Basketball wasn’t Patterson’s first love—at least, it wasn’t his only one. Growing up, his parents introduced him to a wide array of activities and sports. He was a Cub Scout, honor roll student and finished second in his fifth-grade spelling bee. A natural athlete, Patterson played basketball and football in elementary school. His mother points to her son’s good hands for catching. As he entered junior high, he had a tough decision to make. “I remember him playing football,” Mrs. Patterson recalled, “Patrick got tackled and got the wind knocked out of him.” She cautioned her son to be careful and told him she didn’t think football was the sport for him. The violent nature of the game worried her. “I was sitting up there about to have a heart attack.” Speaking of hearts, Patterson has a passion for soccer. He played on the pitch for three years, which has helped with his footwork on the hardwood. He was in Brazil during the summer to take in some FIFA World Cup action. While reporting for BALLnROLL in March, Patterson told me if he could play any sport other than basketball professionally, it would be soccer. Chatty and candid, he has become quite the media darling in Toronto.
“Yeah, he’s been in our coaches’ meetings and heard some of the criticisms of the players,” Raptors head coach Dwane Casey said Sunday before his team faced the New York Knicks. “Hopefully he doesn’t take that back to the players but if he does, it’s not like I’m saying something I wouldn’t say to their faces.” Casey said DeRozan certainly adds his two cents to the meetings. “We ask him questions and he participates,” Casey said. “He is a sharp guy and the good thing is he was here from Day 1 when we put in the (current) system so he understands what we are trying to do, probably mores than some of our coaches.”
The 95-90 final was one the Raptors will gladly take but feeling good about it might be a little tougher. “It was one of those nights where everyone was struggling,” head coach Dwane Casey said. “Nothing would go. Ball would hit your hands and fall out of bounds, fumble it out. It was very uncharacteristic for Kyle (Lowry) to have nine turnovers himself. It was one of those nights you just find a way to grind it out. We had so many mistakes on both sides, even defensively but if you are serious about winning, you find a way to get it done and our guys did it.”
Raptors win ugly against Knicks in OT | Toronto Star
“It was one of those nights you find a way to grind it out. We had so many mistakes on both sides, even defensively,” said relieved Raptors coach Dwane Casey after the less-than-elegant affair. “It was one of those games where if you are serious about winning, you find a way to get it done and our guys did it.” How ugly was it? Even the usually sure-handed Lowry coughed up nine turnovers. The fact that the Raptors pulled away in OT after having coughed up a few leads in regulation is a tribute to the team’s maturity, said Lowry. “You have to stay level-headed. You can’t get too up or down. You have to ride it out. We kept our level heads and grinded it out,” said Lowry after the game.
Patterson fuels OT win in unlikely role as a defender | TSN
Patterson, a steady positional defender throughout his time in Toronto, may have even surprised himself with what he was able to do as a stopper on Sunday, facing off against an elite scorer down the stretch of the Raptors’ 95-90 OT victory at Madison Square Garden. “I ain’t going to lie, it was a big challenge tonight as far as guarding one of the best players in the NBA,” said Patterson, who spent most of the game’s final 11 minutes, including the five-minute OT period, chasing around Knicks’ star forward Carmelo Anthony. “My whole mindset when I was on him was to just deny him the ball as much as possible. Other than that, yea, I’m not really known for my down-the-stretch perimeter clutch defence like that. But it felt good.” “My teammates had total confidence in me, the coaching staff had total confidence in me as far as keeping me on Melo in those crunch-time minutes. Thankfully it worked.”
Raptors Win Ugly Over Knicks, 95-90 in Overtime | Raptors HQ
After holding Indiana to 94 points on Friday, the Raptors defense was solid again, holding the Knickerbockers to 90, with 34 of those coming from Carmelo Anthony. Toronto is now 10-0 when holding teams below 100 points, a great sign for this team when the offense is, well, less than spectacular. This was one of those nights. The Raptors committed 23 turnovers, nine of those coming from Kyle Lowry, whose 21 points, 11 rebounds and six steals came in fits and starts for the point guard. Terrence Ross picked up the slack, though, scoring a season-high 22 points in 33 minutes, putting up a +13 mark. As he usually does in signature games, he threw down a signature dunk.
The Raptors — particularly star point guard Kyle Lowry — didn’t exactly play up to their billing as the East’s No. 1 team, but credit should also be given to the Knicks, who played a fairly solid game on both ends. Whether you prefer to heap more blame on the Raptors or praise onto the Knicks, Walt Clyde Phraser was at least somewhat correct: These Knicks possess the tools to tank, and very few teams in the NBA can stop them (from losing).
Melo, Knicks fall to Raptors, 95-90, in overtime | New York Post
“We had five minutes of basketball to play and we didn’t just get back to some execution things that we talked about between the fourth quarter and overtime,” said coach Derek Fisher, whose 5-21 Knicks forced the extra session with two defensive stops after Anthony drove to tie with 28.7 seconds left. “We talked about being able to execute in that overtime and we didn’t do it.” Yeah, the Knicks missing their first six shots of OT with three turnovers added is not exactly executing. By the time the Knicks made an overtime shot, by Hardaway (18 points) at :05.2, the Raptors were up seven. “Didn’t quite get the stops that we needed on a few possessions,” Amar’e Stoudemire (10 points) said. “They stepped up their defense a little. With more pressure we couldn’t run the plays we wanted. We missed a few open shots,” said Jose Calderon (13 points). “We were playing against the best team in the East and were right there.”
