Pelicans’ Alexis Ajinca plays in Toronto with his mind on Paris

The New Orleans Pelicans and Toronto Raptors meet Friday night at the Air Canada Centre.

Casey did not say why Carroll made a decision to change his shoes during training camp but this is definitely a different reason for a player missing games.

“I wanted to make sure that if he had relatives or anything there, that he had at least spoken to ’em, or if anybody was in harm’s way right in that area”, Gentry said.

Carroll said he had total rest from basketball activities during his layoff and was feeling “way better than I did before”.

“Once I get home, I’m gonna make my wife do a few wifely duties with my foot”, Carroll said, leaving the exact details of that process up to everyone’s imagination.

“That was the good news”, Ajinca said.

Despite DeRozan’s poor shot selection at times, and his maddeningly slow pace (he always seems to see the pass a second too late), he finished with a well-rounded 15 points, 11 assists and 6 rebounds.

Ajinca had other things on his mind.

Well, maybe not. Carroll indeed had a rough opening frame, but it continued into the second and he was just 2-for-9 from the field for five points in the half. “You think you are safe and you are just walking down the street and the next thing you know, people start shooting”. My family, everybody’s safe.

“Pretty much all of my family is in Paris”, he said afterward. My prayers go to my family, France and Paris right now and I hope everybody is safe.

16 Eric Gordon scored 16 of his season-high 30 points in the first quarter, hitting on 6-of-10 shots. Patterson hit a 3-pointer for the final points of the third quarter that gave the Raptors a 72-61 lead. “I let Gordon get like 20 points”. Kyle Lowry led the way with four three-pointers on eight attempts.

The team is clearly much better defensively with Carroll in the rotation, and he was sorely missed in all three of the games he sat out, but perhaps none moreso than Tuesday’s 111-109 loss to NY, when the Raptors struggled to contain Knicks superstar Carmelo Anthony. Lowry hit two 3-pointers and Patrick Patterson and Luis Scola also hit 3s to help Toronto outscore New Orleans 31-21 in the third.

Toronto opened the fourth on a 16-5 run, extended its lead to 20 points before the midway point of the quarter and rolled to victory from there. I think we held them to 34 percent. The Raptors took an 11-point lead into the fourth.

“We felt that we were not playing the style of basketball that we knew we could play at both ends”, DeRozan said of Toronto’s halftime talk. “During the whole game, I was trying to get this out of my mind so I’d be able to stay focused”.