NO DENYING RAPTORS A RECORD START
Toronto pushes record to 6-0 by holding off Mavericks to nab 116-107 victory
The Dallas Mavericks gave the Toronto Raptors a bit of a scare Friday night, but there was no keeping this squad from the franchise mark that was there for the taking. The Mavs whittled what had been a 17-point lead down to just one with just over a minute remaining in the third before the Raptors re-asserted their dominance and ran away for a 116-107 win.
It was a franchise-best sixth win in a row to start the season and really the first legitimate scare they’ve had to face.
The Mavs were coming off a loss in Atlanta in which they led by as many as 26 points and somehow coughed it up.
That kind of loss gets a team’s attention, so it wasn’t totally surprising that the Mavs would make a game of this one at some point.
Rookies Luca Doncic and Jaylen Brunson were front and centre in the third quarter turnaround to get the Mavs right back in the game.
Toronto, playing without Fred VanVleet and Delon Wright as well as small forward OG Anunoby, who was dealing with a personal issue, threw out some rather unique lineups for this one because they were a little short-handed but got through with some quality minutes from Lorenzo Brown.
The big numbers still belonged to the likes of Kawhi Leonard, with a team-high 21 points, and Kyle Lowry, who had 20 points and 12 assists, but this was a win that needed contributions from up and down the lineup.
C.J. Miles, who came into the game mired in a mini-slump, busted out in fine fashion with a pair of threes and 10 points off the bench. Jonas Valanciunas got the start with a traditional big man in DeAndre Jordan starting for Dallas. The big Lithuanian responded with 17 points and eight rebounds.
Doncic had a Mavs-high 22 points to go with five rebounds and four assists.
The Raps now have a twoday break before taking on the unbeaten Milwaukee Bucks on Monday as they hit the road again. They will be right back in Toronto the following night to take on another Eastern Conference foe in the Philadelphia 76ers.
FAST AND FURIOUS
In case you’ve been under a rock or just not paying attention for the first 10 days of the NBA season, scoring and pace are up in the league. Scoring is up marginally. Pace is up a ton.
“I think I heard somebody say the other day that the Phoenix Suns’ ‘7 Seconds Or Less’ would be last in pace right now, and I cannot believe that,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said.
The question being asked both of Nurse and Mavericks’ head coach Rick Carlisle was do they think the current scoring rate and pace are sustainable or will it come back to previous normal levels as the season wears on?
Both men believe what we are seeing now is what we will be seeing in March and April, and in the future.
“When you are marching out four guys with speed, quickness and long-range skill — really, in many cases it’s five. Look at (the Raps),” Carlisle began. “They are playing Ibaka, who really shoots 3s. Siakam doesn’t shoot a bunch, but he is 3-for-6. It’s a faster game.”
Nurse doesn’t see the pace or the scoring coming back down any time soon, either.
“I think there’s some longevity in this,” Nurse said. “I think a number of teams are doing what we’re doing, or all the teams or doing a similar thing playing one big and playing four wing or guard type players. I think there’s a lot of teams doing that.”
Coming into play last night, NBA scoring was up six points a game from a year ago, while pace (est. possessions per 48 minutes) is up from 97.3 a year ago to 101.4.
HEAD-TURNING ASSISTS
Kyle Lowry’s passing game has never looked so good and we’re not just talking about the quan- tity of assists Toronto’s point guard has so far. Surrounded by more speed (thanks, Pascal Siakam) and more spacing (thanks, Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green) than ever before, Lowry is making the kind of get-up-and on-your-feet dimes with regularity. He had Siakam out in transition and ahead of one defender and cutting between another who he hit in stride with a bounce pass for one of his eight first-half assists. Then pulling up for a jumper at the three point-line, he spotted through a crowd Jonas Valanciunas underneath the basket and all alone and aborted the threepoint attempt to throw a missile to JV for his easiest basket in eons.
QUICK HITS
The Raptors were without a pair of point guards as Fred VanVleet (big toe sprain) and Delon Wright (left adductor strain) were out. What it meant was more time for Lorenzo Brown as the backup to Lowry and some really early minutes for Malachi Richardson, not to mention a heavier workload for Norm Powell ... CJ Miles came into the season having dropped weight and in peak form from a conditioning standpoint. Unfortunately, he got out of the gate a little slow from a shooting perspective. He began the night shooting just 29 per cent from the field and a truly un-Miles like 2-for-14 from three. He changed that in a hurry in the first half against Dallas, when he was 4-for-5 from the field and 2-for-2 from distance for a 10-point first half.