Raps’ scoring surge sinks Bucks
Valanciunas has 20 points in third quarter as close game turns into 19-point blowout
MILWAUKEE— Out of nowhere it seemed to come, a 12-minute stretch of absolute Jonas Valanciunas domination, a shot-making, shot-blocking flurry that turned a close game into a rout and reminded some that the seven-foot Lithuanian can do some damage now and then.
Operating at will against a non-existent interior defence, Valanciunas went off for 20 points and nine rebounds in the third quarter alone here Friday night as the Raptors drubbed the Milwaukee Bucks 129110 to extend their latest win streak to four games.
It was a shocking quarter from Valanciunas, who had played only four minutes in the first half because of foul trouble. But with the Bucks unable to handle his physical presence, he made his first five shots of the quarter and could not be stopped.
The 20 points were only two off the single quarter franchise record, held by Kyle Lowry, and Valanciunas had one more point than the entire Bucks team in those 12 minutes. He and DeMar DeRozan, who had 14 points in the quarter, led Toronto to a 43-point outburst that stretched a two-point halftime lead into a 26point bulge that made the fourth quarter meaningless.
It was Toronto’s second win in less than a week over Milwaukee and carried none of the drama of Monday’s overtime affair. And it took away any suggestion that there’s a budding rivalry between the teams that met in a tense playoff series last spring.
“I think we just played them in the playoffs and now once this season,” Lowry said before the game. “Five games, six games don’t make it a rivalry.”
Serge Ibaka led Toronto with 21 points, DeRozan finished with 20 and Lowry had 15 with six rebounds and four assists. Giannis Antetokounmpo had 24 for Milwaukee.
The Bucks didn’t do a lot differently defending DeRozan than they did Monday, when he blitzed them for a franchise-record 52 points, but they did do it better. Aggressive traps and double-teams turned DeRozan into more of a facilitator, and he had only six field-goal attempts in the first half before he caught fire in the third quarter.
It wasn’t a surprise that the Bucks would be better against one of the top scorers in the league, given how recently they had been burned by him.
“It’s still fresh what they did to us and I’m sure fresh what we did to them,” Casey said Friday morning. “It’s good. It’s almost like a playoff situation and it should be fresh in our mind, what we did well and what we didn’t do well, the adjustments we make.”
The “adjustments” were to get an explosive offensive game out of Ibaka, who had17 of his points in the first half, and Lowry, who was playing without the wraps he had on both hands Wednesday night in Chicago. But it wasn’t his wrist that was bothering him, a worry for some fans since he had wrist surgery that derailed the 2017-18 season.
“Nah, it’s my fingers,” he said. “They’re sore man. Just jamming them, getting them caught up in jerseys. They are pretty sore and swollen.
“It’s a long season. You always have something wrong with you. It’s just how you manage it and maintain it.”
Lowry maintained it well enough to make four three-pointers in just 27 minutes as he and the starters earned most of the fourth quarter off.
“Everybody’s got a nick or something throughout the NBA,” Casey said. “I guarantee Giannis has got something bothering him that he’s not telling anybody about. If (Lowry’s) out here in uniform, he’s ready to roll.”