Here are notes, quotes and observations from Toronto’s loss to Washington in Game 1:
- With the loss, Toronto is now 1-7 all-time in Game 1’s. Yikes.
- John Calipari was sitting Drake’s courtside seats. Turns out Drake was out of town due to a performance tonight at Coachella. He’s “probable” for Game 2 on Tuesday.
- Toronto came out with a ton of focus on the defensive end. They held Washington to 1-9 shooting from the field and three turnovers in the first six minutes of the game. They finished the game holding Washington to under 40% from the field.
- Patrick Patterson was a huge spark off the bench early for Toronto. He had 10 points (4-5 from the field and 2-3 from beyond the arc) in his first nine minutes of burn. He failed to score a point in his font 23 minutes of burn.
- Randy Wittman on using Paul Pierce stretch four: “It spreads the floor. Now, they have the ability to do that, too. (Patrick) Patterson came in and I thought he hurt us at the end of the first quarter, start of the second quarter and we made some adjustments. It gives us the ability to do that. I thought Paul (Pierce) was good at it and Drew (Gooden) gives us the ability to do that, too.”
- Kyle Lowry fouled out with seven points, eight rebounds and four assists. He went 2-10 from the field. After the game Lowry was disappointed in how Game 1 played out: “I’m very mad and very upset, but I’ve got to deal with it. It’s something I’ve dealt with before. It’s not how I want to keep play. At the end of the day, a bad game is one bad game. I’ve got another game on Tuesday.”
- Toronto gave up 19 offensive rebounds and were out-rebounded 61-48. After the game Jonas Valanciunas admitted: “They were tougher than us.”
- Lou Williams on rebounding issues: “They had 20 offensive rebounds. That’s an issue, especially when you lose a game by six or seven points. You can look at rebounds as one of the red flags. They dominated us on the boards. At the same time, they got some pretty lucky bounces. I think it was four or five that I can remember for sure where it was tipped around, tipped around, tipped around. Then Nene gets a long tip all the way back to halfcourt. Then they get an opportunity to run another play and reset their offence. Those are the kind of small things that we can clean up. The guards have got to do a better job of giving the bigs some relief in situations like that by boxing out and helping out.”
- Casey on rebounding: “I thought we did an excellent game defensively. We held them to 39%, and a lot of those times they got the rebound and they scored. They had, what? 20 second chance points? That’s the game. We’ve talked about it. It’s not just our big guys. It’s everybody. We start watching when shots goes up. People have to get in there and clean up the boards. We know that. It’s been an issue. Until we make it a priority it’s going to be hard for us. With that said, there’s still a lot of basketball to be played so it’s not over. It’s not doom and gloom.”
- Dwane Casey on James Johnson: “James (Johnson) will play in a matchup situation. Again, he could be in play later in this series. The difficulty thing to do is play all of our wings. We’ve got a good rotation with Greivis (Vasquez), Kyle (Lowry), DeMar (DeRozan) and Terrence (Ross) in that group and it’s just hard to get that fifth guy in there unless it’s just a special matchup. Again, it will come into play in this series at some point but today wasn’t the day. Believe me, I heard all the people yelling, ‘Put James in, put James in,” but, again, who do you take out? We were having trouble with outside shots. DeMar was doing a good job. Lou was a threat. So, we’ll see. There’s going to be a place for James (Johnson) in this series. I’ve talked with him about that.”
- Casey on Washington doubling DeRozan and Lou Williams when those players came off of screens: “I thought we executed well. We had 21 assists. I thought Amir (Johnson) was a benefactor of that with 18 points because he attacked out of the double-team. We did a good job of finding the pocket and we attacked out of that. We were ready for it. We went through it yesterday in practice and we were prepared for the double team.”
- Paul Pierce: “I don’t mind playing the role of underdog or villain or whatever you guys want to call it. It’s not that I’m a bad guy.”
- Pierce thrives on being the villain. Fans might want to be a little less throaty in Game 2. Just an idea…
- Bradley Beal on waving to Kyle Lowry: “I said, ‘bye-bye.’ He had six fouls.”
- Going into this game, Washington was 39-9 when holding opponents to under 100 points this season and the Raptors were 30-6.
