Raptors bounce Nets to stay on roll
Toronto proves dominant in last home game of 2016 as team prepares for tough road trip
TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors ushered out the home part of the schedule for the calendar year in much the way they ushered in the season — with a convincing win.
That four wins in the past five games, and facing a trap portion of the schedule if ever there was one with games against Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando and Brooklyn, only two of them on the road. The only loss came against Atlanta, a talented team but one that had been under performing for much of the past month.
Now it gets serious again as the Raptors head out on the road for games over the next two weeks in Salt Lake City, Portland, Oakland (Golden State), Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Antonio.
Credit the Raptors for not getting caught up in playing down to their competition and taking care of business.
That was a distinct possibility last night with the Brooklyn Nets in town without star centre Brook Lopez and a lineup rather light on NBA experience besides 10-year vet Luis Scola and point guard Jeremy Lin.
The Nets kept it close for a quarter, but the Raptors began to pull away in the second and were never seriously threatened the rest of the way in a 116-104 win.
It was a typical take-care-of-business night for a good NBA side (the Raptors) taking on one that is in the infancy stages of a rebuild (the Nets). The Raptors did what they had to do.
Raptors head coach Dwane Casey wisely took the opportunity to get Patrick Patterson off his feet and rested the versatile power forward. Patterson played in Orlando but could be seen getting work done on his left thigh throughout the game. By taking Tuesday off, Patterson’s body will get four full days to heal before he goes back into battle.
Even without one of their best defenders and a three-point threat, the Raptors felt no threat from the Nets.
Rondae-Hollis Jefferson came off the bench to give the Nets 19 points before fouling out with over six minutes to go in the game but other than that, the Nets were hard pressed to find another scoring threat.
Toronto spread the scoring around led by Kyle Lowry with 23 points, a season high 21 for Norm Powell, 17 for DeMarre Carroll and 15 for DeMar DeRozan, who once again sat out the fourth quarter.
The good news for the Raptors is they have been able to use this portion of the schedule to get some of their high usage players’ minutes down a bit.
In addition to keeping DeRozan to under 30 for the game, Lowry’s night was limited to 34 minutes while also getting Patterson a full break.
The defensive concerns from a Raptors standpoint have lessened a little as well over the past week or so. Casey liked what he saw in Orlando for three quarters and couldn’t have been too unhappy with his club holding Brooklyn under 40 per cent shooting for the night.
“Defensively we had a good game against Orlando but we have to build habits,” said Casey. “That is one game. We can’t be up and down, up and down defensively. We have to make sure we create those defensive habits and maintain them over a longer stretch of time.”
The game had one first for the Raptors organization when Bruno Caboclo and Fred VanVleet checked in to the delight of the sellout crowd.
The two Raptors are the first in team history to play both a D-League game and appear in an NBA game in the same day. Both played 31 minutes in the 905s loss Tuesday morning before checking in with 2:17 to go in the win over the Nets.