Raptors experience some malice at the Palace,
AUBURN HILLS, MICH.— They advanced, menacing and threatening and together, words spewing out and threats being made and fingers being pointed.
The retreating Detroit Pistons — and somewhere the Bad Boys had to be feeling chagrined at that point — looked at the group and had to be thinking, like the rest of the NBA might be today: “Who are these Toronto Raptors?”
It really was a nothing contretemps, a cheap elbow on James Johnson by frustrated Pistons centre Andre Drummond, but it precipitated a little shoving and pushing and jawing that was entirely a show of force by the supremely confident Raptors.
“Our team, we’re built for that,” Johnson said of the mild incident in the fourth quarter of yet another Toronto win, this one 110-100 over the Pistons here on Friday. “We’ve been brothers since the first day of preseason. We go hard for each other. I do that for anyone of them, just like you seen Chuck (Hayes), Pat (Patterson) and GV (Greivis Vasquez) do that for me. We’re all a group, we’re all brothers, we all love each other and that’s the big reason for our success.”
Minutes earlier, Johnson had thrown down a wicked dunk over Drummond — “that was nasty, right? I cocked that joint back and banged on him,” Johnson said — that was as vicious as it was emphatic.
It had to gall Drummond no end, and when Johnson was going by him a couple of possessions later, the Pistons’ big man floored the Raptor with an elbow.
“On a play like that it could go either way, it was a hard foul,” Drummond said. “He got a dunk the play before and he was feeling good so I was just trying to protect the paint. That’s really it and it turned out to be a hard foul. Emotions were high during the game. It happens, it’s basketball. There were no hard feelings. I have nothing against him. I shook his hand after the game and everything so it’s all part of the game.”
It immediately started a surge of Raptors towards the Pistons, who basically took a step back as the scrum developed.
“As a team, we’re a band of brothers,” said Kyle Lowry. “You pick on one, you’ve got to pick on us all.”
It wasn’t like the incident was a turning point, though, coming with Toronto up 17 points and less than seven minutes remaining. The Raptors had once again used a dominant third quarter to pull away from an over-matched opponent.
Veteran Raptor Amir Johnson, meanwhile, suited up in his 400th game for Toronto.
And Jonas Valanciunas, who seems to relish major challenges, had 11 of his 17 points in the third quarter as Toronto went from tied at the half to up 11 going into the fourth quarter.
“We have to understand you get a reset,” said Lowry, who had 15 points and seven assists.
“You get a chance to kind of start the game over and put your effect on the game big-time. We’re just coming out and coach is just really making our adjustments at half-time and making our changes and we’ve been going from there.”
The third quarter did have one of the scarier moments of the season, though.
Landry Fields, who has done such an admirable job filling in for injured starter DeMar DeRozan, suffered an eight-stitch cut to his head after a terrifying fall. However, he passed the NBA’s concussion protocol at the arena and looked okay after the game, woozy but okay.
“It scared me, especially when I saw the blood gushing out,” said Raptors coach Dwane Casey. “It scared me, but he’s fine.” It cast a momentary pall on what was a de facto home game for the Raptors, who were cheered on by a vociferous group of travelers that had to number in the thousands.
And with the crowd generously announced at 16,274, it was as much a Toronto home game as a road affair. “It’s awesome,” said Lowry. “It gives us the energy to say, ‘Look, we can’t let our fans down, we’ve got to give them a reason to cheer.’ ”