Court Squeaks: Lowry’s three-point shooting has been infectious – Video – TSN
Kyle Lowry has been unconscious from beyond the arc this season, sitting tied for fifth in the NBA with 71 threes made, and as Matthew Scianitti explains, Lowry’s red-hot shooting has been infectious for his Raptors teammates.
Raptors’ Powell makes most of what little time he has | Toronto Star
Powell’s usage has been all over the map in Toronto’s 23 games before Monday’s contest at the Milwaukee Bucks.
He has had five starts — all when Carroll was resting with the Raptors playing on consecutive nights – and has averaged more than 30 minutes in those games, including a season-high 36 in Boston on Friday.
His last two starts have been tremendous, 20 points and five steals against the Celtics, 16 points and seven rebounds in a win over the Los Angeles Lakers.
But he’s also had four games where he hasn’t played a second, three where he’s played less than three minutes of mop-up time and five others where he’s been on the court for fewer than 10 minutes.
“It’s tough,” Powell said last week, “but when I get my minutes, no matter how many minutes it is, go in there and show that I can play and show I can have an impact and they can call my name.”
It might not get any easier, either. Casey holds out hope that the restrictions on Carroll playing consecutive nights will ease after Jan. 1, potentially removing even spot starts from Powell’s workload. Ujiri may find a way to leverage all his talent into something else nearer February’s trade deadline but that’s still months off for Powell to wait for minutes when they come up.
Ross emerging as Mr. Reliable for Raptors – Sportsnet.ca
“We had to pick up our intensity,” said Ross afterwards. “They made their push, they made their run just like everybody else is gonna do, and we had to come back and make ours, and I think the second unit helped do that.”
It was Ross’s moment, the kind of night that had DeRozan wondering why his teammate isn’t getting more buzz for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award.
All the former Slam Dunk contestant needed was a signature highlight.
He seemed to have it when he made a steal, broke away from the pack and took off for what would have been a bring-the-house-down windmill dunk. Except he missed. Lowry scrambled after the rebound and made the three to put Toronto up 21 with 7:49 left, but the damage was done.
“It’s gonna be on every meme, every social media, so I’mma get used to seeing it around,” said Ross. “Hopefully it goes away soon.”
What happened?
“I don’t know, man. I’m telling you, I started calling it the curse of Vince Carter,” said Ross. “Nobody’s allowed to do two-foot windmills in the ACC until he retires, I’m guessing … I’m just gonna start laying it up.”
Raptors go buck, beat Milwaukee 122-100 – Raptors HQ
The third quarter lull was to be expected simply based on the fact that the stifling defensive rotations and zippy ball movement couldn’t possibly be replicated by a unit featuring Pascal Siakam and Jonas Valanciunas. The Raptors essentially just want the starting lineup to hold the fort for their potent bench to go berserk. That briefly felt like it wouldn’t happen. Giannis, who had 6 points at that stage, tallied 15 all on his own, and Jabari Parker joined him with some precise back cuts and distance shooting to help the Bucks cut the lead to 10 to enter the fourth quarter. The Bucks also interestingly trapped the Raptors guards and tried to force a play out of Siakam, Valanciunas and Carroll, which wasn’t really working out.
Normalcy was restored in the 4th quarter when Lowry and the bench checked in and Terrence Ross promptly went insane. He hit 2 threes, another jump shot, a push shot, missed a breakaway windmill off a steal, got fouled on a 3. It was peak Terrence Ross. The Raptors’ lead, which dropped below double digits for a brief speck of time, once again stretched out to 20. The defence was sharp again, as the Bucks scored only 18 in the quarter. Lowry and DeRozan played only 34 and 32 minutes respectively, as the Raptors ended up taking this one 122-100.
Raptors’ historic offense keeps rolling with blowout of Bucks – Yahoo!
Behind the somewhat stunningly consistent excellence from midrange that has noted throwback DeRozan averaging 27.9 points per game, top-five marks in free-throw rate (how often you get to the line) and turnover percentage (how infrequently you cough up possession), and that killer second unit hitting the gas at the start of second and fourth quarters, Toronto has been right up there with Golden State in the running for the NBA’s most effective offense through the first quarter of the season.
