Gameday: Raptors @ Wizards

The Toronto Raptors will face off against the Washington Wizards for the second game in a row and they will look to bounce back and grab the crucial win. Last game we saw an unfathomable discrepancy between the bench unit and the starting unit and in order to win this game Toronto’s bench simply has to play better.

In the last game the bench was a combined -73 and offered essentially no support for Toronto’s starters, Gary Trent Jr didn’t offer his shotmaking, Precious Achiuwa was uncharacteristically bad on defense, Thad also offered nothing on defense along with Will Barton. It also didn’t help that some of the starters had awful games like Fred having an awful shooting night along with Pascal having one of his worst games of the season.

Some positives we can draw from the last game was that OG Anunoby has a favorable matchup on him with Bradley Beal, time after time he had wide open layups due to Beals poor off ball defense, OG also shot the ball quite well and looked great on drives. Jakob Poetl also had a great game and his size is extremely necessary against Washington so Nurse cannot get away with the same first half rotations that he did last game.

Defensively OG did excellent on Bradley Beal, but it was Kyle Kuzma and Delon Wright who really carved Toronto up, the help defense must be much better because at this point the point-of-attack defense is a lost cause, also last game a lot of guys just didn’t seem to want to put forth the effort on that end as well.

This is a crucial game because the Wizards and Raptors are so close in the standings that the tiebreaker can become a very important thing potentially and quite simply, Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet can not shoot that poorly if the Raptors hope to win. So better offensive production from the stars, more competent play from the bench, Jakob needs to play high minutes because the team seemingly can’t survive on defense without him, and the bench HAS to give you something.

Game Info

Tip-Off: 5 pm EST | TV: Sportsnet One/4K | Radio: Sportsnet 590

Raptors Lineup

Jeff Dowin Jr, Christian Koloko, Dalano Banton, Joe Wieskamp and Ron Harper Jr. are all with the Raptors 905(This is subject to change, will report as we are informed). Otto Porter is done for the season.

PG: Fred VanVleet, Malachi Flynn

SG: Scottie Barnes, Gary Trent Jr, Will Barton

SF: O.G. Anunoby

PF: Pascal Siakam, Chris Boucher, Thaddeus Young

C: Jakob Poeltl, Precious Achiuwa