The ever-popular basketball triumvirate featuring The Fan 590′s Zack Cooper, The Score’s Leigh Ellis and HOOPSADDICT.com‘s Ryan McNeill assembles to talk about the Raptors’ issues this season, the NBA in general, who the best shot-blocking small forward in the NBA is right now, and filling out the All-Star reserves.

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It’s exactly this kind of contradiction that is causing Raptors’ fans to yank out their hair this season while watching DeRozan play.

For his coach, Dwane Casey, it’s just a case of a young player falling in love with the outside shot and not attacking the rim and using his athleticism as often as he should.

“I was looking at his three-point shooting and I think he shot 52 games last year over 82 games and this year he has shot 44 already,” Casey told the media Friday evening. “My thing is he needs to continue to attack. He needs to continue to try to get to the rim and body hunt once he gets there so that he can get to the free throw line. Last year he averaged around four free throws a game and he’s right at that mark again this year. But he needs to get there more.”

The recent problem facing DeRozan is even though he has been attacking the rim with reckless abandon, refs have been slow to give him the benefit of the doubt and send him to the free throw line.

“He just needs to keep doing it,” Cased told me. “He’s eventually going to get the respect of the officials. He’s got to create contact and get in there and body hunt. He can’t avoid contact.”

The worst thing DeRozan can do right now is to sulk or fade into into the background on offense. Instead, he needs to barrel into the lane and dare defenders to get in his way and attempt to change his shot.

Sure, that is tougher with Andrea Bargnani out of action, but as Casey told the media before the game against Washington, when DeRozan’s outside shot is falling like it did in the recent win against Utah, it opens up enough space in the the lane for a “Mack truck to drive through.”

The key for DeRozan is to realize he will continue to get his touches even when his shot isn’t fall.

“I’m sure it’s human instinct if you’re not shooting the ball well to lose a little confidence,” Casey explained to the media. “But he’s got the most touches on the team besides Andrea (Bargnani). We run a lot of our plays – he’s second to Andrea – go to him. We’re going to keep feeding him and try to get his confidence back by putting the ball in his hands. This (slump) won’t be for a lack of touches or not having plays run for him.”

After his third straight “off” game, DeRozan was quick to admit to the media that he can’t dwell on the negatives.

“I just can’t think about it too much,” DeRozan reassured the media gathered around his locker. “I look at a lot of other players in the league who are great shooters and they’re struggling, too. I don’t know what has caused it. You can blame it on the lockout or whatever it is. It just is what it is right now. My shot is eventually going to fall and when it does a lot of things are going to change.”

For DeRozan, the key to getting out of the current shooting slump that he is mired in is staying positive and blocking out all the negative talk from fans and members of the media.

“You’ve just got to stay positive,” DeRozan told the media while chucking. “Everybody wants to criticize me and I don’t worry about it. You just can’t think about it too much and you have to go out there and play your game.”

For DeRozan, something that helps is having his head coach firmly in his corner whether he’s struggling or carrying the scoring load.

“It helps a lot,” DeRozan mentioned to me after the win against Washington. “He talks to me all of the time about how I shouldn’t feed into what people are saying or what the media may say. All of that hoopla. He reminds me that I just need to keep working and it’s going to come. Everybody has their ups and downs in this league. Everybody has had their struggles and it is just something you have to work hard to overcome. When I overcome it, it will be something I can look back on and laugh about.”

While his recent shooting struggles are no laughing matter, his approach to the situation is right on the mark. Why stress over a shooting slump that will eventually pass? It’s not like the past season and a half were mirages that can’t be duplicated and built upon. With a little more aggression attacking the rim it’s easy to see how this slump will end sooner rather than later.

Once DeRozan is able to escape from this mid-season shooting slump there’s no doubt this is something he will have learned from and be able to laugh about.

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The problem is that Davis’ natural position, power forward, is being occupied by Toronto’s best player in Andrea Bargnani.

According to Casey, the creative solution to that problem is to play Bargnani some of his minutes at small forward.

