Raptors stars fail to bounce back in Game 2 and second round hopes now look grim

TORONTO – DeMar DeRozan slammed his hand on the padding behind the Raptors net, walked back to the bench and looked up at the jumbotron.

A timeout with 2:59 remaining in the fourth quarter was only delaying the inevitable.

There was plenty of hope for the Raptors heading into Game 2 with the Washington Wizards. Hope that much like last year, the home team would bounce back after a shaky start to the series; hope that their back court, centered around DeRozan and Kyle Lowry would start playing like all stars again; and hope, looking at the bigger picture, that the second game at home would represent a jumping off point to giving themselves – and their fans – something more than a first-round series to get excited about.

Instead, by the time the final seconds had ticked away Tuesday, the sold out crowd that was still chanting ‘Let’s Go Raptors’ while their team was being blown out in the fourth quarter, had almost entirely cleared out the Air Canada Centre and Toronto was staring at a 2-0 series deficit after a 117-106 loss to the Wizards.

It certainly wasn’t the response Dwane Casey and the Raptors were hoping for or expecting.

While the Raptors came out looking like a different team to start Game 2 – DeRozan connected on his first three attempts from the field and Jonas Valanciunas established a post presence – foul trouble forced Kyle Lowry to the bench early in the second quarter and that seemed to change the momentum of the game completely in the Wizards favour.

With Lowry glued to the bench, Washington scored 37 points in the second quarter and headed into halftime up 11. The Raptors all-star point guard finished the game with just six points and four assists.

"It's tough to lose Kyle [Lowry] early," DeRozan said after the loss. "Not having the point guard you're accustomed to, at a certain time the rotation and everything, it was tough."

While the Raptors rallied at the beginning of the second half, they were never able to reclaim the lead and fell victim to a team that was knocking down shots from all areas of the floor.

“They made the shots we wanted them to take with challenged hands,” Casey said. “I really thought that was the difference in the game, more so than defensive breakdowns. They made some tough shots.”

Washington finished the game shooting just over 53 per cent from the floor and 47.6 per cent from three-point range.

They were led, unsurprisingly, by their two-headed monster of a backcourt in John Wall and Bradley Beal, who both responded after lacklustre performances in Game 1.

Wall finished the game with 28 points and 17 assists while Beal had 26 points and shot 50 per cent from the field.

"I think the difference in the game was [John] Wall hitting his threes," Casey said. "Beal came off his pin downs and knocked his shots down, even his threes. They were four-for-nine between them and once they saw the ball go in the hole I thought that was the difference, and got us spaced out a little more."

The odds are now stacked heavily against the Raptors, who will play Game 3 in Washington Friday. According to an article by Sportsnet’s Michael Grange, teams who’ve fallen behind 2-0 at home to open a seven-game series have gone on to win the series just three times in 29 tries.

If this series finishes with the Raptors on the losing end, there will certainly be plenty of questions around what went wrong for a team that had such a promising start to the season. And like it or not, there will be no shortage of those pointing fingers at coach Casey.

And laying a portion of the blame at the coach’s feet wouldn’t be unwarranted either.

While Casey deserves a ton of credit for turning this team from a basement dweller into a back-to-back Atlantic division champion, the Raptors seemed to haved regressed overall year-over-year.

Sure they set a new franchise record for regular season wins (49), but a team that once prided itself on playing pesky, hard-nosed basketball now lives and dies with their offence and more specifically, their inconsistent jump shooting.

Their defence has been an on-going concern all season and Casey, who was brought into the organization as a defensive specialist, has been unable to make the necessary adjustments successfully.

There have also been no shortage of questions around how he’s managed the Raptors roster – from keeping Terrence Ross in the starting lineup to limiting Jonas Valanciunas’s fourth-quarter minutes and leaving James Johnson on the bench in situations where one would think a player of his skill set should be utilized.

No, Casey’s future may not hang on whether or not the Raptors advance to the second round, there’s a lot more that goes into firing a coach than that, including looking at who's available to potentially replace him, but it would be naïve to think his job is definitely safe if the season ends with a first-round exit.

That said, there’s still a long way to go before Masai Ujiri has to consider replacing his coach.

As DeMar DeRozan put it, this season is “far from over.”

“We still have to go into their place, confidence still high,” DeRozan said. “All we have to do is take it game by game. Anything can happen. We’re not down on ourselves and we understand what we have to do. These two games are an example and we just have to learn from it and understand we have to come out in Washington a different team.”