Raptors have a lot of work to do if they want to compete with NBA’s elite

TORONTO – About an hour and a half before the opening tip Dwane Casey was talking about the importance of taking care of the basketball.

The Raptors were about to go up against the NBA’s hottest team in the Atlanta Hawks, a team that heading into Friday had gone 24-2 over a span of about six weeks.

Over that month and a half the Hawks had also become one of the NBA’s top defensive squads, holding opponents to a league-low 93 points per game on just 42.3 per cent shooting.

Making the most of offensive possessions and limiting turnovers would thus be all the more important.

“If you don’t take care of the ball it will be a blowout,” Casey said before the game.

And he was right.

The Raptors turned the ball over 19 times Friday night and the Hawks made them pay for their mistakes, scoring 24 points off those turnovers in a dominant 110-89 victory.

It was Atlanta’s 11th win in a row as they continue to prove why they’re currently considered the class of the Eastern Conference.

The Hawks had six players score in double figures including Al Horford, who led the way with 22 points, five rebounds and five assists in just under 28 minutes, and as a team they shot an impressive 52 per cent from three-point range.

“That team is a well-oiled machine,” Casey said after the game. “They are hitting on all cylinders and we shake their hand because they are playing the game the right way on both ends of the floor.”

The loss, which was Raptors sixth in their last eight games, led to a long postgame discussion amongst the players, and though he wouldn’t reveal the details of that conversation, James Johnson did give his opinion on what he feels has gone wrong the last few weeks.

“We just started to get a little overconfident,” Johnson said. “We started taking it to heart that we were a good team and we haven’t accomplished nothing yet.”

The Raptors allowed the Hawks to shoot a combined 61 per cent from the floor and they got almost no production from third-year starters Terrence Ross and Jonas Valanciunas.

Valanciunas, who didn’t hit a field goal in the first half, finished the game with just four points and Ross, who started the game 0-for-5 from the field before being pulled out for James Johnson, finished with just five points.

“As I’ve always said with [Ross] and JV, we want them to be old heads from day one and that doesn’t happen [in this league,]” Casey said. “Their up-and-down curve is going to be the most consistent thing about them right now. [Ross] is going to hit an uptick, when that is I don’t know, but it’s going to happen.”

Ross’s struggles have been a hot topic of conversation amongst Raptors fans as of late and there is undoubtedly a portion of the fan base – and media contingent for that matter – who believe that Johnson should be given the opportunity to start in his place.

He continued to build a case for himself Friday.

Along with DeMar DeRozan, who led all Raptors with 25 points, Johnson was the lone bright spot for the team, chipping in off the bench with 17 points, six rebounds and two blocked shots.

It’s impossible to deny that he brings a more all-round game to the floor than Ross, but the 23-year-old, when his game is on, is the Raptors second most effective three-point shooter and that threat opens lanes for DeRozan and Kyle Lowry.

That said, the Raptors problems at the moment are bigger than just Ross – first and foremost they need to recommit to defence – and as Casey kept stressing post-game, it’s going to take the entire team working together to push through this current slump.

“Whatever wall we’ve hit, we’ve hit it and we got to get a sledgehammer and all of us together have to bust through it,” Casey said. “It’s something we’ve just got to fight through and grind it out.”

The positive side: they’re still alone atop the Atlantic Division at 26-13 and part of a wide open chase for first place in the Eastern Conference with about half a season left to play.

“Four or five games separate a lot of the teams,” Casey said before the game. “It’s wide open for the taking and that’s what I told our guys. Let’s not be satisfied with just winning the division. Lets fight, scratch and claw and get [something] better.”