Knicks waste effort and fall to Raptors in overtime, 95-90 | NY Daily News
Ultimately, the results were the same, as the hybrid offense faltered and the head coach said point blank that getting away from the triangle proved to be the Knicks’ undoing. “We have several things we do to start possessions that is still inside of our offense,” Fisher said after the Knicks fell to 5-21. “We have to continue to add things as our guys have become more comfortable with our basic stuff. Once you open that box it is hard to get guys back to our basic things. That is what cost us in that overtime. We didn’t get back to our basic things in overtime.” The Knicks produced one field goal in overtime against the Atlantic Division leaders. Overall, the Knicks went 1-for-8 in the final five minutes, including six straight misses to open OT. The Knicks failed to win their first game against a team with a winning record and failed to produce back-to-back victories for the first time since they beat Cleveland and Charlotte during the first week of the season.
Tim Hardaway Jr. and Knicks Step Up, but Fall in Overtime | NYTimes.com
Three minutes into Sunday’s game, Quincy Acy missed a dunk, and the crowd bellowed, offering a glaring reminder of the team’s futility this season. But the Knicks did manage to keep the score tight. A 3-pointer from Williams with 2.6 seconds left in the half put Toronto ahead, 45-44. On the subsequent inbounds pass, Acy lobbed the ball all the way downcourt, where it found Calderon sneaking behind the defense. With his layup, the Knicks held a lead at halftime for just the eighth time this season. The Raptors shot 62.5 percent from the field in the third quarter, building their biggest lead of the game, 7 points. But the Knicks refused to allow Toronto to pull away. In overtime, though, 1 for 8 from the field was not going to cut it.
Raptors adjusting on the fly without DeMar DeRozan | Newsday
Leave it to a basketball team from hockey’s heartland to learn how to change on the fly. The Raptors have had no choice but to adapt in a hurry after star DeMar DeRozan went down with a serious leg injury late last month. “It’s tough to replace 19 points in your lineup,” coach Dwane Casey said. Still, Toronto has kept rolling, with the latest effort being a 95-90 overtime win over the Knicks Sunday night at the Garden. That raised the Raptors’ Atlantic Division-leading record to 18-6, showing that they have not missed a beat. “Oh, we missed a beat,” said Kyle Lowry, who had 21 points and 11 assists in 38:38 Sunday night, refusing to let the Raptors buckle. “We miss our guy, man, but we always say ’15 deep.’ We’ve got a bunch of guys that know their roles and know their positions. When a guy goes down, it’s next man up.”
Raptors And Knicks Combine For 49 Turnovers | Pro Bball Report
Fans would be excused if they couldn’t stick this game out until the bitter end. This was not a well played game. New York shot 37.2 percent from the field and only managed to hang around because of some very generous free throw opportunities provided by the guys in gray. The Knicks went to the charity stripe 10 more times than Toronto for 9 more points – all of it relating back to a bizarre first quarter where the referees couldn’t seem to stop blowing their whistles for every real and perceived minor infraction. The whistle-fest slowed the game down to a crawl and made it nearly unplayable let alone watchable. As is often the case, the foul situation evened out over the course of the game, but the damage had already been done – aided greatly by the continued sloppy play from both teams.
The North shuts down the Big Apple | Raptors Watch
This was Dwane Casey’s worst coaching game this season. Too many isos coming out of timeouts, and Jonas Valanciunas had just one field goal attempt in the first half. That’s pretty inexcusable when you’re playing the Knicks who are a weak interior-defense team.
Post Game: Toronto Raptors pull through in OT vs. Knicks | Raptors Cage
The Raptors defence tonight was average at best. They allowed themselves to get torched early on by Jose Calderon. The dysfunctional Knicks offense should’ve looked frantic against a seasoned defensive scheme set by Dwane Casey. The Raptors failed to meet the energy level set by New York and ended up playing at their tempo for most of the night. Toronto has a terrible tendency of playing down to the skill level of their opponent and that showed tonight. They held new York to only 37.2% shooting and forced them to commit 25 turnovers versus their 15 assists. Kudos to Toronto for buckling down and getting the job done in overtime, because the game should’ve never been this close in the first place.
Toronto Raptors 95 – New York Knicks 90 [OT]: Bad teams r us | Raptors Rapture
There were some solid performances by players in Toronto uniforms; Patrick Patterson needed only 6 shots to record 13 points, including a 3-ball in OT. Jonas Valanciunas missed some easy shots, and was being battered all night by Amar’e Stoudamire and others, but still pulled down 13 boards. Kyle did finish with a double-double, scoring 21 and adding 11 assists. We expect more from Lou Williams than 5 of 15 shooting, but he still shit some tightly guarded shots. (Grevis Vasquez is getting less and less playing time; only 13+ minutes, with a bucket to show for it.) Amir Johnson was invisible in regulation time, then grabbed 5 boards and scored a dagger bucket in OT.
Tipoff: Magic at Raptors | Toronto Sun
Another tough matchup for the young Lithuanian. Vucevic is just back after missing six games with back spasms. He showed no rust in his return with 18 points and 11 rebounds in Orlando’s win over Atlanta. For the season he is averaging a double double with 18.6 points and 11.7 rebounds per night. He has 14 double-doubles this year to lead the team. Valanciunas has been very strong of late himself, stronger than he was in the first two meetings between the two clubs. This should be a good gauge of how far Valanciunas has come in the season.
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