Gee Wiz, Raptors take quite a beatdown

There are going to be some trying times for the Toronto Raptors until Kyle Lowry is back.

Opponents like the Wizards, who own a top-10 offence and a top-10 defence, aren’t going to be the norm for the Raptors over their final 21 games (although the two will meet again Friday in Washington). But the Raptors weren’t even in the same class as the Wizards for most of Wednesday night.

Washington is nowhere close to being the team that spit up a 113103 loss on its home court in early November when the Raptors got their first look at them. Since then, they have bought in to head coach Scott Brooks’ style and improved their depth with the acquisition of Bojan Bogdanovic at the trade deadline.

All Bogdanovic did Wednesday was spearhead a second-quarter shellacking as the Wizards outscored Toronto 38-20 in that frame on their way to a 105-96 win, a result that appears much closer than the game actually was. At one point, the Wizards went off on a 26-1 run.

Toronto has been pretty decent in terms of coming back from deficits since Lowry went down, but there was no coming back from this one.

The win moved Washington a full game ahead of Toronto for that vital third spot in the East, which ensures a meeting with Cleveland no earlier than the conference final.

“We can’t keep doing that,” the Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan said of early deficits. “It’s tough on us, it’s extremely exhausting. To get down that much you have to work that much harder to get back in the game, let alone win.”

The absence of Lowry, that has been overshadowed by some solid defence led by Toronto’s trade deadline acquisitions in Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker, was felt in a big way against a Wizards team that is operating on all cylinders right now.

Without Lowry to worry about, teams are loading up to stop DeRozan. As good as Ibaka and Tucker have been in their short tenure in Toronto, neither is fully up to speed offensively and no one else has yet stepped up to fill in for those 23 points a night the team is missing without Lowry.

DeRozan had 24 points, 10 of those coming from the line.

Bogdanovic was a stone-cold Raptors killer off the bench, scoring 27 points in 25 minutes. He led the Wizards, followed closely by Bradley Beal, who had 23 points.