Raptors' Adrian Griffin clinches 1st NBA win as coach
When Toronto Raptors head coach Adrian Griffin needed a bucket late in the fourth quarter against the Philadelphia 76ers it was Stanley Johnson who delivered, scooping up a rebound from Dewan Hernandez and nailing the floater to put Toronto up two.
Seconds later Paul Watson Jr. scooped up an errant pass and iced the Raptors' 125-121 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night.
On August 12.
At Walt Disney World.
Imagine reading that in February. It's been a bizarre year.
When it comes to meaningless games, Wednesday night's game was actually pretty entertaining.
Toronto's regular head coach Nick Nurse decided to hand the reigns of the team over to assistant coach Griffin for the evening, letting him get his first NBA head coaching experience.
"You really can’t put it into words. It really touches me," Griffin said after the game. "These guys we go to war with them, we won a championship together, the highs and lows and they’re your family, they are your brothers out there. I’m not too far removed from these guys. They think I am. They think I’m an old head, but I remember being out there on the floor so I have always tried to show them the type of respect I wanted as a player and that’s really helped me as a coach. To have all those guys - first I have to thank coach Nurse. He didn’t have to do this. Honestly, for one night I felt like Cinderella. I had the glass slippers on and it was great. Tomorrow it’s back to reality but it was an awesome feeling.”
After a slow first half led almost exclusively by 19 points from Lowry, Griffin was content to let his bench do most of the work in the second half.
Chris Boucher showed no signs of slowing down, following up his career-high 25 point night against the Milwaukee Bucks with another impressive showing.
Late in the third quarter, Boucher came flying in to tip in a missed shot from Terence Davis II. Less than a minute later he recorded his third of four blocks on the night, sending a Shake Milton layup the other way.
"That’s game-changing play, that’s momentum-swinging play," Raptors guard Norman Powell said. "Especially in an environment like this where you don’t have the crowd to feed off of and you only have your teammates and you have a guy like Chris that brings a lot of energy making two big plays like that back-to-back it can really fuel guys, get them going, get them a little more adrenaline, moving faster on the defensive end, making plays. We need those types of plays, especially in this environment, and I’m glad to see not only Chris but a lot of the guys to have an opportunity to play and make those winning plays and that’s what we need more of."
Boucher finished the night with a team-high 19 points and nine rebounds to go along with his career-high four blocks.
The fourth quarter was really when the fun began. As the Raptors began mounting a comeback, the bench — full of the usual starters — began going wild, cheering on their counterparts.
"We were just having fun," Raptors guard Kyle Lowry said. "That's the one thing about this situation is when you're able to kind of have some fun, and at the end of the day, we're all NBA players, but it's a small fraternity that we're in, and we're both supporting our team. It was cool."
Johnson tied the game up at 121 with just 32 seconds to go in regulation and then sealed the game with his putback floater with 4.9 remaining.
It was enough for Griffin to win his first game as an NBA head coach, the first of many, according to Lowry.
"From the first tip of the game, he did an unbelievable job," Lowry said. "Hopefully Coach Griffin will get a chance to be a head coach soon. We’ll miss him, but hopefully, he gets his opportunity to be a head coach. We gave him a bit of a water shower. We forgot to get him the basketball but he’ll have plenty more wins to come and he’ll get that basketball."
The Raptors will wrap up their regular season on Friday when they take on the Denver Nuggets at 1:30 p.m. ET. After that, it'll be on to the playoffs where Toronto will get the Brooklyn Nets in the opening round.
