By Norman Castro
EBC New York Bureau
TORONTO (Eagle News) – On a chilly Friday spring night, the Toronto Raptors looked to lock up the top seed in the Eastern Conference as they faced the Indiana Pacers. In a possible second round match up in the playoffs, this showed to be a preview of what might come.
The Air Canada Centre was buzzing from the opening tip off, and the Raptors were more than happy to answer the call of its fans. For the first time in franchise history, Toronto clinched the top seed in the East as they easily defeated the Pacers 92-73 behind Serge Ibaka’s 25 points.
As the waning minutes of the fourth quarter ticked away, Air Canada Centre stayed on their feet to cheer and relish the moment of the Raptors securing the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
“It’s a feeling of gratification from where we started seven years ago, at the bottom of the Conference, the building process,” said Raptors Head Coach, Dwane Casey on the organization’s accomplishment. “There’s a sense of gratification, watching the growth of the program, the development of the program from scratch and building [the team] into a number one team in the Conference. It’s good; we’re still not satisfied and we still need to get some things accomplished, but I know everybody in that locker room had something to do with it.”
The Raptors took a commanding lead early, finding easy baskets through good ball movement and cuts to the middle while the Pacers just couldn’t find the bottom of the bucket. The Raptors led at halftime 45-33 and continued to hold onto their lead and finished the game strong in its entirety.
Despite earning the top seed, Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry says the journey is not over.
“The journey is not over,” said Lowry. “We have to grind out and continue to grow and get better.”
DeMar DeRozan added that the team’s confidence and hard work can carry them through the playoffs.
“It just shows that if you put your mind to something and work towards something like a goal, it can be accomplished,” said DeRozan. “We did that [and] now we have another goal that we want to reach as well. So this just gives us confidence to know we can do it and take it to another level.”
With the regular season winding down, Coach Casey still wants to iron out any kinks before heading into the playoffs.
“We have a lot of mental stuff to work on, nuances, we’re going to add things offensively within what we already have,” Casey said. “Those [changes] is what we will work on going into the playoffs next week. This thing is about playing hard and toughness. I thought we’ve showed that the last couple of games.”
(Eagle News Service)
