Raptors win on special night

Montrealers have triple impact

It was a night to celebrate the level of basketball coming out of the city of Montreal and the province of Quebec in general.

Three Montrealers — Oklahoma City’s Luguentz Dort, and the Toronto Raptors’ Chris Boucher and Khem Birch — became the first Montreal trio to ever start in an NBA game together.

Then Boucher and Dort took the Montreal dominance to another level, scoring 17 and 21 points respectively in just the first quarter in a game the Raptors would win 112-106.

All the Montreal success early on disguised the fact that the Raptors once again were playing without the bulk of their core, with Fred Vanvleet, Kyle Lowry, OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam all out of the lineup for the night.

Officially, only Lowry was held out for rest, with Vanvleet (hip), Siakam (shoulder) and Anunoby (calf) all out because of injury.

Fortunately, the 514 was there to take over. Between them, Dort and Boucher were a combined 13-for-16 in that first quarter, with Dort a perfect 7-for-7.

Both players enjoyed career high quarters in those first 12 minutes, but as is often the case in the professional ranks, adjustments were made and both players found the remainder of the evening much tougher.

The Thunder had control of the game in the early going but a greater defensive focus in the second half by the Raptors steadily pulled the Thunder back, allowing Toronto to get the lead into the final moments of the third quarter.

As good as the Montreal contingent was, it was the play of Malachi Flynn in the final half of the final quarter that was the difference in this game.

Raptors head coach Nick Nurse mentioned Flynn as a guy he was going to be watching closely through the final portion of the schedule as the Raptors’ first-round pick gets tons of playing time to develop his game.

Flynn rose to the occasion down the stretch, finding the right shooters and coming up big on the defensive end as well as Toronto finished up strong.

Boucher, who got off to that stellar start, had a similar finish with 10 points in the final two minutes as Toronto pulled away from a game but overmatched Thunder team.

Boucher finished with 31 points, two more than Dort, who looked like he had won the battle of Montreal with two free throws he earned going hard to the basket against — who else — Boucher in the final minute. Instead, Boucher hit a three-pointer with just 10 seconds remaining to grab the Montreal honours.

Birch had a huge role in that deciding three-pointer as he flattened Dort with a screen, allowing Gary Trent Jr. to get the ball to a wide open Boucher. The other area of focused attention the game was going to get from Nurse was on the glass, where the Raptors with newcomers Birch and Freddie Gillespie are a much improved team.

The rebuilding Thunder embarrassed the Raptors in the rebounding department when these two teams met 2½ weeks ago.

The Raptors matched the Thunder on the boards on the strength of a huge advantage on the offensive glass.