Raptors on a record tear
Aquarter of the way through the season, the Toronto Raptors are on franchise record pace.
The 16-4 record through 20 games with Friday night’s 125-107 win over a troubled Washington Wizards club tacked on allowed the Raptors to surpass their previous best 15-5 start to the 2014-15 campaign.
That the Raptors have done that with their full complement of players only once in the 20 games speaks both to this group’s potential and their overall depth.
Friday night marked the return of the success enjoyed earlier in the season from behind the three-point line.
It’s been a bit of a bone of contention of late, but with OG Anunoby back in the fold after a three-game absence due to injury and Fred VanVleet looking more like the threat he was a year ago from distance, things were looking much better Friday night.
As a team the Raps were 17-for39 from behind the three-point arc on the night. That’s a season high for makes from distance, while the 44 per cent success rate dwarfed all other efforts this year.
Anunoby and VanVleet were both 3-for-5 from long range, while Danny Green made three of his seven. C.J. Miles, who also returned to the lineup Friday night, finally got one to fall on his sixth attempt of the night, finishing up 1-for-7.
Kawhi Leonard didn’t have a big role in the long-distance game, but he did lead the Raptors with 27 points and 10 rebounds following a night off in Atlanta on the second of back-to-back games.
The Raptors’ bench dominated Washington to the tune of a 59-39 edge.
Toronto will get a little practice time Saturday and then is right back on the court Sunday night, playing host to the Miami Heat.
ONE MAN CONVINCED
Kawhi Leonard routinely answers the question about whether he is back to where he was preinjury with some form of “I’m not looking to the past. I am only looking ahead.” So chances are we’ll never get his actual feeling about where he believes he is in terms of his health.
Wizards head coach Scott Brooks says it’s not even a question anymore for him.
“I mean he’s back,” Brooks said pre-game. “You can probably say he is the best two-way player in basketball. And the way he takes the challenge of guarding the best players every night — and that takes a lot out of you physically — but mentally you have to be mentally strong to challenge yourself every possession to guard the best players. And if you do get scored on, you have to re-boot pretty quickly because you have to do the same thing the next time down the court.
“But he has the quickness, he has the post-up game, the midrange game, he shoots threes, he gets to the free throw line,” Brooks said. “There is nothing he doesn’t do well.”