Raptors extend their mastery over Wizards
DeRozan leads with 35, Toronto beats Washington for third time this season
WASHINGTON— DeRozan didn’t blink before the words were out of his mouth.
“We got swept last year,” the Toronto Raptors shooting guard said, after he’d hung a season-high 35 points on the Washington Wizards, the offensive backbone in a defensively sound 97-88 win. DeRozan’s previous season high was 34 and one of those games came against the Wizards too.
Last year’s playoff sweep at the hands of the Wizards is old news by now, hammered home by 2016’s arrival. But being on the Verizon Center court, hearing a crowd of 17,064 cheering the Wizards on and seeing those painfully familiar red, white and blue jerseys, brings the burn of failure back to DeRozan, at least for one night.
“I was here for the playoffs, and that was a bad feeling to get swept,” he said. “Coming back here just playing against them (gives) the same reminder of what happened.”
The Raptors (now 23-15) know that avenging that loss can’t happen until the playoffs, whoever their opponent would be. Friday’s win was a testament to how different these Raptors look now, getting back to their defensive roots after two embarrassing losses earlier this week to the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers.
They were stingy in a 91-74 win over the lowly Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday and came back with their best defensive quarter of their season against Washington, limiting the Wizards (15-19) to 14 points in the third.
“I think (the defensive identity) never went anywhere. I think we had two bad defensive games against two really good offensive teams,” Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry said, after scoring 21 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. “I think that it never went anywhere. We still have a game (Saturday, against Philadelphia). If we go in and play really good defence we’ll be really consistent.”
Raptors coach Dwane Casey liked that third quarter but wasn’t a fan of what he saw in the first. The Wizards opened up a 10-point lead while forcing six turnovers. The Raptors weren’t able to get their turnovers under control — they gave up the ball 23 times — but were saved by that impressive third quarter, outscoring the Wizards 26-14.
“Like I said at halftime, ‘If we make defensive mistakes, let’s make them hard, we’ve got to make hard mistakes,’ ” Casey said.
“They were outplaying us in the first half. They just outworked us. We couldn’t get anything done offensively, so we had to turn up our energy on both ends of the floor . . . and luckily, our defence kicked in first and our offence followed.”
The offence followed DeRozan’s lead. His game was a thing of beauty in the second half, and he fought through a physical first half — both teams slugged it out much of the night, with the refs’ whistles buried in their pockets — to start getting calls and getting points on the board.
“He’s that good. He’s an all-star, personally, in my opinion,” Lowry said of DeRozan.
“He’s a guy going out there every single night leading our team in scoring. That’s what he does for us, he scores the ball for us.”
“I think he got frustrated in the first half,” Casey said of DeRozan. “They were into him and I think he just made a conscious effort of taking things into his own hands, playing through contact, playing through their physicality.
“I thought he made an effort to fight through that and get things done.”
The Raptors could be without Terrence Ross in Philly. The backup guard left the game in the second half with a sore lower back. With DeMarre Carroll already out with a knee injury, Casey could be stretched thin on Saturday.