Injury Update [Update]: Did DeRozan get hurt last night against the Spurs?

The Raptors weren’t going to win all 82 games, but last night’s give-away loss to the Spurs still stings. To Toronto’s credit, they went down swinging, hanging in tight with San Antonio despite a sizable rebounding discrepancy (55 to 34, including 18 o-boards for the Spurs), and a complete inability to hit a 3 (10-for-37, good for 27 percent). Eventually though, the Spurs’ superior execution won out — which is also about as good as a Spurs epitaph as you’re likely to find.

But now, some possible bad news.

Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun relayed some info from an on-the-scene Mike Ganter regarding the condition of DeMar DeRozan after the game.

There’s not much more to report here, as the Raptors have not made any additional announcements as to DeRozan’s status.

That said though, a knee and hip issue for DeMar would not be great, as you can imagine. With Valanciunas listed as day-to-day, and Kyle Lowry, uh, struggling, the Raptors will need to find scoring from somewhere. And while the Raptors’ new passing offense is a good idea — particularly when in action with the all-bench unit — the kind of elite one-on-one scoring ability that DeRozan possesses is extremely important. He draws the kind of attention from a defense that opens up passing lanes and open shots for the rest of the team.

This isn’t a new concept (e.g. good player is important to team, news at 11), but we’ll keep you apprised of the situation as DeRozan news gets out.

UPDATE!

So the news isn’t great, but it’s also not the worst. From the Toronto Star’s Doug Smith:

Given all of the painful knee and ankle injuries we’ve seen through the first week of the season, this comes as something of a relief. Still, the Raptors want and need DeRozan at 100 percent, so here’s hoping he’s back soon.