Raptors overwhelm uninspired knicks
Siakam puts on scoring clinic before nurse sits starters in fourth quarter
Short of reminding Mitchell Robinson that it’s not OK when you put a fellow NBAer in harm’s way with your reckless play, there wasn’t much for the Toronto Raptors to accomplish on Thursday night in Gotham.
But if polishing up a few things was the intent, as head coach Nick Nurse indicated before the game, then consider the night a complete success.
How much stock anyone wants to put into it, though, really comes down to how hard anyone really believes the New York Knicks are trying, and the easy answer to that is not really hard, based on the Raptors’ 117-92 win.
Pascal Siakam had his way with the Knicks, scoring from every angle imaginable in putting up 31 before he sat down with about nine minutes to go.
He was one of six Raptors, three of them from the bench group of Norm Powell, Serge Ibaka and Jeremy Lin, who got into double figures in scoring.
Toronto’s lead was as high as 31 points in this one, despite having no starters playing for the final nine minutes. With Kawhi Leonard taking the night off as another load-management game, and OG Anunoby feeling dizzy again after taking a knee to the head in Tuesday’s win over Chicago, Nurse got the opportunity to see some action with both Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka on the court together.
It’s really one of the final things he would like to experiment with as the Raptors play out the string.
Kyle Lowry, who was on the receiving end of a reckless tackle by Robinson the last time these two teams met, managed to return the favour, putting his knee into Robinson’s midsection and earning an offensive foul for his efforts.
Late in the game, Kadeem Allen took a vicious swing at the arms of Malcolm Miller as he attempted a dunk in garbage time.
Nurse called a timeout to calm things down, only to have Gasol walk past midcourt to address the cheap shot with some of the Knicks.
It was as much of a response as the Raptors got from the Knicks all evening.
Toronto was on fire from distance all night, knocking down 19 of the 45 three-pointers they attempted, led by five from Danny Green and another four from Fred VanVleet. Powell had three of his own.
Robinson did earn a few MVP chants late in the game when he went to town in garbage time and wound up with 19 points and 20 rebounds, the most rebounds by a Knicks rookie since Patrick Ewing.
QUICK HITS
The Raptors had one very enthusiastic visitor to their bench area during the pre-game warm-ups: Jama Mahlalela, former assistant coach and now head coach of the Raptors 905. Mahlalela and the 905s are in New York to take on the Long Island Nets in the Eastern Conference G-League semifinal after a closely contested overtime win in the quarters over the Grand Rapids Drive on Tuesday. If Mahlalela’s 905s can keep it going with another win here tonight, they’ll advance to the G-League Eastern Conference final against the winner of Westchester and the Lakeland Magic ... Anunoby was at the gym getting his work in and expecting to play in Thursday’s game, but the dizziness that had him wobbling off the court on Sunday after he took a knee to the head returned, forcing him out of the lineup against the Knicks. “Yeah, it was a little surprising,” Nurse said. “We thought it was pretty good after the game the other night, and then he actually did quite a lot today, and then it kind of snuck up on him after he did a lot of his running and workout.” Anunoby is listed as day-to-day ... Nurse sums up Toronto’s current position with just under two weeks to go in the regular season: “I’ve been saying this for a month. If the playoffs started tomorrow, I’d feel good going in there. We’re ready to roll when they roll, but since it’s not time to play them and there is some time to polish some things up, then we’re going to do that.”