An overtime game in New York, a long wait at an airport, a middle-of-the-night flight back home to Toronto.
Less than 24 hours after beating the Knicks on the road, the Raptors had "every excuse in the world" to lose to the Orlando Magic on Monday night, said coach Dwane Casey.
"That's what I told them at halftime," he said.
But, as has become their habit this season, the Raptors used a strong second half to defeat the Magic 95-82, behind 18 points from Lou Williams and 17 points and eight assists from Kyle Lowry.
"I don't want to give our guys an excuse but we get in at 2 in the morning, come through Customs; we have to sit at the gate in New York forever — I don't know if they do that on purpose or what — and then we get in late, back-to-back, overtime game," Casey said.
"But in the second half we found our voice, our energy, our spirit. . . we found our defensive mojo in the second half."
Amir Johnson finished with 11 points, while Patrick Patterson chipped in with 10 for the East-leading Raptors (19-6), who played their ninth game without injured all-star DeMar DeRozan.
Tobias Harris had 18 points to top Orlando (10-17), while Ben Gordon had 16.
The victory was Toronto's 10th straight over Orlando.
It wasn't the prettiest of victories, who needed overtime in an ugly 95-90 win over the Knicks. But on Monday the Raptors turned an eight-point deficit late in the first half, to a 71-65 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
A three-pointer by Channing Frye cut Toronto's lead to just two points with 9:28 to play. But the Raptors play their best basketball in fourth quarters at the Air Canada Centre, and by the time Greivis Vasquez drained a floating jumper with six minutes to play, the Raptors were up by 14 in front of another capacity crowd of 19,800 fans at Air Canada Centre.
"Energy," Patterson said, on the difference in the second half. "In that first half we couldn't use (Sunday) night as an excuse. Although guys were a little bit tired and exhausted, we had a great motivational speech in the locker-room at halftime and then guys just came out and stepped it up.
"It started off with Kyle being the leader that he is and it just carried over to everyone else."
Lowry admitted the night of travel hadn't been easy.
"I wouldn't use anything as an excuse but it took us awhile to get back," Lowry said. "It's part of the league, we know we're always going to take long trips on back-to-backs, so it's all good."
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