DeRozan, Valanciunas hot in big Raptors win
Coming off a tough road loss the night before, the Toronto Raptors projected to be easy pickings for a solid Portland Trail Blazers squad on Friday at the Air Canada Centre.
DeMa r DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas had other ideas.
Both scored inside and out, Valanciunas continuing a recent trend of three-point marksmanship and DeRozan getting reacquainted with life beyond the arc following a dry spell by matching his career- high of six threepointers.
Toronto shot out to a 37-18 lead after a quarter and went up by as many as 29 points in a 74-point opening half on the way to an eventual 130105 cakewalk.
The home side had 101 points after three. Portland had been the NBA’s eighthbest defensive team heading in, but DeRozan and Valanciunas absolutely carved them up early on.
DeRozan finished with 35 points, Valanciunas 18. Toronto only committed a single turnover through 24 minutes and six in all, one off of the season low.
The Blazers were coming off a 50- point performance in just three quarters by star shooting guard C. J. McCollum, but this time the Raptors were the team that let its top players get the final quarter off.
McCollum was held to 21 points, while all-star Damian Lillard notched 32, including Portland’s first nine points, the only initial bright spot for the shell-shocked visitors.
Valanciunas attempted more than two three- pointers for the first time in his career and is now seven for his past 10, helping him score at least 17 points in each of the past three games.
The Raptors hit 19 threepointers in all, the secondmost in a game in franchise history.
Fred VanVleet is also cooking from deep. Back in the lineup after missing a game to tend to his newborn daughter, VanVleet scored 16.
Raptors head coach Dwane Casey had challenged his reserves pre-game following a bad night in Washington: “If you’re on the court, you’ve got to do your job and not be a minus- 8 or minus-7 or minus- 9 or whatever it is and then force us to play the starters bigger minutes.”
“They’re not going to be out there if they don’t do their job.”
Message received. Each of the Raptors did their job on this night, whether it was the many big scorers, Jakob Poeltl protecting the rim, Serge Ibaka waking up to score his only seven points of the game to start the third quarter to give Toronto a spark, or OG Anunoby playing some defence.
C. J. Miles was out of the lineup again with a sore knee, but his shooting wasn’t needed on a night where his teammates could barely miss.
The Memphis Grizzlies come to town for a pre-Super Bowl matinee on Sunday and the Raptors did themselves a favour by playing well enough to allow the older players to skip the fourth.
Many fans did the same.