RAPS SHOW WRIGHT STUFF AGAINST FAST PHILLY TEAM
Finding a way to win. Even the best basketball teams have nights where it just doesn’t seem like they have a shot from the tip. They are sluggish. Slow to the ball. Unfocused. Whatever. It happens from time to time over an 82-game schedule to even the best teams.
There’s any number of reasons why teams go into games not quite ready to play.
But when it happens, the good ones more often than not still find a way to get the job done.
The Toronto Raptors had one of those “off” nights Thursday in Philadelphia and somehow managed to emerge with a 114-109 win.
Coming out of the half, things looked bleak. Other than a three-point shooting surge from DeMar DeRozan, the Raptors’ shot-making was off and their energy level was down.
They had the built-in excuse of having played in Charlotte, N.C. the night before and arriving late in Philadelphia, but those excuses don’t wash with this team anymore.
Coach Dwane Casey went into the room at halftime and stated the obvious. The young Sixers were playing harder, they were playing faster and they were being more physical. He pointed out that on more than one occasion, the Sixers had given up 20-point leads, so even though the Raptors were down by 13 at the half and would eventually fall 22 points behind early in the third, there was still hope.
Casey helped turn the tide when he inserted “energy” guys like Pascal Siakam and Delon Wright into the game.
Energy is Siakam’s calling card. It’s what he brings on a nightly basis. Wright had been off the court the better part of the last month recuperating from a shoulder injury, so he was raring to go. Casey didn’t have to call his name twice.
“I’ve been sitting for a month and he called me in,” Wright said. “I was just happy he called for me.”
Siakam did his thing running the floor with that wild abandon getting his hands in passing lanes and creating turnovers and most importantly getting stops underneath his own basket where the Sixers appeared to have taken up permanent residency.
For the night the Sixers would outpoint the Raptors in points in the paint by a 66-36 margin, but Siakam and his pogo-like skills tempered that finally in the third quarter.
Wright had an even tougher assignment. Wright was given primary defensive responsibility to cover rookie Ben Simmons, a 6-foot-10 point guard who was having his way with the Raptors up to that point.
Wright, a lanky 6-foot-5 with a better than average wing span and an ability to keep opponents in front of him, made life just difficult enough for Simmons that the easy baskets the Sixers had been getting dried up.
“I was just trying to keep him in front of me and play a good team defence and we were all doing that,” Wright said.
DeRozan, the guy who would go on to seal the game down the stretch with 11 fourth-quarter points to finish off a career high 45-point night, suggested Wright might be under-estimating his contribution.
“We didn’t want them getting open shots, no feel-good shots,” DeRozan said, and made the point that was accomplished by Wright and the second-team unit. “Nothing easy going to the basket. We made everything hard.”
Wright wound up with 12 points in just under 28 minutes, but the night was far more about his energy and his defence than anything he did on the offensive end.
“It was real physical,” Wright said. “I think that kind of brings the best out in you, guys hitting you around. You gotta hold your own. It was fun.”