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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - DeMar DeRozan sat alone on the Raptors' bench during pre-game lineup introductions.

As the all-star guard stepped onto the court for the first time since being helped off of it nearly seven weeks earlier, he was greeted with a standing ovation from the sellout crowd.

"Honestly, just [tried to] stay level-headed, treat it like a normal game," DeRozan said after returning to action in Toronto's 100-84, wire-to-wire win over Philadelphia. "I didn't want to get too high on it. I understood I still had to come out here and play. I didn't want to go out there and try to do too much. Just played within the rhythm of the game."

Again, the packed Air Canada Centre roared when DeRozan caught a pass from Kyle Lowry on the team's first possession, seconds into the game. Dumping it off and receiving the ball again off a curl, he would miss his first shot since tearing a tendon in his groin during a loss to Dallas on Nov. 28. It was the only jumper he'd miss during a promising six-minute, first-quarter stretch.

If the 25-year-old was working off any rust following a 21-game absence, he certainly didn't show it in his long-awaited return to Toronto's lineup.

Logging nearly 29 minutes, a few more than his predetermined cap for the night, DeRozan scored 20 points on 9-of-14 shooting.

"He brings a calm about it and not only that, he makes great decisions," Dwane Casey said after the win. "When things get helter-skelter, when we call a play, one of the plays we've been running for a while or whatever it is, there's a calmness about him."

DeRozan looked like his old self - confident, decisive and active. On his second shot of the night, he came off a screen and drained a step-back 14-footer. Later in the frame he split the defence and got to the rim for an uncontested layup. Even when he wasn't scoring, his presence was felt. Doubled in the corner, DeRozan made a difficult diagonal pass to Patrick Patterson who found Greivis Vasquez for a floater in the lane.

"[It was] very comfortable," said Kyle Lowry, happy to have his backcourt partner back on a night in which the point guard recorded 18 points and 12 assists. "[He got] some guys some open shots, [took] some attention off me, and it's always good when you get your all-star back, a guy who can get 20 points on 14 shots in such an efficient way."

Despite some standout performances from his teammates while he was out - Lowry and Patterson early on, Jonas Valanciunas and James Johnson recently - the Raptors have missed DeRozan's knack of sucking in the defence, on top of his improving ability to make plays out of those situations.

"I think the one thing that has helped us is giving guys confidence they can play without him," Casey said ahead of Wednesday's game. "It should have given [Terrence Ross] more confidence, [Johnson] more confidence to play and everybody else a comfort level of moving the ball and defending without him out there."

Toronto went 12-9 in his absence, 11 of those wins coming against sub-.500 competition while six of the losses came in seven games versus winning teams.

No one knew exactly what to expect from DeRozan after such a long layoff. Activated just ahead of tip-off after being labeled a game-time decision for most of the day, DeRozan seemed to take Casey's advice and ease his way into action, never forcing his game.

"The key thing with him," Casey had said, "is to come out, be himself, do what he can, blow it out, get the rust off the pipes and let the chips fall where they may."

"I play slow anyway," DeRozan joked, shortly after Casey referred to his outing as an 'old-man game'. "[My conditioning was] better than what I thought it was, honestly. I thought I was going to be out there huffing and puffing but I felt good."

The Raptors outscored Philadelphia by 18 points with DeRozan on the floor Wednesday, bested by two in the 19 minutes he spent on the bench. Casey felt comfortable allowing the sixth-year guard to exceed his pitch count by a few minutes because of how he was playing. And besides, DeRozan didn't make it easy on him, as expected. "Once I'm out there, I want to play," he admitted.

"I don't want to do anything that's going to jeopardize his health or re-injure it, lord forbid, again," Casey said. "So if it looks like he's labouring or winded or whatever, we're going to be smart about that. And if they give us a minute limitation than we'll go with that and make sure we try to stick with it. That way we can look out for his overall career and his health long term."

Bringing him back against the seven-win 76ers gave them a chance to do that, reintegrating him into the lineup before a pair of challenging opponents - the first-place Hawks and improved Pelicans - come to town over the weekend. Casey and the Raptors will undoubtedly lean on him more in those upcoming contests and we'll get a better sense of where this team is at now that they have their star back.