Opinion | Raptors did what they said they would do: Play harder, play better and win

That was kind of a crazy, out-of-nowhere night but all due credit to the Raptors because they did precisely what they said they would do.

The put two ugly losses behind them, played far harder and better than they had and won a big road game with ease.

Maybe it wasn’t the end of days Saturday in Atlanta now that we think about it, right?

Anyway, it should be fun around the old gym tonight but I wonder just how big the crowd will be. It will be boisterous, of that I am sure, but I wonder if it’ll run out to 20,000 or so because I get a sense a lot of folks are still very leery about going from all kinds of restrictions to basically one. I know I am, at least a little bit and it’d likely ease my mind a bit if I knew everyone else in the place was fully vaccinated but MLSE didn’t feel that was necessary, a truly odd call by a company that took a leadership role from Day 1 of this mess.

But that’s for tonight.

For this morning, there’s this last look at last night’s win.

(Oh, a digression: Anyone who remotely thinks of praising MLB owners for being allegedly close to deal today after they intentionally dithered for months to get to the precipice of disaster just doesn’t get it)

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THREE POINTERS
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Setting a tone

Scottie Barnes stripping a somewhat lazy James Johnson of the ball seconds after the opening tip – Johnson was easing into the possession when Barnes surprised him, forced a turnover and eventually got fouled – was an energetic start.

And it gave Nick Nurse an idea.

With his team obviously more full of vim and vigour than it was on the weekend, he decided to tell them to force the issue even more.

It got the Raptors going, it got the Nets off guard and away they went.

“You could see we were kind of ready and energetic and I thought I’d take advantage,” he said.

“I just said, let’s stay up everybody, let’s get up and we created another turnover early off the pressure.

Yeah, they jump-started themselves but I was just putting a little, making sure we keep going by calling some of that stuff.”

It probably won’t work a second time on consecutive nights but it sure set a tone last night.

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Getting revenge, sort of.

Remember last season when Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards dunked viciously on Yuta Watanabe and Watanabe said he didn’t care, that he’d always go for the block because that’s the right play to try to make?

Well, he got a bit of revenge in the most electrifying play of the game, a rather thunderous dunk that had everyone out of their seats. It wasn’t an easy play but you could feel the sense of satisfaction Yuta was feeling when it was over.

“Yuta made a tough play,” Nurse said. “He’s never afraid to go in and make a play, a consequence play at the rim at both sides. Right. And he was on the delivering this time. It was good to see.”

Mighty impressive indeed.

Prompted Nick to make this comment to our friend Takeshi Shibata in Tokyo, who covers Yuta and the Raptors from afar.

“They’ll be playing that one in Japan, Takeshi, don’t you think?”

And Takeshi, being a cool dude, was quite impressed but also quite worldly when we tweeted at each other.

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An impressive outing

It certainly was a solid game from Malachi Flynn and we’ll take a deeper look at him sometime over the next couple of games.

Not sure what clicked last night but after a very up and down season when he simply didn’t play hard enough or smart enough to meet the demands of his coach or his team, he sure did last night.

Calm but aggressive, tough but not overly-active, he was a true point guard on a night when his team needed him so all the credit in the world to him.

“I think my main thing is just trying to be aggressive, not necessarily to score or to pass, just being aggressive and seeing what the defence gives you and just kind of reading them and then going off of that,” he said.

I don’t know if it’s sustainable because it hasn’t been all season but if it is, the happiest guy in the world is going to be Fred VanVleet, who won’t have to play 38 minutes a night.

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Okay, we should start compiling the mail for the weekend and you do that by clicking on [email protected] and sending in your questions.

Do it today, please.

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