‘ Sweet and sour’ as Raps clinch division
TORONTO — Landry Fields’ chair provided the canvas.
The rarely used swingman was not at the Air Canada Centre on Friday night, battling an upper- respiratory infection. Terrence Ross and Chuck Hayes border Fields’ stall in the locker- room.
A red T- shirt was draped over Fields’ chair. It read “Atlantic is ours” — the division, not the ocean.
“Who would have thought we’d have these T- shirts?” Ross said to Hayes. “Ain’t nobody thought we’d have ’ em this year.”
The T- shirts are pushed by the league, so do not mistake the Raptors for a satisfied group. Nonetheless, they did not clinch the division in style.
The Raptors fell 108- 100 to the Knicks, but took the division about 20 minutes after the final buzzer when Brooklyn fell to Atlanta. It is the Raptors’ second division title in franchise history, the first since 2006- 07. It also guarantees the Raptors will start the playoffs in Toronto, with home- court advantage in the first round.
“It’s sweet and sour,” point guard Kyle Lowry said. “It’s very sweet that we won the division but it sucks that we didn’t win it ( with) a win. But we’ll take the division champs any day.”
In a vacuum, this was not a good day for the Raptors. The Bulls came back to beat Detroit, passing the Raptors for third place in the conference. If those seeds hold — and that is far from certain — the Raptors will play the Nets in the first round as opposed to the less experienced Wizards or Bobcats. It could also potentially put them on the same side of the bracket as the Heat as opposed to the struggling Pacers.
Those are first- world problems compared to where the Raptors started the year, but they represent the new reality. Both Lowry and DeMar DeRozan expressed a complete apathy about the identity of their first- round opponent. Of course, they cannot say otherwise, lest they admit fear of another team.
“We’re still anxious,” DeRozan said. “We still want more. We’re not satisfied with nothing ( yet).
“We understand we have much more basketball to play and a long road to go and we want to take advantage of it.
“Not just get there and say we got there, where people doubted us. We definitely feel like we can go in and make some noise.”