AIR OF CONFIDENCE
Raptors outlast Pelicans for their seventh win in 10 games,
There is one more step for the Raptors to take before they can be considered anything close to a complete thing, a little oddity that no one can fully explain but something that’s keeping them from being whole.
It happened again Friday night at the Air Canada Centre, a sluggish start rescued by a dominant third quarter, the same guys doing entirely different things to start a game and a half.
“It’s a mystery,” coach Dwane Casey said after Toronto pulled away from an injury ravaged New Orleans Pelican team for a100-81win in front of a sellout crowd.
“You can jump up and down before the game, yell, scream whatever it is, some teams just go through that. This team has been a third-quarter team all year, it’s hard to live that way, it makes it hard on yourself, especially against good teams.”
A good team the 1-8 Pelicans are not, not without Anthony Davis and a host of other rotation regulars, and there was the feeling of an inevitable Toronto win most of the night. A 17-point first quarter and a 40-point first half weren’t pretty but the runaway-and-hide second half was predictable.
“The first half we couldn’t get stops,” said Patrick Patterson, who had two three pointers in the fourth quarter and 10 points on the night. “We had a lack of communication, lack of following orders as far as coverages. The start of the third quarter, that first unit did a great job of setting the pace and setting the tone for the entire second half.”
It also helped considerably that DeMarre Carroll came back to the starting lineup after missing a week with a sore heel. He had moments of rust but did contribute 11 points and five rebounds in 33 minutes.
“He gives us so much defensively, cutting, spacing, handling the ball, tough plays, rebounds, steals, so many other intangibles that are hard to replace,” Casey said.
Getting Carroll back almost gave the Raptors their full complement of players — Terrence Ross remains injured — and it gave them far more available bodies than Pelicans.
Davis sat out for a second straight game with a hip bruise for New Orleans, which was also missing Norris Cole, Tyreke Evans, Quincy Pondexter and Kendrick Perkins.
Pelicans backup centre Alexis Ajinca, a native of France, managed to contribute 10 points and nine rebounds despite the tragedy of his homeland on his mind. “Pretty much all of my family is in Paris,” he said. “I just found out everybody is okay now. During the whole game, I was trying to get this out of my mind so I’d be able to stay focused.
“We went through the same thing last year, three guys trying to go into the newspaper and started shooting everybody. Now it was pretty much everywhere. It’s scary. I don’t know what the government has to do to make people more safe. It’s just a crazy world.”
Jonas Valanciunas led Toronto with 20 points and 10 rebounds and provided an anchor on defence at the rim as the Raptors ran their record to 7-3 before heading out on a fivegame road trip.
The Raptors made nine threepointers, and two in the fourth quarter from the struggling Patrick Patterson helped break the game open. Kyle Lowry also had four to juice an offence that had just 40 points in the first half. Lowry finished with 20 points and DeMar DeRozan had 15 points and 11 assists.