Raps keep finding a way to get it done

Finding a way to win. Even the best basketball teams have nights where it just doesn’t seem like they have a shot from the tip. They are sluggish. Slow to the ball. Unfocused. Whatever. It happens on occasion over 82 games even to the best teams.

The range of reasons for nights like these are both large and actually irrelevant. Basically it happens.

But when it does, the good teams find a way to get the job done even in those circumstances

The Toronto Raptors had one of those nights Thursday in Philadelphia and somehow, some way came out with a win.

Coming out of the half things looked bleak. Other than a three-point shooting surge from De Mar DeRozan, the Raptors’ collective shot was off and so was their energy. They had the builtin reasons with a back-to-back, a late arrival in Philly after a game the night before in Charlotte, but those excuses don’t wash anymore with this team.

D wane Casey went into the room at halftime and stated the obvious. The young Si xe rs were playing harder, they were playing faster and they were being more physical. He pointed out that on more than one occasion the Sixers had given up 20-point leads so even with the Raptors down by 13 on their way to an eventual 22-point deficit things weren’t over.

But Casey’s biggest impact of the night came in that third quarter when he found the energy needed to turn the game around in the not so surprising forms of Pascal Siakam and Delon Wright.

Energy is Siakam’s calling card, it’s what he brings on a nightly basis. Wright has been off the court the better part of the last month recuperating from a shoulder injury. Casey didn’t have to call his name twice.

“I’ve been sitting for a month and he called me in,” Wright said. “I was just happy he called for me.”

Siakam did his thing running the floor with that wild abandon getting his hands in passing lanes and creating turnovers and most importantly getting stops with his activity underneath his own basket where the Sixers appeared have taken up permanent residency.