“In fact,” Ian Levy of FanSided noted earlier Monday, “the Raptors currently have the second best offensive efficiency mark of all-time, relative to the league average.” And that was before they hung 122 on Milwaukee to take over this season’s No. 1 spot in points scored per possession from Golden State.
“The Raptors are learning their lessons and getting better,” SB Nation’s Paul Flannery wrote Sunday. “At the end of the day, that’s all they can do.” And if, in the process, they continue to roll out a historically potent offense, then so much the better. Whether it’ll give them a puncher’s chance against LeBron and company come May remains to be seen, but it’d sure make the trip there a hell of a lot more fun to watch.
Bucks frozen in headlights of Raptors’ shooters | Toronto Star
It was just another night at the office for Toronto shooters, who were 14-for-25 from three-point range, and shot 50 per cent overall.
The Raptors hung 60 first-half points on the Bucks, who came into the game holding opponents to a league-low 43.1 per cent from the field, and 32.1 per cent from three-point range.
DeMar DeRozan poured in 30 points — helped by a 15-for-15 night at the free-throw line — as Toronto won for the ninth time in 11 games and moved 10 games over .500 (17-7) for the first time this season.
The Raptors are now operating better offensively than any team in the NBA. Their rating is 114.9 points per 100 possessions, about a point per 100 better than the Golden State Warriors.
Bebe steal. Ross dunk. Fans happy. #wethenorth pic.twitter.com/ZXdPuaDyUl
— Sam Holako (@rapsfan) December 13, 2016
Game Rap: Raptors 122, Bucks 100 | Toronto Raptors
LOWRY + BENCH CLOSING THE DOOR
In the fourth quarter, the Kyle Lowry + reserves lineup quickly broke the game open again, turning a 92-82 lead to start the quarter into a 111-88 advantage at the 5:33 mark when DeMar DeRozan and DeMarre Carroll returned to the game. The Bucks wouldn’t get closer than 18 points the rest of the way through.
DeRozan with the sick spin move in the paint #wethenorth pic.twitter.com/CtNcytjQY0
— Sam Holako (@rapsfan) December 13, 2016
Bucks vs. Raptors Final Score: Toronto’s three-point barrage buries Bucks, 122-100 – Brew Hoop
Giannis came out determined in the third, scoring five of the Bucks’ first eight points in the third before a Jabari three-point jumper cut the lead to 77-60. Toronto answered with a quick 5-0 spurt, but Giannis and Jabari combined to go on a 12-2 run with a series of transition finishes and roll-ins near the rim to make it 84-72. As he did all night, Terrence Ross nailed a three-pointer in the Bucks face, but after another Jabari Parker three, the Bucks trailed only 90-80. The quarter ended with Milwaukee down only 92-82 as Giannis and Jabari combined for 23 of the Bucks’ 34 points in the quarter.
The optimism of the third dissipated quickly, shattered by the Raptors blitzkrieg bombing attack from downtown. Terrence Ross and Kyle Lowry each hit two threes in the first half of the third quarter as the Raptors lead inflated back to 109-86. Jabari and Giannis hit a few baskets to close it out, including a rim-shattering Parker slam, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Thon got some garbage time minutes and hit a baseline jumper, but Toronto won out as Norman Powell hit one last three-pointer for good measure to sink the Bucks 122-100.
Norm flexing some fancy handles (ends in a jumper) #wethenorth pic.twitter.com/sCkRvMCsdD
— Sam Holako (@rapsfan) December 13, 2016
Raptors 122, Bucks 100: Defense a no-show in lopsided loss
They were in character the whole night from the start,” Bucks coach Jason Kidd said. “We weren’t. We didn’t put up any resistance. Our defense was non-existent.
“We fought in that third quarter and got it down to 10. Then their leaders took over the game and they went from there.”
Toronto outscored Milwaukee, 30-18, in the fourth quarter as Ross and Kyle Lowry took over. Lowry had 10 of his 18 points in the quarter.
“We were just scared of getting embarrassed, and that’s why we played with some urgency,” Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo said of his team’s response in the third quarter. “If we could play like that the entire game, it would be a totally different game.
“They were just swinging the ball real fast and they got a lot of open looks. It’s tough to beat a team when they’re knocking down most of their threes.”
