Raptors focus on fixing easy mistakes
Three days in Atlanta, where the temperatures will be considerably warmer than Toronto, is enticing, but the Toronto Raptors have basketball plans for their extended stay in Georgia.
Four close losses in the past seven games have coaches and players alike sounding off about a need to get back in the gym.
This time of year, teams typically cut back on practice time, saving energy for games. But take it from Dwane Casey — if that’s not enough, take it from DeMar DeRozan, too — this team needs time to work out some kinks.
Fortunately, the schedule is agreeable to this need before the team takes on the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday.
“We have a lot of cleaning up to do,” Casey said following Saturday’s 115-109 loss to a solid Minnesota Timberwolves club that was without its best player, Jimmy Butler, but still bettered the Raps.
Casey’s team was manhandled on the offensive boards and spent the rest of the night watching the Wolves shoot free throws.
“We’ll get our rest Sunday and then get in to practise Monday and Tuesday,” Casey said. “We got to get back to the drawing board. There’s a lot of little things: our timing, our spacing, our ball movement — on-time, on-target passes, just the little things that have gotten sloppy.
“We are professionals and we talk about it and do it in shootarounds,” he added. “Shootarounds are kind of our practices now. We have to make sure about our attention to detail. It’s the little things. It’s not anything that we can’t do or haven’t done. We’re just a step late, you know, or a step slow coming out for a pick and roll in our open offence.”
DeRozan echoed his coach’s thoughts a few minutes after Casey addressed reporters.
“It’s always good to regroup, understand the mistakes that you made, especially after a backto-back, playing against two great teams and understanding what we could be better at, what we can clean up on,” DeRozan aid. “It’s always good to look at your mistakes, have a couple of days to practise, settle down, mentally just regroup. It should be good for us.”
Neither DeRozan nor Casey sounded panicked about the current situation. They just see a need to revisit some areas that have slipped a little in the past month.
“Yeah, just small things,” DeRozan said. “It’s always beneficial when you’re able to look at your mistakes and see how they’re coming about and see how they affect the game, how you can lose a game like tonight. It’s always good to look at that and clean up things.”
DeRozan said he noticed the slippage most at the worst possible time, late in Saturday’s loss to Minnesota.
“Our rhythm was kind of off trying to execute late-game situations,” DeRozan said.
“Like I said, it’s always good to look at those things, look at it, correct, see what other options we have.”