Raptors prove they can win short-handed

‘We were switching a lot, which made it easier for us’

PHILADELPHIA •Stylepointsare overrated. Sometimes, like Tuesday night in Brooklyn, it’s just a matter of getting the job done.

With no Kyle Lowry — who unhappily was held out to rest the first game of a back-to-back — the Raptors’ victory over an overmatched Nets squad was not pretty. It wasn’t even cute. But it was a testament to how this team can adapt, and that in itself is an ability the Raptors can stow away for later in the season.

Lowry wasn’t the only absentee. Also missing was Patrick Patterson, the glue that binds this team and makes all the parts work rather seamlessly. Patterson sat out his seventh game in the past nine with a lingering knee injury.

In the first quarter Tuesday, Lucas Nogueira — the seven-footer providing the kind of rim protection the Raptors lost when Orlando opened its wallet and made Bismack Biyombo an offer he couldn’t refuse — took an elbow to his left eye and saw sufficient stars that he was taken to the back room where he underwent the league’s concussion protocol.

It all left Dwane Casey scrambling to find effective five-man units that could hold off a Nets team that is significantly better on their home court than they are on the road. In the end, he found the men who could do just that.

It started in the backcourt where DeMar DeRozan, after a tough first half, put his offensive game in overdrive and wound up leading the team in scoring with 36 points, in rebounds with 11 and in assists with six. It’s not a triple-double, but on this night it meant more to the Raptors than that overhyped stat ever will.

Right there alongside DeRozan was Cory Joseph, the normally quiet — from an offensive perspective — backup to Lowry who, on this night was asked to change his mandate and take on more of a scorer’s role.

Joseph, with Lowry pacing the bench and offering advice like a 10-year coach from the sidelines, more than filled the role, finishing with a career-high 33 points on a career-high 22 field goal attempts.

Joseph would do all this while maintaining his defensive focus, finishing a team-best plus-16 in the game.

Right behind Joseph in that plusminus barometer was rookie Pascal Siakam, a guy who got the Raptors through the early portion of the season starting at power forward until Toronto settled on Nogueira alongside Jonas Valanciunas as the preferred big pairing to start a game.

Siakam, for the second time since those starts dried up mostly because teams were starting to take great advantage of his inexperience, came on in the second half and gave the Raptors the kind of boost they were searching for.

Not to be overlooked were the almost 25 minutes from third point guard Fred VanVleet. All that rookie did was chip in with 10 points, four rebounds and a couple of assists while running the second unit with a calm and steady hand that belies his experience level.

It was the kind of night a fan might look at and wonder, “Why did they make it look so hard against a team that isn’t at their level?” Casey didn’t see it that way at all. “Those guys found a way to win,” Casey said. “Whatever lineups we had, some different lineups, but it comes down to guarding your yard, guarding your defence. We were switching a lot, which made it easier for us in the coverages, offensively we did some simple things where guys could fit it in, it was basketball.”