Welcome aboard!

IMO, Nelson and Calderon are both solid PGs; although, personally, I prefer Jose over Jameer.

Both are plenty good enough to with on a consistent basis.

FWIW … I am someone who thinks Jose Calderon is a very good PG.

Although Nelson’s individual scoring stats may well have been better than Calderon’s in some of those games … I would nevertheless contend that he did not have a superior game overall.

A loss to the Magic in this spot, if the Raptors are in fact sitting at 0-2, will be a ominous sign.

This is precisely the sort of early season toss-up game that a team striving for a #4 slot in the EC needs to place in the W column, to get the ball rolling downhill … if it wants to be taken seriously down the road.

While others are expecting easier victims to appear later on the schedule I, for one, think that there are going to be a gaggle of very tough opponents in the East this season against whom no game can be pencilled in at this point as a certain W.

An astute catch on your part, in light of the discussion taking place in the other thread, re: Mo vs Jose.

IMO, Mo’s quickness at the PG position tends to balance out the fact that overall Jose might be a better basketball player.

Jameer, on the other hand, has no such decided advantage in terms of sheer quickness vs Calderon.

Since Jose is a bigger player he can frequently seem to others to be “less quick” than Jameer, and vice versa; although, neither of these perceptions is really accurate, in my book. Without a quickness advantage over Calderon then the fact that Nelson might just be a touch below him on the overall ability scale creates an individual edge for Jose, in this type of 1-v-1 evaluation scenario.

Those with a sincere interest might find value in going back to the individual player ratings, by position, which I published earlier to cross-reference if I had Calderon rated as being more or less talented than Nelson and/or Mo Williams … which is something that I have yet to do myself.

If I actually rated Williams or Nelson above Calderon, at the time, that would be an interesting fact, at least for me it would be interesting, and I’d re-visit whether or not my impressions, either, here or there would need to be re-evaluated while keeping that in mind.

The Magic look good to come into this game 2-0 (the season opener will be an interesting one), so your scenario has merit. Even without Lewis, I don’t see a loss in this particular game to be a precursor for the season being a disaster. Can’t count losses to the Eastern elite (sans Lewis) as huge blows to this team.