Hoops Addict had the chance to chat with Raymond Felton about his shooting percentages increasing this season, the groove he found himself in this month and Charlotte’s struggles on the road.

Here’s the audio clip of my chat with Amir Johnson about his mini-slump over the past two games and the strong play of the team to end this month.

While doing some research for Toronto’s game against Charlotte I began wondering if Toronto will throw out a couple different defensive looks at the Bobcats in an attempt to get some easy buckets in transition while preventing Charlotte from setting up their stingy defense. However, after chatting with Raptors head coach Jay Triano it became clear he isn’t thinking along the same lines.

When you cover a team like I do the Wizards, and you hear a coach rip his team the way Saunders did, you absolutely cannot wait to get to the locker room to hear what the players have to say in response. But much to my surprise, when I went to the locker room, none of the players seemed to disagree with the coach’s observations about their defensive effort.

I recently had the chance to chat with Hornets rookie point guard Darren Collison about his opportunity to start eight games while Chris Paul was injured, how his mindset changes when he comes off the bench, his welcome to the NBA moment and what he’s learning from battling Chris Paul every day in practice.

Toronto’s current starting line-up of Jarrett Jack, DeMar DeRozan, Hedo Turkoglu, Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani have won four-straight games are now an impressive 6-3 over their past nine games.

After a big win this afternoon, Antoine Wright talked with me about what it was like to get some extended minutes this afternoon, how tough it is to guard Rip Hamilton and the teams recent four-game winning streak.

It’s not unusual to see Flip Saunders call for a substitution off the bench only to change his mind and send that player back to bench. So when Saunders called for Blatche, Young, Boykins, Oberto, and McGuire to check into the game I assumed this may be one of those instances.

It wasn’t.

No player hopes for a teammate to get injured, but with Jose Calderon out of action with an injury, third-string point guard Marcus Banks is making the most of his chance to get some burn.

I’ve interviewed Jermaine O’Neal, Jalen Rose, Grant Hill, Patrick Ewing, and even participated in a conference call with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Surely I shouldn’t harbor nervousness for an interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, right?