Raptors roll to 8th straight win, rout Knicks 132-106
With starters on the bench for 4th quarter, backup unit hits the ground running — again
NEW YORK — Continuing their season-long dominance over the weaker teams in the NBA, the Toronto Raptors pulled away for a tidy 132-106 victory over the New York Knicks on Sunday afternoon, a businesslike performance that extended their season-best winning streak to eight games. The Raptors are now an astonishing 29-2 this season in games against teams with sub-. 500 records, a sign of maturity and the ability to take care of business when it needs taken care of. Some of the games may have been closer than some fans might have wanted but there is no denying the Raptors have the ability to make things easy on themselves by putting away inferior opponents. The Madison Square Garden matinee once again afforded coach Dwane Casey the chance to give every significant starter the fourth quarter off as the team’s backup unit put the game away for good in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. With the likes of Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas yukking it up on the bench, the second unit turned an eightpoint advantage going into the fourth quarter into a 22-point bulge with about six minutes left and it was garbage time. The points total was the second highest of the season for the Raptors, who scored 133 against Cleveland. And everyone got in on the action with 12 of the 13 players to get in the game scoring at least two points. Valanciunas had 17 points and Lowry 16 for Toronto while Delon Wright returned from missing two games with a big toe injury to score 12. Nigel Hayes, signed to a 10-day contract last week, made his Raptors debut and made the two three-pointers he took. For Casey, the extended time at the end of the game for seldom used players gave him a chance to evaluate them at a lot of different levels. It’s easy for players in garbage time to devolve into a “I’m going to get mine” mindset, which is exactly what Casey and his staff don’t want to see. “That’s what we talk about all the time, when you go into those situations, don’t go in looking for numbers,” Casey said recently. “You play within the system, offensively, defensively, and you don’t gamble, don’t take pump fakes and bad fouls. “More so than scoring (it’s) how do they fit in and do what we’re asking them to do. Game plans, making adjustments, whatever it is. It’s the hardest thing in the NBA because those guys say ‘OK, I’ve got to get my numbers or play a certain way.’ But they’re being evaluated on how they play within a certain system.” There have been plenty of opportunities to learn, too. Toronto is now 12-0 in games decided by 20 or more points this season and they have the ability to put teams away rapidly because the backup unit hits the ground running to start fourth quarters. C.J. Miles had 13 points, Fred VanVleet 11 and Jakob Poeltl 10 as Toronto’s bench shot 67 per cent as a group and made 11 of 16 threepointers they took. Hayes was a bit too overexcited after his two made three-pointers against the NBA team that eventually cut him in training camp and sent him to the G League but other than that, the Raptors finished professionally and without any excessive showboating, as they have all season. It was not an easy game to play and took a level of professionalism to take care of business with little fanfare and in a methodical nature. The Knicks were missing starter Enes Kanter and Lance Thomas and were coming off a four-game road trip in which they’d lost all four games. The Raptors were playing for the first time since an emotional win Friday night over Houston and Casey had termed it a “trap game” before it began. But Toronto took control a couple of minutes into the second quarter and never trailed again.