Raptors return favour with sweep of Wizards but playoff success all that matters; Valanciunas needs to get back to passing; Casey must stop playing with fire with starters

To paraphrase (poorly) the original Star Wars trilogy: This wasn’t the sweep the Raptors were looking for.
No, the four-game playoff wipeout Washington hung on the Raptors would have been far preferable than the four-game regular season sweep the Raptors completed with Tuesday’s convincing win over Washington. Back in the pre-season, Patrick Patterson said that the playoffs matter, not these meetings “Whether I drop 100, whether we go out there and embarrass them, it doesn’t matter,” Patterson had said. Still, mentally, handling the Wizards so many times consecutively now has to give the Raptors a boost. It might just be a temporary thing though, since the playoffs are still three months away and the season series with Washington is now done. This success might be a memory by then.
Of course, this season is all about what happens in the post-season. This record-tying winning streak is nice, and worth savouring, but even if the team wins 30 straight, but still falls in the first round, significant changes will come and the season will be seen as a failure.
PREMATURE ADULATION?
Wrote about the growth of Jonas Valanciunas as a passer a few days ago. Oops. At the time, Valanciunas had doubled his assist rate and was doing a fine job of moving the ball. Since, he’s gone two games without registering an assist.
While Valanciunas has shot 13-for-20 in those two contests, he needs to start passing more again. He told me that besides helping the offence and his game, it cuts down on his turnovers and that’s true. Valanciunas had four turnovers against Washington, his most since six turnovers against the Wizards earlier this month. In the six games in between, Valanciunas only had one turnover in each outing.
While the Wizards clearly give him trouble, Valanciunas did a much better job defending the John Wall-Marcin Gortat pick-and-roll than he has in the past and also scored more easily than before. If not for early foul trouble, Valanciunas probably posts a 20-point, 15-rebound game.
TAKE THEM OUT
Toronto’s inability to blow out opponents or stomp on them early enough to get the starters some rest has been well documented here.
That’s not on Dwane Casey, if games are still in doubt, he needs to play his starters (and usually Patrick Patterson) a lot in fourth quarters. While Casey and his staff have done a great job this season overall (for example, his timeout usage to stop runs was solid on Wednesday) they would be well-served better recognizing opportunities to get the reserves in earlier.
Casey is cautious and knows an 8-0 run is always just around the corner for an opponent, which would force him to bring back the starters anyway, but how about crossing that bridge when you come to it?
Casey almost got burned in this one, when Lowry got hurt at a point of the game he should have been sitting on the bench. Lowry, DeRozan and Valanciunas should have been done for the night either of the three times the team went up by 14 points midway through the fourth.
Instead, Valanciunas and DeRozan inexplicably got re-inserted.
They should have been out at least two minutes before they were removed, maybe longer.
AROUND THE RIM
Some good news for DeMar DeRozan: He won’t be seeing Otto Porter again this season (unless Washington somehow rallies to make the playoffs). DeRozan has solved just about all of his old adversaries in this breakout season, but Porter still has his number defensively. Porter is smart, patient, and is much longer than DeRozan and uses all of that to prevent him from doing what he wants to offensively.
Why don’t the Wiz shoot threes anymore? I thought they had banished that poor, old thinking that hurt them so much in the past. Guess not and guess Randy Wittman is again on the hot seat.