Earlier, the Raptors wasted no time in forging ahead during a lop-sided first half.
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Realistically, the only way Washington wins this series is if its All-Star backcourt of Wall and Bradley Beal significantly outplays Toronto’s of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. Tuesday’s officiating crew didn’t seem to buy that. The Wizards come in as the 8th seed, while the Raptors are the top seed in the Eastern Conference.
The teams will now take the series back to Washington for Game 3 on Friday night. Or this nugget: “Our adjustment was to not given them threes”.
“Everybody has played 82 games this year, that is how many you are supposed to play; but at the same time, it does wear on you, you do get exhausted”.
– Mike Scott checking into the game for him. For Milwaukee to win, though, it needs Bledsoe and Khris Middleton to outplay Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Wall’s 29 points powered Washington. “We can’t run up the minutes for our starters extensively”.
“I just let the game come to me”, DeRozan said afterwards.
However, Washington battled back to make it close in the fourth quarter. Beal shot 3-of-11 and scored just nine points Tuesday night. “But we’ve gotta get some more guys to join the party”.
“We need everyone on his team”. Midway through the fourth quarter, John Wall walked up to the charity stripe and sunk two free throws. It’s the moment that everybody has been waiting to see from them for so long – just go into the playoffs, play a team they’re supposed to be better than, and look convincing while they do it. Still, Washington’s trio of John Wall, Bradley Beal and Otto Porter looked like a formidable core and, with the expectation of a jump from Kelly Oubre Jr. and the reality that the team’s bench nearly had to improve from its previous struggles, optimism reigned at the outset of this season.
“We were prepared, we knew they were going to try and take out Kyle (Lowry) and DeMar (DeRozan), they had 15 or 16 assists between them, so we were prepared for that”, Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. Gortat tweeted “Unbelievable win tonight?” “He is definitely going to get in the gym and get up extra shots and find ways to be more aggressive”.
“If you can tell me a better two-way player in the league right now, I’ll listen”, said Gentry. I average nearly 10 assists a game. I got shots. I got shots for my teammates. “We’ve just got to more into it, got to be the more desperate, hungry team”.
All parties concerned say it was much ado about nothing, that it was a media-created controversy although even a cursory glance at the coverage in the mainstream media suggests all those opaque statements were what really fuelled the fire. At the end of the day, Washington’s offensive output was impressive on the whole despite the loss. He has some coaching to do.
Brooks acknowledges that problem has no simple solutions when the Raptors play well.
“I didn’t wanna throw it to him out there”.
“We’re down 2-0, we’re the team that’s in the hole, we’re the team that’s desperate, but we have a lot of confidence”.
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That last statement was said with Brooks’ most conclusive tone of the night. The last time the Raptors played the Wizards in the playoffs was in the 2014-2015 season where the Wizards swept the Raptors winning the series 4-0.
