All is not lost for Raptors
Despite setback in Boston, team took step forward
• Isaiah Thomas aside, the Toronto Raptors’ pit stop in Boston wasn’t a complete disaster.
Obviously, they didn’t get the win they came looking for and that abysmal display of free throw shooting was truly forgettable. The loss did move the Celtics a game and a half clear of Toronto for second in the Eastern Conference, but there was progress.
Dwane Casey is and always will be the first to sound the alarm bells when things are going off the rails.
The Raptors head coach knows what a team ready and willing to compete looks like and based on his comments he saw Wednesday night in Boston he felt he got it ... for the most part.
His post-game breakdown was peppered with words l i ke “fi ght” and “scrap.” Casey, in case you haven’t noticed of late, is hyper-alert to any defensive slippage and while there was some letdown late in Wednesday’s game, that had as much to do with Isaiah Thomas as anything else.
Defensively the communication was better, although difficult in the fourth when TD Garden was in full roar and the entire arena seemed to be feeding off Thomas’ expected fourth quarter heroics.
The wee Celtics guard did not disappoint with 19 in the frame and 44 for the night.
Regardless, we’ve seen Casey upset after losses and that was not the case Wednesday night.
“I thought our guys battled, I loved the fight, scrap,” he said. “We have to continue that, get everybody healthy, guys off the minutes restrictions and then we’ll go to war.”
The minutes restrictions would appear to apply to Patrick Patterson, Casey’s glue defender who makes everything about the Raptors defence just seem to mesh.
Patterson was held to just over 20 minutes, not near what Casey likely wanted out of his defensive linchpin, but probably necessary given the team was playing on back-toback nights and Patterson is still rounding into form after a layoff.
The healthy part applies to both Patterson and DeMarre Carroll, whose damaged middle finger on his shooting hand has been wreaking havoc on his ability to knock down shots.
Carroll did hit on two of his six three-point attempts, but those six points were the total of his offensive contribution. Carroll’s role is first and foremost defensive, but his ability to knock down the three forces defences to spread out. When he’s not hitting, teams can let him fire away and focus their attention elsewhere.
Perhaps the biggest lesson from last night’s game — and this is one that is eminently correctable — were the early and often unnecessary fouls that put the Raptors in a jam.
The rotation was out of whack from the get- go with first Valanciunas and then Lucas Nogueira requiring time on the bench after some early whistles went against them.
Then both Cory Joseph and most importantly Norm Powell started to pile up the fouls.
Powell was enjoying a strong game through the first half — besides some early turnovers — and was forcing the Celtics to pay almost as much attention to him as they were to Kyle Lowry.
But when he picked up his fourth foul early in the third quarter, it was bench time for Powell and all the Celtics’ defensive focus seemed to land on Lowry.
“Those are things you’ve got to learn to do on a back to back, smart plays, smart fouls, don’t get the cheap ones,” Casey said. “We had so many cheap ones with our big guys early, ticky-tack fouls that take our bigs out of the game and get (them out) of their rhythm.”
But even without DeMar DeRozan ( sore ankle) and on the back end of a backto-back, they were still right there.
It wasn’t great and it probably didn’t feel like it, but this was a step forward.