Late fades bad news on ugly trip
> JAZZ 93 > RAPTORS 89
SALT LAKE CITY— It was the second night of a back-to-back after an emotionally draining loss the evening before, and they were facing a well-rested opponent at high altitude.
It was a night stacked against the Raptors seemingly from the start and the trickle-down effect got them in the end of another loss, on what’s becoming a nightmarish road trip.
The Utah Jazz pulled away in the final 80 seconds here Wednesday night, beating Toronto 93-89 and handing the Raptors their third straight loss on a fivegame trip that heads to Los Angeles for the weekend.
After blowing a 10-point fourth-quarter lead in Sacramento on Sunday and unable to make plays in the dying seconds against Golden State on Tuesday, this loss was accomplished in much the same way.
But that means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
“There’s nothing good that comes out of a loss,” Kyle Lowry said after a tough 115-110 loss to the defending champion Warriors in Oakland. “You can learn some things from it, but at the end of the day it’s still a loss. You can learn from it and move on.”
Casey has made this early portion of the season mostly about a desire to see improvement as much as wins and losses.
Adifficult portion of the schedule — 11 of the first 14 games are on the road — doesn’t lend itself to a glittering record and Toronto was just 7-5 before facing the Utah Jazz here on Wednesday night.
However, there have been those valuable teaching points that have come up that Casey can use in the future.
One would be the team’s tendency towards slow first quarters that haven’t been crippling, but troubling. The Raptors missed eight of 10 shots in the first eight minutes of Tuesday’s game in Oakland and while they climbed back in the game and had a chance to win down the stretch, that’s got to get cleaned up if Casey is serious about nipping bad habits in the bud.
“We talked about it, we saw it, and we discussed it,” he said. “What we can do differently and our main woes right now are offensively with our starts. We have to make sure we come out with energy and push the pace. That does not mean we come down and take a quick shot, but when we do we have more time in the shot clock to get something done. That’s our goal.”
The odd part is that it seems to have nothing to do with the combination of players, since the same group that’s had difficulty starting has been dominant most nights early in the second half.
After that slow first eight minutes in Oakland, the starters were primarily responsible for recovering from a double-digit hole in the third quarter.
It is all part of the growth process that Casey expects to take weeks, if not months.
“This is the NBA. Even when we were 5-0, I said early we have a lot of growing and developing to do with this group coming together,” he said. “We need more cohesiveness and cohesion. We are seeing that the hard way on this road trip, but that’s part of the NBA. To be a professional you have to bounce back. You can’t get too high or too low. We have to continue to work and improve.”
“We have to make sure we come out with energy and push the pace.” RAPTORS COACH DWANE CASEY