably a favourite to make the playoffs and now to see where we ended up is just disheartening. TSN.ca: Does it hurt more because of the hope? LIND: Yeah. Another year older; another year of the same result. I mean, its not over, but we havent played very well in any phase of the game. We need to flip the switch dramatically, starting today, if we want to make the playoffs. TSN.ca: Youre at a point in your career, age-wise, where you probably see as much in the rearview mirror as you do ahead. Does your perspective change? I guess youre really realizing now you cant take these years for granted because each one that doesnt involve a playoff opportunity is another one missed. LIND: Well, theres definitely no more covers of Baseball America in my future or the notes at the bottom of the page. Yeah, it sucks with how the division has turned out being so weak in theory. Its tough. TSN.ca: You were hurt. Edwin was hurt. There was a lot of talk about Adams going to get back, Edwins going to get back, Bretts going to get back and he did, but then he went down again. Was it a little too hopeful to believe that just because you guys would be returning those would be, effectively, acquisitions that would turn things around? LIND: When youre struggling, youre looking for something. The fans, it gives them hope. It gives the team hope. Were kind of the heart of the order, so I guess you can hang your hat on it, but it happens to every team and its a team, so one players not going to change things. I think, what else was there to talk about? It was a way to give the fans hope that the seasons not over and when we get back, start rolling again. I didnt come back in the best situation. I came back for Seattle, which was Iwakuma and some good pitching, and with a few days off and National League series I didnt play for another week, so I played like four games and had a week off again and here I am. TSN.ca: Do you think this team, despite how its gone in the last month, month and a half, is this team still really close? LIND: To making the playoffs? TSN.ca: Not this year but are you a player or two away? LIND: If you look at our, I dont know where I saw it, were last in hitting and 27th in pitching, so Id say were more than a couple of pieces away. TSN.ca: But you werent earlier in the year. After May, I mean May was crazy but even into the All-Star Break you guys were top five, top seven in most of the important offensive categories and there was a suggestion at that point that what youd produced was pretty sustainable because three months is not really a mistake. But now its totally fallen off the horse so how do you assess it? LIND: Well, I mean me and Eddie were gone, Bretts gone, Nolan Reimolds gone. The things that we were hoping would do well and he missed three weeks or whatever it was. You know, things just havent worked out. Cheap Jerseys China NFL Jerseys China NFL Jerseys Wholesale Discount Basketball Jerseys Cheap NHL Jerseys Authentic Cheap Baseball Jerseys Free Shipping Cheapest College Jerseys Sale Cheap Football Jerseys China Nike NFL Jerseys Canada Wholesale NHL Jerseys From China MLB Jerseys Outlet Canada Wholesale NBA Jerseys Canada Store Cheap Soccer Jerseys China Cheap Authentic Jerseys Canada ' ' '