Raptors win the easy way after Knicks’ Hardaway mouths off
This one came with one of those huge warning signs you see on cigarettes and anything else that one can consume and harm oneself.
In sports parlance, it was the consummate trap game.
The Toronto Raptors were coming off a huge win over the No. 1 team in the NBA, another big overtime win on the road before that one, and were now playing the New York Knicks, a team that is more interested in ping-pong balls and development than this season’s results.
On top of all that was the fact the game was being played at 1 p.m. local time — actually a noon tip when you consider the spring forward of daylight time.
Dwane Casey, by his admission, spent a lot of time pointing all that out in the morning meeting before the game. He needn’t have worried about getting the Raps riled up. Tim Hardaway Jr. did the job for him.
Hardaway and Kyle Lowry received double technicals with just under a minute to go in the second quarter. Hardaway kept talking after the tech and that brought Serge Ibaka, a man who does not put up with anything he deems disrespectful.
Ibaka got a tech for his troubles. Over the next 25 minutes, the Raptors outscored the Knicks by 19 points to pull away for an easy 132-106 win.
“He did,” point guard Delon Wright said when asked if Hardaway got the Raptors back in it.
“He was kind of talking. To me, when guys are talking, it kind of gets me going. He kind of woke everybody up.”
From that point, every time any of the Raptors got a bucket they were chirping right back at Hardaway, who had to be regretting his earlier bravado.
Chances are this one might have gone the way it did had Hardaway not uttered a word, but it’s not a coincidence that the moment Hardaway started to get lippy was the moment the Raptors began to put this one away.
While centre Jonas Valanciunas led all Raptors scorers with 17, it was double-digit scoring from four of the five bench mob members that pushed this out of reach. Toronto’s bench, the undisputed best in the NBA, outscored New York’s subs 69-29.
“Their bench comes in there and they have a nice clique going with the five of them out there,” Knicks head coach Jeff Hornacek said. “(Jakob) Poeltl does a nice job of protecting the basket and those other guys are flying. C.J. Miles can shoot it. (Fred) VanVleet and (Delon) Wright, they both can get to the basket. … Their bench is playing great for them and that’s probably why they’re a legitimate contender.”