Big effort in the Big Easy

Valanciunas finds his form against Pelicans’ Cousins

A T L A N T A • Mardi Gras had come and gone by the time the Toronto Raptors rolled into New Orleans Tuesday, but one member of the Raptors in particular rolled out of town on a pretty big high.

It’s been a little while since Jonas Valanciunas left a game feeling as good as he did following Wednesday’s win over the host Pelicans.

Valanciunas had one of those games where his defence was on point, his shot was on target and the help was on time. Those almost-perfect games don’t come along often, but when they do, they can give a guy a boost and Valanciunas was in need of a lift.

“He did an excellent job last night on both ends of the floor,” Raptors head coach Dwane Casey praised. “He scored. He played with a lot of zip and pep in his step and that was good to see. I thought he had his head down there for a little bit (coming into the game), but I thought he played with a tremendous amount of confidence against one of the top centres in the league. Again, it’s a marathon not a sprint. He has to continue to do what he did last night on both ends of the floor.”

Just getting the fourth-quarter minutes that had dried up for the Raptors’ starting centre was a change.

Valanciunas had not played a single minute in the fourth in the previous six games as Casey looked elsewhere to shore up his defence in crunch time.

But wherever Casey looked, he found a player who simply doesn’t have Valanciunas’ ability to score.

With JV in the game for 33:32, a full 11 more minutes than he has had in the past nine games, the Raptors got a game-high 25 points out of their centre, not to mention a game-high 13 rebounds. Only this time they got the solid defensive play to go with it.

Casey is and always will be a defence-first coach. You prove yourself on that end and then you get the opportunity to play offence. Valanciunas quite simply wasn’t getting the job done on the defensive end until Wednesday.

“He proved he could do it,” Casey said of Valanciunas’ fourthquarter play. “That is what keeps him out there on the floor or any of our guys, it’s not just Jonas. If a guy has trouble guarding a certain situation, he can’t stay in. It would be the same with Cory Joseph if he was having trouble. It would be the same for any of our guys if they were guarding a premier matchup and is at a disadvantage at their position. But he did an excellent job. It’s a good step in the right direction for his growth and he has been doing a good job of guarding pick-and-roll situations.”