Raps change things up ahead of win in Philly After their 114-103 victory over the woeful Philadelphia 76ers, several Toronto Raptors players credited a change to the game-day routine, initiated by coach Dwane Casey, for lifting their spirits.

Josh Lewenberg TSN Raptors Reporter Follow|Archive

TORONTO - The Raptors' locker room was a joyous place again.

One player took credit for predicting DeMar DeRozan's bounce-back game. Another mimicked the piercing, high-pitched screech of a woman who shouted, "Miss it, miss it, miss it" each time they shot a free throw that night.

Overall, the vibe was positive, an unfamiliar feeling around a team that had recently dropped their fifth-straight game to the corpse of the New York Knicks.

They had just defeated the 76ers, a club only marginally better than the one they had lost to a couple days earlier, but that was hardly the point. DeRozan needed to remember what it felt like to see the ball go through the net. The team desperately needed to remember what it felt like to win.

After their 114-103 victory in Philadelphia, several players credited a change to the game-day routine for lifting their spirits.

"It all started in shootaround," Greivis Vasquez said Monday night. "Coach [Dwane Casey] really managed shootaround differently today, it was more fun. Didn't have too much pressure. Sometimes, we lose sight of the things that we have done and we've done some great things. We were just having fun at shootaround and we carried that over to the game."

"We did something totally different that we never did [before]," DeRozan added moments after scoring a season-best 35 points. "It was fun."

What did they do differently?

"[Casey] came in with a shooting contest," Vasquez elaborated following Tuesday afternoon's practice session back at the Air Canada Centre. "Our normal shootaround is a scouting report and all of that stuff. We just came in and had fun. We were laughing, half-court shots, stuff like that. We went back to the hotel, and everybody was relaxed, and we came back and won."

During their five-game slide, the Raptors shot 40 per cent from the field - ranking 28th in the NBA over that stretch - and 25 per cent from three-point range (29th), a steep drop-off from their shooting numbers on the season (45 per cent from the field, 35 per cent from three). On Monday, they shot the ball at a 51 per-cent clip, hitting 11 of their 27 tries from long distance (Note: the Sixers' defence is actually middle of the pack and not as bad as their record would suggest).

"Fun is winning, I think that's the most important thing," Casey said. "Fun is winning. Changing up the routine, I think, is important, especially as you're fighting these dog days right now and I understand that. But again, fun is winning. Fun is going out and competing, kicking somebody's behind. But we just changed it up a little bit."

Credit Casey for reading the room and acting accordingly. Since coming together after last season's trade with Sacramento, this is a group that has genuinely seemed to enjoy one another. They've often cited their unique on-and-off-court chemistry as a big factor in their success and it tends to come through in the locker room.

For about a week, as the losses began to pile up, the room got oddly quiet, unusually tense before and after games. Vasquez said they needed to find their "swagger" after the loss in New York. Kyle Lowry said they've got to "start making the game fun again" following an earlier defeat to the Warriors.

The last time they were stuck in a losing skid that big - in early December of 2013, just before the Rudy Gay deal - Casey cancelled a practice in Phoenix and planned an impromptu bowling trip instead. Thanks in large part to their salaries and celebrity status, it's easy to forget that professional athletes are employees like the rest of us. They go to work, they come home to their families and the general stresses of life and do the same the next day. They have good days and bad. They have distractions, both related and unrelated to the job. Sometimes, they need an escape in the middle of a long season.

"It's that time of year," said the Raptors coach. "Monotony sets in. You want to make sure guys are enjoying coming to work."

"We just went out there, we understood we were in a slump, we just went out there and had fun and just put everything else to the side," DeRozan added. "Went out there and had fun with one another and just understood what got us to this point. That's all we focused on. We had fun, we laughed. I think that helps a lot."

"We were coming in with so much pressure, trying to solve the whole situation," said Vasquez, who has been starting in place of Lowry, held out the last two games to rest a series of nagging injuries. "Everybody was trying to get the answer. We did it a bit selfish. I put myself first, I took some bad shots, I made some mistakes. When you look at yourself and you know what the problem is, you understand how to solve it. Coach came out with a different mindset yesterday. It got the pressure to go away, just to relax and enjoy ourselves. We have a good team. We have good players. We have a good locker room. We have a great coaching staff. We just need to keep believing in ourselves."