Toronto Raptors Shatter The Pistons 123-94

Last night was important for the Raptors and was a chance for them to get back on track after their loss to the Milwaukee Bucks last Friday. Their win against the Pistons put them back in the winning column with both Lowry and DeRozan each scoring 20 points.

Commenting on the reality check the Bucks handed Toronto, DeRozan said,

“Not to make no excuse, but a game like last game, we kind of needed it to knock us back on track, especially coming off a break. We understand what we needed to do, what we need to get back to, and we did that tonight.”

Kyle Lowry had a strong performance last night adding six rebounds and four assists to his season totals, and scoring six of eight three-point shots allowing the Raptors to hold a lead over the Celtics for first place in the NBA Eastern Conference. Pascal Siakam also helped the Raptors with eleventh points, five rebounds and six assists in the twenty-four minutes he played in last nights game.

As for the Pistons, Andre Drummond, he led scoring for Detroit with eighteen points and eighteen assists. For Detroit, the troubled franchise has lost the last three games and had had only one win in the last seven played and are now sitting eighth in the standings.

Detroit coach Stan Van Gundy commented on the loss stated,

“Obviously we had a lot of offensive struggles and our bad offence led to some bad defence. Two main things that have been pretty common over the last two games on the defensive end that we’ve talked about is we are not doing a good job getting back and getting matched up.”

Toronto Raptors

Lowry and DeRozan both scored 20 points in a game that saw Toronto leading in three of four quarters. Jakob Poeltl has the crowd in high spirits as he sent a one-handed slam dunk in the net against Drummond giving Toronto a 109-83 lead with 6 minutes left in play.

Detroit came back strong after the first half, but Toronto responded by scoring fourteen back-to-back points in the third quarter, and as they say, the rest was history with Toronto leading by sixteen points for the remainder of the game.

Raptors coach, Dwane Casey commented on the Raptors response in the third quarter stating,

“”We knew that they played (Sunday) night so we wanted to make sure we kept the pace, and use our speed. That’s something we didn’t do the first game back from the all-star break.”

The Pistons finished the first half with a late surge to shorten the lead to six points. DeRozan scored thirteen points in the first half, Lowry scored twelve and had five assists, and with the Raptors shooting 51%, it saw Detroit giving up nine turnovers. The stong response by the Raptors will fuel basketball sportsbetting sites in the upcoming games as they set odds, which likely will see Toronto favoured to win as they next play the Orlando Magic tomorrow at 7 pm, then face off against the Hornets on Sunday

The Raptors furthered their lead in the second half and pushed their lead to twelve. This saw Pistons coach Van Gundy calling a timeout, but with Toronto’s superior play and defence, it seemed little Detroit did had an impact. Detroit will have a chance for redemption on the 7th of March when Toronto will visit the Pistons at the Little Caesars Arena.