STAR ON 45
Raptors small forward Kawhi Leonard gets a hug from teammate Serge Ibaka during a dominant 45-point performance, a career high. Toronto beat the Utah Jazz, 122-116.
Kawhi Leonard gave referee Tony Brothers a lesson in forcing whistles in the Toronto Raptors’ 122-116 victory over the Utah Jazz to start 2019.
It is not the first time the Raptors’ star and the man calling the game have gone head to head. Brothers gave Leonard his first regular-season technical foul in November, during a win over the Miami Heat.
Leonard was frustrated with the non-calls in that game, a night that eventually led to a fine for Raptors coach Nick Nurse for publicly defending his best player.
It was a similar story in the first half of Toronto’s first game of the new year. While Leonard went into the break with a team-high 15 points, his frustration with a lack of calls was apparent.
This time, instead of lashing out with his words, Leonard let his play do the talking. The 27-year-old and his teammates went hard in the paint down the stretch, forcing Brothers to make the calls against the Jazz. Leonard scored 19 points in a master-class third quarter, on his way to a career-high 45 points. Thirteen of those points came from the line, on 17 attempts.
Leonard has now scored 30 or more points in 11 games this season, including three of the last five.
From three: The Raptors went into the intermission down 53-51, in part because of a lack of shooting from beyond the arc. Toronto had two buckets on eight attempts in the first 24 minutes, courtesy of Norm Powell and Pascal Siakam. But the home team got hot quickly after the restart, thanks to three long-range baskets from Siakam and another from Fred VanVleet in the first few minutes of the third quarter.
The Raptors tied a season low with 20 three-point attempts, hitting a total of seven.
Season highs: Powell put up a season-high 14 points against the Jazz, with C.J. Miles relegated to less than three minutes of play after not appearing in two of Toronto’s last three games. Siakam went 3-for-4 from three and 9-for-15 from the field on his way to a career-high 28 points. His game-high 10 rebounds beat Utah’s Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors (nine each)
This and that: Leonard’s 45-point effort was the eighthhighest total by a Raptor during a regular-season game ... Leon- ard, Siakam and Powell were the only Raptors players to score 10 or more points ... VanVleet, who has started eight of the last 10 games in Kyle Lowry’s absence, missed some of the second half with a left hip contusion but returned to the court in the fourth quarter ... Utah’s Jae Crowder went off for a seasonhigh 30 points, six more than he has picked up in any other game this season.
Up next: Thursday at San Antonio, with Leonard and DeMar DeRozan facing their former teams for the first time.