Title: Casey gets better of Raptors again, and 9 other takeaways from an overtime loss to the Pistons
Date: March 3, 2019
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I wrote about Dwane Casey’s Pistons beating the Raptors in another tight game despite Kyle Lowry’s best efforts.
Kyle Lowry did not want to lose to Dwane Casey again, it seemed.
He entered a second matchup with his former head coach on the heels of a few really strong games and went to work early trying to carry a slow-starting Raptors squad against Casey’s Detroit Pistons. The Raptors were stuck in mud and couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a bass fiddle, while Blake Griffin came out looking madder than a wet hen. Lowry looked like the only Raptor with a burr under his saddle.
Sorry. The Caseyisms just flow naturally after a tough Raptors loss. And despite Lowry’s best efforts, Sunday was just that, with Casey earning a second down-to-the-wire victory against his former team, 112-107 in overtime. In a reversal of stories from the last time out, it was the Pistons who got up big early and the Raptors who chased their way back, turning a 13-point deficit into an 11-point lead before seeing it fritter away in the fourth quarter.
A storyteller would point to this all setting up a battle of late-game chess between the ousted bench boss and his replacement, Nick Nurse. In the previous meeting between the teams in Toronto, Casey earned an emotional victory by out-executing Toronto down the stretch. This time around, the Raptors drew up a nice after-timeout play to get Danny Green a decent look at a three. When that missed, Lowry then missed a tip-out triple, only for OG Anunoby to swoop in and tie it.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 