“It’s going to be a challenge for him to get minutes when (Bargnani) comes back,” Casey admitted to me. “He’s going to have to play some five for us. There’s also a possibility that Andrea (Bargnani) can play some three. That is something we will have to look to as far as an unconventional offensive set. There are some three’s in the NBA he can guard. Not a lot, but there are some. That would be an out of the box kind of situation.”

Now, this isn’t set in stone, but the possibility raises an interesting situation where Toronto’s lack of rebounding could be offset by having three big men on the court at the same time.

Regardless if this actually happens or not once Bargnani is healthy, it was an interesting glimpse into Casey’s thought process as he tries to secure additional minutes for Davis this season.

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Larry Drew chatted with the media this week about his team rallying after the loss of Al Horford, the improvement of Jeff Teague this season, the strong play of Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams becoming one of the top three-point shooters in the NBA this season and a host of other topics.

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Josh Smith chatted with HOOPSADDICT.com about how the team has been able to regroup after the loss of Al Horford due to an injury, not being worried about his own stats and how Marvin Williams’ outside shooting has open up the offense for the entire team.

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When news got out a couple weeks back that the Atlanta Hawks would be without All-Star big man Al Horford for the remainder of the season due to an injury, countless members of the media and fans thought that would be the end of their season.

Somebody forgot to give the Hawks this message as they are 9-2 in their past 11 games and they find themselves half a game back of the Miami Heat in the Southeast Division.

One of the big reasons the team has been able to maintain their momentum is due to lots of different players stepping up.

Joe Johnson has scored 20 or more points in eight of his last ten games while chipping in 5.0 rebounds and 4.1 assists during that stretch.

One of the surprises of the season for the team, Jeff Teague, is second in the NBA in steals while doubling his scoring from last season. He is averaging 13.0 points per game (up from 5.2 last season) and 5.2 dimes (up from 2.0 last season).

“He’s been more aggressive in his approach to the game,” Larry Drew raved to HOOPSADDICT.com about Teague. “Now he’s attacking defenses. I’ve told him this 100 times, but when he’s not aggressive and he’s passive out there it affects the entire offense. But when he’s in the Jeff Teague mode where he’s really attacking and really getting into the paint and forcing opposing defenses to collapse and push the ball in transition, he just makes us more effective. It opens up shots for everybody else on the court with him because teams have to collapse on him.”

One of the players to benefit from teams collapsing on Teague or focusing on Johnson is Marvin Williams. He is currently third in the NBA in three-point field goal percentage and had made 12 of his last 17 three-pointers.

That dead-eye perimeter shooting has helped Williams average 10.6 points per game while opening up spacing for his teammates.

“It helps out a lot,” Johnson told me .”It keeps the defenses honest and it keeps the floor spaced out. With me and Jeff (Teague) getting into the teeth of the defense we’re able to kick it out to him for wide open jump shots. Those guys have all day to shoot and it’s been working out great for them.”

But, more than just those individual accomplishments, the team has gelled as a team.

“This is just a situation where when one of your soldiers goes down everybody has to pick it up and everybody has done,” Drew told me. “In particular, Joe (Johnson) and Josh (Smith) have really been playing at a high level for us. Jeff Teague has really stepped his game up as well and we’ve been given a lot of help from our bench.”

This sentiment was echoed by Josh Smith; a player who on nights has awed and inspired.

“I think guys are really stepping up and we’re not making any excuses about his absence,” Smith told HOOPSADDICT.com. “I think we’re playing great team basketball by sharing the basketball on the offensive end and we’re really helping each other out on the defensive end. It’s just been a great collective effort.”

Sure, the loss of Horford hurts this team, but for Drew, it’s just another chance for him to leave his imprint on this team and help to move the players closer to playing the kind of basketball he envisioned when he became the head coach.

“One of the things I wanted to do in taking over this team was take away some of the predictability,” Drew explained. “Everybody knew with the ball in Joe (Johnson) hands he was our main guy. It resulted in our offense getting a little stagnant at times. We still do, but for the most part what we do is try to get a bit more organization and motion out of what we do which allows us to distribute the ball.

“Right now I think we’re fourth in the league in assists. Guys are playing together. Guys are sharing the ball. Guys are feeling good about what we’re doing offensively. This just makes us a lot tougher to defend because you don’t know where the shots going to come from.”