Ross is playing like a champ #wethenorth pic.twitter.com/I4FsJQZzCt
— Sam Holako (@rapsfan) December 13, 2016
Raptors thriving despite tough early-season schedule – Article – TSN
Most impressively, they have done something that even the best teams have trouble doing over the course of a long and gruelling NBA season: they have battled every night, without exception. Toronto is the only team in the league that still hasn’t lost by double figures. To put that into context, every other club has lost at least three games by 10 points or more, including last year’s finalists, the Cavs and Warriors.
“I think it’s great, man,” said Carroll. “We’ve been fighting through adversity – we’re still missing Jared [Sullinger], he’s a big part of what we [want to] do – and for us to be sitting here, number two in the East, [one game] behind Cleveland, it’s good. Our biggest thing, I think we’ve just got to keep fighting and we can’t take teams for granted. We’re playing great basketball right now, we’ve just got to keep trying to build off everything we’ve done.”
The Bucks game was the first of five straight against teams that entered Monday at or below .500, with Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando and Brooklyn on deck before Toronto heads out on the road. There, the degree of difficulty quickly goes back up. Over Christmas and through New Year’s, the Raptors will visit the Jazz, Trail Blazers, Warriors, Suns, Lakers and Spurs – teams with a combined record of 84-65.
From there, they will theoretically reap the benefits as things finally turn in their favour. No team has an easier rest-of-season schedule than Toronto (based on opponents’ average margin of victory or defeat). It’s around that time Sullinger, out since training camp after undergoing foot surgery, should be nearing his return.
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Raptors rain threes in pounding of Milwaukee Bucks | Toronto Sun
For the season, the Raptors came into the game shooting 39.4% from deep territory and improved that to 40.14% with Monday night’s efforts.
The Raptors did all, or certainly most of their three-point damage in this one in the first 15 minutes of the game, but even after that were extending their lead with good work inside from Jonas Valanciunas leading to a bunch of second-chance points that kept the lead around 20 for much of the second quarter.
The Bucks made their inevitable run in the third quarter and early in the fourth, getting what had been a 26-point lead all the way down to eight before Ross shut the door for good with two of his four threes about three minutes into the fourth quarter.
Ross didn’t do much wrong all night in one of his best individual games of the year, but he did likely make the highlights for the wrong reason when he stripped a member of the Bucks and then with no one between himself and the basket botched the windmill jam.
The game was won at the three-point line where the Raptors had 14 to the Bucks four in just one more attempt than the visitors.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BN7e5vTAW8B/
Three under-the-radar keys to Raptors’ win over Bucks – Sportsnet.ca
As they quickly fell behind by 20, it didn’t take much of a basketball savant to decipher that what the Bucks were doing in the first half wasn’t going to work. And so, Milwaukee came out of halftime with a new initiative to trap Toronto dribblers as much as possible and blitz both Lowry and DeRozan with sometimes as many as three defenders in order to disrupt Toronto’s offensive onslaught.
That kind of aggressive defence can be extremely difficult to manage as bodies swarm around you and make it tricky to find your teammates through traffic. At first, the Raptors struggled to overcome the pressure. But as the quarter wore on, Lowry and DeRozan started to figure it out, finding Valanciunas and Nogueira, who were often left alone in favour of double teams.
“You can’t out-dribble a trap. You’ve got to move the ball and beat it with a pass,” Casey said. “Kyle and DeMar got off of it and understood what they were trying to do. They both did a good job of finding the weak side and finding the big. … JV and Lucas are doing a good job of playing out of the trap when teams try to trap us.”
Meanwhile, at the other end, the Bucks channeled the hustle the Raptors displayed in the first half, forcing five turnovers and fighting their way to five offensive rebounds. Antetokounmpo created a couple steals and found his rhythm as he played the full quarter, scoring 15 to help cut down the Raptors lead by half going into the fourth.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BN8b4zqDBVi/
Power Ranking Poll Week 7: The Raptors on Paper Meet Reality – Raptors HQ
Though, hey, the Raptors beat Moore’s number one ranked team the Rockets — in Houston! So really, we’re number one! We’re number one! We’re number one!
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