Ladies and gents, welcome to The Other Side, a less-than-conventional look at the Raptors, the NBA, and occasionally life in general. Let's dive in.

In like a lion, out like a lamb. The Raptors went into this season on a flurry of trades, and they weren't the only ones. Seems only fitting, then, that deadline day should come and go with Fred Jones for Juan Dixon being the biggest deal. I can't remember a quieter deadline day since I've been watching the league. This trade can only be good for the Raptors: Fred Jones was doing nothing, and Juan Dixon costs less. Even if he does nothing too, we've saved money and cut a year off the books.

Speaking of Dixon, he's been making all the right noises about defense. Of course, we've heard that noise before. As I mentioned on www.altraps.com, I give it 3 games before that platitude evaporates, and defense becomes that minor inconvenience between shot opportunities. There is a contagion on this team, that seems to affect even the good defenders like Parker and Mo Pete. It saps their will to defend and replaces it with a shot-happy persona. Hopefully, with those two, Garbajosa and now Dixon, all having made noises about defense, we can reverse the trend. Me? Not holding my breath.

That sound you heard last night was the Raptors crashing to earth. We got spanked, soundly, by the best defensive team in the league. Bosh got owned, like he did against Rasheed. Strong, physical big men have always given him trouble: witness our game against Phoenix last year, when Brian Grant forced him into several turnovers in the last few minutes. I don't foresee the same problems against Houston, without Yao. We've done fairly well against them in recent years.

Has everyone forgotten that we still have the draft rights to Roko Ukic? There have been rumblings that his play has declined and his PT lessened, but I remember he was injured last summer, so that could be normal. Plus, PT in Europe is less anyway, and he's behind Juan Carlos Navarro, also known as the second-best player on the Spanish team that won the Worlds. All reports suggest that he's not in the right team to showcase his talents, and both Colangelo and Gherardini are saying he needs to play somewhere else. Maybe bring him over in the summer and put him in the D-League? He's a better shooter than either of our current PGs, but a touch undersized to play the 2. He's a hell of a passer though.

Random thought: if Ukic does come over, we'll have players from 7 different countries. Why not use the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army as a theme?

At the start of this season, I started driving a very unpopular bandwagon: the Trade Bosh bandwagon. I was singularly unimpressed by his performances down the stretch last season, and by his lackluster team leadership. I figured that trading him then, when his value was likely to be at its highest, would yield us some very nice pieces, letting us build around Charlie V and whoever we ended up drafting. Given that this team would be VERY young, we'd be high in the Greg Oden/Joakim Noah sweepstakes too. Boy am I ever giving up on THAT bandwagon.

One thing I will not give up on is my boy Carl English. Dude can flat out shoot, he's not bad on the ball, and he gives everything on every play. He might be a one-trick pony, but he's very very good at his one trick, and people like Steve Kerr made a very healthy living off that one trick. English has been playing VERY well for Team Canada, to the tune of 34 points against Germany, for example. Surely this warrants a spot at the end of someone's bench?

Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Gimme a break. Couple years back, everyone and his dog was doing a marriage show. Now, it's intelligence shows. At least they require a discernible skill, but who in their right mind would risk being found dumber than a 5th grader?

That's pretty much it for round 1, folks. I'll be back next week, same Raptor time, same Raptor channel. If you've got anything you want covered/explained/debated, email me at chrislansdell@altraps.com .