When the Toronto Raptors entered their dressing room for halftime Friday night, heads hung after 24-minutes of clumsy, disorganized basketball that resulted in an appropriate 40-40 scoreline with the far inferior New Orleans Pelicans, DeMarre Carroll got up and told the room it was on him.
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Raptors coach Dwane Casey said Valanciunas is maturing as a player.
For most of the first 24 minutes, the Pelicans maintained the lead, and at one point, they led by as many as 9 points.
37 Pelicans’ shooting percentage for the game.
“It’s big because we put him in a lot of situations where he had to find [teammates]”.
“I’ve got like a million things in my shoe right now”, he said.
“I’m so proud of Jonas, I’m hoping he makes all-star”, Patterson said. “The start of the third quarter, that first unit did a great job setting the pace, and setting the tone for the entire second half”.
Alexis Ajinca kept on coming back to the word “crazy”. DeMar DeRozan added 15 points and 11 assists, and Kyle Lowry scored 20 points.
Carroll returned after missing three games with a sore right heel and helped the Raptors outscore the Pelicans 60-41 in the second half.
“It’s just a insane world, man”, he continued. My family, everybody’s safe. “You think you are safe and you are just walking down the street and the next thing that you know people just start shooting”.
“Pretty much all of my family is in Paris”, he said afterward. All of my prayers go to all of the families that lost love ones.
Gordon scored 16 points in the first quarter in 6-for-10 shooting to give the Pelicans a 21-17 lead.
The Raptors took off from that point, dominating the third quarter (as they do) and cruising to a 100-81 victory that wasn’t as easy as the scoreline suggests. Point guard Jrue Holiday will return to the starting lineup for the Pels, but will be on a minutes limit.
The team is clearly much better defensively with Carroll in the rotation, and he was sorely missed in all three of the games he sat out, but perhaps none moreso than Tuesday’s 111-109 loss to NY, when the Raptors struggled to contain Knicks superstar Carmelo Anthony.
The Raptors hit just 2 of 10 3-point attempts in the first half, but made 7 of 11 from beyond the arc in the second half.
Patterson also opened the scoring in the fourth quarter to increase the lead to 13.
TOR: Norman Powell; I just want to see him play, his strong showing against Philly should be just reason to get a few run against New Orleans.
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“I think we felt that we weren’t playing the style of basketball (in the first half) that we knew we could play at both ends”, DeRozan said.
