Raptors rebound from big loss
Toronto gets revenge on Washington with better all-around effort from entire lineup
Signature wins are in the eye of the beholder, but few will argue there have been more timely wins than the one the Toronto Raptors orchestrated Friday night.
Coming off as bad a loss as the Raptors have had this season, Toronto turned the tables on the Wizards on Washington’s home court, responding to that confidence-shattering loss a couple of nights earlier with a redemption win they needed in the worst way.
Raptors head coach Dwane Casey found nine guys he could roll with and he did so exclusively in a 114-106 win, getting 32 points from DeMar DeRozan — including a dagger threepointer with 20 seconds remaining — and exactly the kind of focus and determination from every other player he sent out that he didn’t get two nights earlier.
The win gives Toronto the tiebreaker in the event these two teams finish with the same record at the end of the year, but more importantly gets that sour taste from a bad loss to these same Wizards Wednesday night out of their mouths.
It also got the Raptors back on even footing with the Wizards for third place in the Eastern Conference.
What they also may have finally discovered — or perhaps settled on is a better way to put it — is a secondary source of offence with Kyle Lowry sidelined by injury.
Serge Ibaka has been handling that job behind DeRozan, but he’s also being asked to anchor the defence.
On Friday night, Norman Powell — the guy everyone thought would logically step into that role with first Terrence Ross gone and then Lowry down — had his coming-out game of the season, finishing with 21 points, 14 of them in the fourth quarter with the Wizards charging hard.
But this was a full team effort. You could go up and down the lineup and find positive contributions from every corner of the Raptors lineup.
Casey began the day with a definite goal in mind for his team.
“Attention to detail has to be there but most of all the physicality and force, the speed that we play with, has to be there,” Casey said. “The other night ( Wednesday) I thought we were in third gear compared to where we were the previous games. When we go somewhere we have to go there with speed, athleticism and force to get to that position. That helps a lot in anything you do.”
His players heeded that advice from the opening tip.
It didn’t come easily. This Wizards team, especially at home, has a swagger that does not let them get pushed around.
They have scoring in John Wall and Bradley Beal and support offence in Otto Porter and Markieff Morris — and more than enough defence to give any opponent fits. What they didn’t have, but do now, is a bench led by trade deadline pickup Bojan Bogdanovic and, more recently, the free agent signing of Brandon Jennings.
If this was a playoff preview, fans in both cities are in for a treat. There is enough animosity and familiarity between these clubs to make things very interesting.
The Washington fan base seems to realize this, turning out 20,356 strong Friday for just the fifth sellout of the year, and they were not cheated.
Unlike Wednesday’s win by the Wizards in Toronto, this was a game from start to finish.
The Raptors’ second-unit issues of a game earlier were not a problem this time around.
A small tweak that saw Cory Joseph, playing in place of the injured Lowry, come out with about four minutes left in the quarter and return just before it ended, allowed him to reunite with that second unit for the beginning of the second quarter.
The Raps got roasted in that second quarter in Toronto against these same Wizards on Wednesday, giving up a 26-1 run at one point as the Wizards rolled to 38 points in that quarter alone.
Bogdanovic, who was a big part of that second quarter Wednesday, did not score from the field in nine minutes in the first half.
The other big adjustment from Wednesday to Friday’s game was a more pronounced effort to move the basketball.
The Raptors had Washington’s defence moving all night, chasing the ball from one side of the court to the other and back, leading to open lanes and open looks.
At one point in the second quarter, it looked like the Raptors might run away with this one as they extended their lead to 19 points. But the Wizards weren’t going to go down that easily.
They got that lead down all the way to six before Toronto pushed it back up to nine to end the half.
They did it primarily from behind the arc, with Beal and Porter doing the damage.
As it turned out, that was just the beginning of the comeback, but one that would eventually fall just short.