BROOKLYN—There’s no big secret about what makes the Raptors as good as they can be.
They have to guard ferociously, defend as a group rather than as a collection of independent operators, and apply whatever tactical moves they expect to work each night out.
When they do, they have a chance to win each game; when they don’t, things can get ugly,
“We always say how good we can be on defence and all those things but you gotta do it,” Pascal Siakam said after a lacklustre performance Wednesday night. “It’s not just a matter of, ‘Oh, we got this, we got that,’ this is the NBA.