No time to rest as Raptors hit Miami
We’re sure the sunscreen and the board shorts were packed, but the dress of the day for the Raptors as they spend the next few days in Miami was far more yellow hard hat than anything tropical.
That may not have been the case when the team made its plans to spend these three days between road games in this southern climate, but circumstances have changed of late, hence the change in tone from management right on down to the players themselves.
“Um, we need it. It’s critical,” DeMar DeRozan said Sunday following a second bad loss in the past four days. “These days — it comes at a critical point that we need it and we can take advantage of it offensively and defensively.”
Through some fault of their own and some not, the Raptors find themselves in a rather unsettled state as they arrive in Miami, where they have scheduled practices Monday and Tuesday before continuing on to New Orleans where this road trip resumes.
The circumstances that have put them in this state are not even stable. With each passing day, something else seems to occur to undermine that goal.
Saturday in Milwaukee, it was a third-quarter incident in which DeMarre Carroll went up for a rebound and either got shoved or just came down on an opponent’s foot, twisting his ankle. He had to be helped to the locker-room and did not return.
He joins an injured list that already includes starting point guard Kyle Lowry, who had wrist surgery last Tuesday and is out for at least the next month.
Throw in the team trying to acclimate two new contributors in Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker and you see the heightened importance of this actually being a working break rather than relaxation.
“We have to use these next few days to make sure we get our work in to get our timing down, to get mainly our offensive timing and understanding what we’re trying to do under control, especially with our new guys,” head coach Dwane Casey said.