Raptors win an ugly one in New Orleans
NBA: Valanciunas steps up to ground Pelicans
NEW ORLEANS — It wasn’t a thing of beauty, but it was a win and a brand of basketball fans Toronto fans might want to get used to for the next little while.
Winning without your star isn’t easy and, more often than not, downright ugly when it does happen.
Wednesday night was one of those nights as the Raptors got out of town with a 94-87 win.
Without Kyle Lowry doing his thing, the host New Orleans Pelicans locked in on DeMar DeRozan and dared anyone else to beat them.
For the longest time, it was touch and go whether the Raptors would even get out of New Orleans with a win against a team they had beaten 11 of the past 14 times.
Of course, that was before DeMarcus Cousins arrived in the Crescent City, and while he carried the load of the twin towers for most of the night by himself, without him the Pelicans wouldn’t have been in the game.
But Cousins alone wasn’t enough, even with the stellar job the Pelicans did on DeRozan, who finished with just 14 points on 5-of-15 shooting.
DeRozan did flash some rather impressive passing ability, finishing with a team high six assists as he took advantage of the Pelicans overloading against him.
That meant the scoring had to come from somewhere else. Jonas Valanciunas stepped up with a game high 25 points on 9-of-13 shooting and 11 trips to the free throw line, where he converted seven. He also led the team with 13 rebounds.
All told, four different Raptors finished in double digits in scoring, with Serge Ibaka and Cory Joseph getting in with 12 and 11 points, respectively. But the Raptors got contributions from all corners. Patrick Patterson hit a big three in the final four minutes at a time when the Raptors desperately needed a score.
Fred VanVleet only got in for four minutes, but he provided a spark in that four minutes.
But if there’s a concern, it was how effective the Pelicans were in taking DeRozan out of his game. For the second game in a row, a Raptors opponent flat out refused to let him get in a rhythm and even with the win, that has to be a concern back in Toronto.
That it came after two days of trying to address this very issue during a mini-training camp in Miami makes it that much more troubling.
DeRozan got it going a little bit in the second half, but was almost a complete non-factor in the first half.
Keeping things close through that first half was some determined inside work from Valanciunas, who was matched up for much of the night with Cousins, the two bigs going at each other, holding little back. Cousins had a slight 17-15 edge over Valanciunas in the points department, both of them hauling down four rebounds.
With DeMarre Carroll out with a sprained left ankle, the Raptors went with P.J. Tucker as the starting small forward.
That meant the Raptors bench was once again a shadow of its former self, with just Patterson and Norman Powell around from the original second unit. Even down men, that second group held its own in the first, down just 14-12 to the Pelicans subs.
The Raps caught a bit of a break in the first half when Anthony Davis had to leave the game with a bruised right wrist.