Raptors 905 120, Delaware 87ers 108 | Box Score
Assignees: None (905), None (87ers)
The D-League doesn’t always work as smoothly as the affiliate club mimicking the parent club cleanly. It’s not a reasonable expectation, and beyond some unified messages and schemes throughout the organization, the connection between the success of the two teams within a single organization probably won’t be a straight line all that often.
For Raptors 905, though, they’ve found a fairly comfortable groove playing to a similar story as the parent Toronto Raptors. With the Raptors winning 14 of their last 16, sometimes at their best and sometimes not, with an underlying desire to get even better than that win total suggests, the 905 are finding themselves saying and hearing the same sort of messages. In dispatching the Delaware 87ers 120-108 at home on Tuesday, the 905 secured their second win in a row, pushing their record to an Eastern Conference best 12-4.
Head coach Jerry Stackhouse will surely still point to areas for improvement, particularly Delaware’s second-half offensive outburst. His post-game comments will likely channel Dwane Casey of late. Stackhouse may want improvements on that end, but the 905 continue to get it done with a combination of defense and depth, leaning on 64 bench points in a 10-deep rotation.
The 905 worked around some foul trouble in the early going, as Brady Heslip and Edy Tavares both picked up a pair of quick ones. John Jordan came in for Heslip and promptly picked up two of his own, and Stackhouse opted to trust Jordan rather than turn the controls over to Axel Toupane or one of the team’s other capable creators on the wing. That worked out fine for the remainder of the first quarter, as Jordan was a part of a a pull-ahead run late in the quarter. The team’s heavy fouling was combatted by Delaware’s own poor shooting at the line (7-of-13), and the 905 were able to take a 29-27 lead into the second.
Toupane continued to lead the second unit with a masterful across-the-board performance, giving Stackhouse the requisite faith to trust him as the point guard, and a bench-heavy group worked to extend the lead. Tavares checked back in and immediately picked up a third foul, and Stackhouse opted to go small with C.J. Leslie at the five, a look that’s been fun but gives up some size (Jarrod Uthoff working in the frontcourt with Leslie helps). Uthoff’s mid-range shooting and post scoring helped supplement Toupane’s masterful performance at the point, one that saw the latter score 14 points on just five field-goal attempts with four rebound and six assists in the half. It also helped buy time for Heslip to sit with the foul trouble, and he responded with a three immediately and then a pull-up elbow jumper in transition.
The 905 defense remained strong for the most part, too, with smart rotations forcing some late-clock attempts and both E.J. Singler and Will Sheehey drawing charges. The 87ers shot 41 percent, and that, a rebounding edge, and chasing Delaware off the 3-point line were enough, in concert, to take a 63-52 lead into the half.
The 87ers came out of the break hungry, with Shawn Long continuing his assault on the offensive glass and James Webb knocking down some big shots. Three consecutive buckets inside from Tavares and then some continued hot shooting from Uthoff, who finished with a season-high 16, helped the 905 keep them at arm’s length for a while, but the 87ers continued to chip the lead down to one point at 81-80 heading into the fourth.
Both sides traded buckets to start the fourth quarter, and the back-and-forth got so hectic that there was a long delay midway through the frame to figure out what the correct score was. (Blame Leslie, who made a spinning cut just before that point that would make DJ Screw sweat and must have given the entire game ops crew vertigo.) When the score was sorted out, the 905 had a six-point lead they quickly pushed to 11 with a Toupane steal, a Yanick Moreira bucket, and a Toupane transition and-one. Good thing they checked to make sure, then.
It was just a matter of closing out for the 905 from there, and Toupane completed his night by dropping his ninth dime (to go with 24 points) on a Moreira dunk-and-one (he was great, too, with 15-and-11) to combat a late push from Long and Lorenzo Wade Jr. Heslip then sunk his fifth three to finish with 17 points, and there wasn’t much the 87ers could do to close it out from there. They tried, and the 905 weren’t comfortable until the closing seconds, but the game never quite felt in the balance from the post-adjustment surge onward.
On most nights, the 905 have been just a little better than their competition. That held here, with some up-and-down play still leaving the 905 in a position to assert themselves down the stretch. Without the benefit of assignments from the Raptors, the 905 lost no semblance of a step, executing in a pivotal second quarter and again down the stretch, which is as much as can be expected on a night-to-night basis – get it done, identify ares to improve, and get better from there.
Notes
- For long stretches of the game, the score on the box score did not match what was being shown on the stream, and it was difficult to tell what the actual correct score was since the game was so close. The Facebook Live feed also had a lot of issues (for me, anyway) early on, and the switch from YouTube continues to be problematic.
- By closing this narrow lead out, the 905 are now 9-0 when taking a lead into the fourth. That’s mighty impressive for a D-League team.
- Toupane is getting called up shortly after the 10-day window opens in January. If he doesn’t, I don’t really have a grasp on what NBA teams, especially younger ones looking to take fliers, might be looking for – he can defend multiple positions, work as a secondary ball-handler and distributor, knock down corner threes, and he has a cup of coffee in the NBA already, so the lights won’t be as bright. He’s really good, and ready to play a deep bench role at the next level.
- The 905 were without the services of any assignees, as both Fred VanVleet and Bruno Caboclo are with the parent club. Considering the Raptors are out west for the bulk of this 905 homestand, it seems as if that will be the case for at least the next two home games, and maybe even next Wednesday depending on how the travel back from San Antonio works out.
- That homestand continues on Thursday, by the way. If you want to check any of those games out live, you can go to this link and use the promo code REPUBLIC905 all season long, as the 905 are hooking RR readers up with discounted tickets.
