Truth is, the talk in this city morphed long ago from staying healthy enough to take a run at the Cleveland Cavaliers, to defending home-court advantage. Norman Powell hears it; he says the Toronto Raptors talk about it, that they scoreboard watch along with the rest of us.

DeMar DeRozan might want to have a word with Powell.

“I think it’s too early,” DeRozan said, after a 100-78 win over the Dallas Mavericks that allowed an entire city to exhale maybe a little more than it should. “You look at the top four (teams) and everybody’s right there. Somebody has a good week, somebody has a bad week … it could switch quickly.”

Leo Rautins: Raptors still the second best team in the East March 13 2017 Your browser does not support the audio element.



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A snowy Monday win against the Mavs, a non-descript, fringy sort of team, hardly seems to be the thing of inspiration, regardless of recent trends. Yet there were enough good things in this game to make head coach Dwane Casey happy.

Nine three-pointers, three more than the Raptors managed in 40 attempts in losses to the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat; a season-best rebounding differential of plus-21 on a night when Serge Ibaka finished with a team-high-tying plus-19 in 32 minutes without scoring a point of his own; stops on defence, running over the Mavericks in transition and imposing their will on a team that likes to walk it up, less over-passing, and a little bit of “juice” (Casey’s word) from a jury-rigged second unit including Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright and Powell.

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Heck, Patrick Patterson even returned from the Missing Persons Dept., scoring 11 points and hitting three of five three-pointers, two of them daggers in the fourth quarter, and playing his most effective game in a long time.

It was Patterson’s second game in double digits since returning 10 games ago from a knee injury.

The Raptors’ three-point woes have at times threatened to become their undoing, with Casey ruing repeatedly not just the number of misses but the quality of the shots that were being missed.

“I thought we turned down some other good looks tonight that we can still get,” Casey said, measuring his praise. “Our shooters have to continue to shoot the ball.”

Patterson and DeRozan both preferred to talk about their team’s defence, and let’s allow them the privilege, OK? It’s surprising that this team is still a work in progress in that part of the game, the kind of surprise that hints of a lack of personnel instead of a lack of willingness. That’s not a knock on Casey or those above him; it’s a simple reflection of the fact that until Kyle Lowry returns from the ranks of the injured, this team cannot be whole defensively. I mean, it just can’t.

DeRozan finished with 25 points on 10-for-17 from the field, while Powell had 19 points and Jonas Valanciunas chipped in with 14 in 22:50 plus 12 boards. Harrison Barnes’ 18 and Dirk Nowitzki’s 17 points led the Mavericks.

The Mavericks had won four of their last five games, losing their most recent game 100-98 when the Phoenix Suns‘ Devin Booker drained a jumper at the buzzer, and they traded runs with the Raptors in the first half en route to a four-point Toronto lead.

The first quarter seemed an extension of the Raptors’ recent 2-3 road trip. They were 0-for-3 from three-point range, relying mostly on some strong work by Valanciunas on Nowitzki, had just four assists and let the Mavericks shoot 52.6 per cent.

But Wright’s three-pointer a little more than a minute into the second quarter signalled that the ship was in the process of being righted. The Raptors had runs of 8-2 and 10-0 in the quarter and put the game away in the third, shooting 62.5 per cent and gobbling up 12 defensive rebounds. DeRozan had 11 points in that quarter, and as the game wound down Casey felt comfortable enough to give Lucas Nogueira and Pascal Siakam a run out. DeRozan played 32 minutes, 29 seconds and those final few minutes on the bench might count for something on Thursday when the Oklahoma City Thunder come to the ACC.

Patterson echoed DeRozan’s sentiments about not getting caught up in scoreboard watching. Want something to focus on? DeRozan has a better idea.

“We have to be patient, understand where we are and figure this thing out without Kyle, and make it an easy transition when he comes back,” said DeRozan – who when pressed admitted there is a time when he thinks beyond the Raptors to other teams around them; when he thinks about what this team could be like when Lowry does return.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling ruefully, “I think about that at night. When I’m watching other teams play.”