Raptors: Reserves come to the rescue to beat Hawks

Nothing really worked for the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night. They couldn’t make a shot, they lacked intensity, and they played to the level of a weaker opponent. Then the bench happened. In the kind of game that pops up in the dog days of an NBA season, the Raptors needed one shot of fourth-quarter adrenalin from their backup group to beat the Atlanta Hawks 106-90 at the Air Canada Centre.

C.J. Miles made a couple of three-pointers, Jakob Poeltl and Pascal Siakam were energetic defensive presences and Delon Wright and Fred VanVleet took care of backcourt duties to turn a one-point deficit at the end of third quarter into a 10-point lead with four minutes remaining.

That was enough to subdue the Hawks and give the Raptors their fifth straight win, raise their conference-leading record to 46-17 and make them an NBA-best 27-5 at home.

“If you don’t play, hustle’s going to beat talent, “Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “Hard work, physicality is going to beat talent every time if you don’t come out with your high beams on.

“It shouldn’t take us three quarters to figure that out, and it did.”

DeMar DeRozan finished with 25 points to lead Toronto but it was a 14-point game from Miles, a 10-point outing from Wright and Poeltl’s overall presence that turned the game.

The Hawks, who had lost seven of 10 before Tuesday night, remained in the race for the worst record in the league. That might be a wonderful thing for the organization in the long term. But Casey knows what might be best for the front office sometimes has no bearing on what the players do on the court.

“Some of those guys are playing for their careers, their lives,” Casey said. “They’re not thinking about organizational goals.”

Toronto was cantankerous and frustrated all night, with DeRozan and Kyle Lowry picking up first-half technical fouls.

“Frustration,” Casey said. “We can’t get in the mindset that tonight they’re going to come out and let us do our thing.”