Raptors offence half amazing
> RAPTORS 129 > ROCKETS 113
HOUSTON— Don’t get sucked in, Dwane Casey warned the Toronto Raptors.
Don’t get goaded into trying to do what the Houston Rockets do, because it’s futile. They are too good at it to try to match them.
Do your thing, he pleaded. Play smart. Don’t get down when things inevitably go sideways for a spell and stay with the game no matter what, then see how things turn out. They listened. And things turned out as well as they could have hoped.
Putting up a near-franchise-record first half and getting major production off the bench from C.J. Miles, the Raptors beat the Houston Rockets 129-113 at the Toyota Center on Tuesday night in a wildly entertaining game.
The Raptors didn’t try to outshoot the most prolific three-point shooting team, and they didn’t try to get into a track meet. They were poised any time the Rockets made a run, finished the final five minutes strongly and beat a good team on the road.
Miles hit six three-pointers and finished with 19 points, rookie OG Anunoby had 16 points in his first start and DeMar DeRozan led Toronto with 27.
Kyle Lowry racked up a doubledouble with19 points and10 assists as the Raptors pulled away after leading by only six with six minutes left.
James Harden had 38 points, half of them on free throws, for the Rockets.
“What happens is, they hit a couple and people lose their will, their resolve to keep playing hard,” Casey had said Tuesday morning. “The way we beat them here last year, we played harder for 48 minutes, and that’s what you’ve got to do.
“You have to commit to it, and it’s hard. This league is hard, but to go out and play against a great threepoint shooting team like Houston takes effort. It takes focus. It takes a commitment to go out and do it every possession. They’re going to let it fly, and you can’t let it take your spirit or your fight away from you.”
The Raptors certainly didn’t lack fight, and played as well in spurts as they have all season.
Toronto’s first half was one of the most offensively explosive in franchise history. With a franchise-record 45-point second quarter, Toronto jumped out to a 76-64 halftime advantage. The 76 points were a season best by 10, and three off their all-time high of 79 set in New Jersey in 1997.
Anunoby made his first start and was solid. He was asked to be the primary defender on Harden and did as good a job as anyone. In the last week, the 20-year-old has been asked to guard a range of players from Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday of the New Orleans Pelicans to Harden to Boston’s Jaylen Brown and has been solid each time out.
If there was much anticipation about the impact P.J. Tucker would have playing his first game against his former Raptors teammates, it dissipated quickly. Tucker played only 16 minutes with no points and five rebounds before he was ejected after picking up two lightning-quick technical fouls midway through the third quarter.
But as good as Toronto was in amassing a lead as big as 20 points, they went through enough bad stretches in the third quarter to let the Rockets close to within nine heading into the fourth.