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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - With a dozen of trembling microphones held up to his face, Gregg Popovich stared down a brave soul who dared to ask him about his accomplishments.

It went something like this:

"Is this just another game for you or is there a little special meaning based on what's on the line for you personally?," the reporter inquired.

"What are you taking about?," a mischievous Popovich shot back, playing coy.

"Well the fact that if you win tonight you get 1000 wins..."

"Psssshhhh, gimme a break," the Spurs head coach said, squashing that topic before dismissing a couple others.

Good luck getting him to talk about it, but his team and nearly two-decade-long pairing with Tim Duncan continues to serve as a benchmark for success in the NBA and throughout professional sports.

"That program right there is where everybody's trying to get to," said Raptors coach Dwane Casey, moments after his team pulled out an unlikely 87-82 win over the defending champs, delaying Popovich's milestone for at least another 24 hours. "You know what game you're going to get against the San Antonio Spurs and that's what we're trying to build to at both ends of the floor."

Experiencing ups and downs while searching for offensive and defensive balance since the calendar turned to 2015, the Raptors are still trying to establish an identity, hoping to borrow a page out of Pop's handbook.

For most of the season, Casey's club has ranked among the NBA's top two or three teams in offensive efficiency, scoring at an impressive rate that, at one point, seemed out of character for a group that once prided itself on the defensive end. The Raptors have reached 120 points nine times so far in 2014-15, six in regulation, something they accomplished just once last season, in a triple overtime game.

Alas, this has come at the expense of Casey's passion: the defence, which was ranked 22nd in the league entering Sunday's meeting with San Antonio.

Despite all their success, their historic start to the season and second-place standing in the Eastern Conference, this has been a tough reality for Casey to swallow, understandably so. Sometimes shots fall, sometimes they don't. Defensive effort is, generally, the one thing they can control, it's what wins in the NBA come April, May and ultimately in June - a time of the year the Spurs have thrived with their great balance.

Asked what stands out about his counterpart before the game, Casey cited Popovich's knack for adapting philosophy to his personnel. You got the feeling the Raptors' coach was speaking with his own dilemma in mind.

"Well, just the way he sticks to who he is," Casey said of Pop. "Well, he sticks to who he is but he's also been flexible. He's evolved as the game has evolved. He's really become more of an up-tempo coach, opening up the floor, shooting the three versus getting it into [Duncan] or David [Robinson], [the] style of play he used to run and was very successful with at that time. Very innovative but still he's true to his roots and to who he is and [is] kind of the envy of all the coaches."

Indeed, the Spurs have changed their face over the years. For 10 straight seasons, Popovich's first with the team, San Antonio was giving up fewer than 100 points per 100 possessions, ranking among the league's best each year and winning four titles over that span. Defensively, they haven't accomplished that feat in seven years since, but their offence has ranked in the top 10 in five of those seasons, prioritizing pristine ball movement and three-point shooting.

Prior to a game in Indianapolis last month, Casey seemed to acknowledge that his current squad may be better suited to score than defend. It was the first time he had made such a concession since arriving in Toronto four years ago.

But the Raptors' defensive-minded bench boss isn't likely to co-author a sequel to the Suns' documentary ":07 Seconds or Less". A tiger can't change his stripes. He hasn't given up on his team's defensive principles, case in point: Sunday's game and the lineup change that won it for Toronto.

Calling a pre-game audible, Casey opted to sacrifice spacing in favour of a more athletic and defensively capable first unit, starting James Johnson over Greivis Vasquez.

"It was for defensive purposes, to match up with Kawhi Leonard, give us a physical presence with him," Casey said after the win. "I was worried about his minutes but he was okay, his hammy was okay. We were watching him but he came through with flying colours."

With Johnson starting, the Raptors offence was forced to adapt on the fly. He and DeMar DeRozan don't give you much in the way of three-point shooting on the wing, but Johnson's hard cuts to the rim and ability to finish seemed to come in handy.

Although they were fortunate San Antonio's shooters misfired on a number of favourable looks, particularly late in the fourth quarter, the Raptors' defence was sparked by the change. The Spurs shot 33 per cent from the field, 25 per cent from long distance and were held without a point for nearly half of the third quarter.

Ironically, the game-winning shot came from Johnson, who drilled a corner three with less than a minute to go. Prior to that shot, the fiery forward was a perfect 14-for-14 from inside three-feet over the past two games - since returning from a four-game absence with a hamstring injury - and 0-for-2 from outside 16-feet, both airballs.

"I thought he did an admirable job defensively, rebounding," Casey said of Johnson. "He got that big rebound at the end. Those are the things we have to have at that position, to make those gritty plays."

"I think we set the bar high," Johnson added after the win. "And we've got to keep going to that standard, we can't go back to playing how we was, when we was in that little slump. We know what we're capable of, we've got to keep playing that way."

With this victory as the bar, the Raptors have now won four of five games against teams over .500 after dropping nine of their previous 10.

As the all-star break approaches and with their next six contests coming against winning competition, the question remains: who are these guys, exactly?

"We're still trying to find out who we are, develop who we are more so than [using] every game, every night as a litmus test," Casey said. "We've got to use these games to get better, to improve in different areas more so than anything else and I've said that the whole year. We're still in the growing process, our program is no where as established as San Antonio is right now. That's the level, as far as the envy of Pop, of what we're trying to build our program to be."