LOS ANGELES—It was nice that the Toronto Raptors got an extra night in Los Angeles after Monday’s game, some of the players got to spend time with family and friends, the rest didn’t have to rush to a charter aircraft and a three-hour flight to Houston that would have landed in wee hours of the morning.
It was made possible by the fact that Toronto had played on consecutive nights and there was going to be no official practice on Tuesday afternoon, a traditional day off in the NBA after back-to-back games.
While the rest was nice for the tired-out athletes, Raptors coach Dwane Casey would have preferred a couple of hours in a gym somewhere trying to work the kinks out of a defensive system that’s all tangled up.