Raptors vs Wizards Final Score: Toronto Wins Ugly 96 - 88

Five straight.

Three straight on the road for the first time in five years.

And now, a game and a half back of the Philadelphia 76ers for the ninth spot in the Eastern Conference.

It wasn't pretty, but to be a good team you need to win ugly sometimes, and the Toronto Raptors did just that tonight, beating the Washington Wizards 96 to 88.

For This Win, We Can Thank...

The Washington Wizards.

Frankly, against most other NBA teams tonight, I doubt this would have been a Raptors' win. The team was good in stretches, but awful in others, including to end the game, where they made some bizarre and lackadaisical decisions with the ball, allowing the Wizards to hang around.

But for the most part Washington played like they were more interested in heading to the locker room to watch the end of Indian vs Michigan State (weren't we all), and it showed en route to the L. 16 turnovers, under 40 per cent shooting, an underwhelming number of points in the paint despite major size advantages down low, frequent defensive lapses...

...those were some of the highlights, or lowlights, as Toronto came away with the road win.

MVP:

I'm going with DeMar DeRozan who had 24 points on 18 shots. He also chipped in three rebounds, three assists and three steals for good measure and while maybe didn't have as many highlight moments as teammate Rudy Gay, gave the Raptors their most steady production all night.

He also did this:

LVP:

Hard to single any one Raptor out tonight for this category. Rudy Gay was only 10 of 25 but made some big plays, and was enough of a threat to get teammates open looks.

Alan Anderson was 1 of 9, but had five rebounds and played some solid D off the bench.

Amir Johnson had a very quiet game by his standards of late, but hardly did anything that was detrimental to the team.

So for tonight, think we'll refrain from appointing anyone.

Comment of the game:

via Brad James

Matt Devlin needs Mr. Microphone

Because it leads us to...

Matt and Jack Classics:

Matt and Leo tonight in some epic awful broadcast work. It started early with the Syracuse talk, then morphed into a bizarre discussion about rapper Wale, as can be seen here.

This then prompted some Twitter shots fired back by Wale, and well, you can read the rest.

We'll have the full recap in the AM as usual but for the Wizards side of the story, make sure you check out the crew at Bullets Forever.