Raptors put away Hawks with ease
• The Toronto Raptors got everything they needed out of Atlanta over four days, ending with a convincing victory.
The rebuilding Hawks, fresh off a win over the Utah Jazz on Monday night that a number of Raptors players and staffers attended, were no match for the rested Raps who spent the better part of their extended visit here fine- tuning things as they got a rare lengthy break in the middle of the schedule.
Wednesday’s 108- 93 win was nothing if not thorough.
The Raps arrived here determined to work on their rebounding, which had been a real concern over the past few games and their end- of- game play which has been well below what they were a year ago. There was also the issue of re-establishing the ball movement that has been at the root of all the change this season.
The rebounding they got a chance to work on in the game — protecting their own basket to limit second- chance points and extending their own possessions with some good work on the offensive boards.
The ball movement was there too with the Raps assisting on 24 of 38 made buckets.
There was no real chance or need to work on the end- of- game issues because this one was so far out of reach early on most of the entire fourth quarter was basically garbage time.
Fred VanFleet led the Raptors with 19 points, while Jonas Valanciunas scored 16 points, and DeMar DeRozan had 14.
The game wasn’t all together pretty for the Raptors but they did make easy work of the Hawks and did show enough signs that the few days of work here did bear fruit.
“For us, it’s a unifying factor, it’s a positive as far as practice, no distractions,” Casey said of staying on the road and getting some practice time away from home. “We did the same thing last year, I thought it was really productive. It’s good. It gives sort of a training camp mentality for our team, especially when you have an opportunity to have a good, physical, hard practice.”
Individually the Raptors saw a handful of players work out some kinks in their game.
Both Serge I baka and OG Anunoby came into the game struggling from long distance. Anunoby in particular appeared to have hit that rookie wall as far as his offence was concerned.
Anunoby, who needed to see the ball go in the basket in a month in which he was shooting just 15 per cent from distance, saw two of three go down in a nice all- round game that including 10 points, five boards and an assist in 24 minutes.
Ibaka, who wasn’t much better from distance in the month, was shooting 20 per cent from behind the arc and bumped that up with a 2- for- 4 night from three- point land, part of a 12- point, three- rebounds, two-assists night.
“It becomes a mental game, it’s something guys have to work on,” Casey said of those three- point shooting skids. “There’s different things you can do if you don’t feel your shot, but I don’t think you can ever tell a guy don’t shoot the ball, especially when you say you’re going to be a three- point shooting team.
“Again, if the shot clock and the game is telling you to shoot the ball, you’ve got to step into it. It’s going to hit, it’s going to click. Those guys have shot the ball well before and they shot them in practice so that’s what you have to live with when you’re developing a three- point shooting mentality and three-point shooting team.”
In other words don’t expect Casey to ever take the green light away from his players.
As a team they were a solid 1434 from distance which is a huge improvement over what they had been shooting from there for the month.
The Hawks meanwhile are most definitely in a rebuild mode in case that wasn’t already apparent.
Somehow they have 14 wins this season but how that occurred is anyone’s guess.