Indiana Paceless.
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Raptors make history with dominant victory over hapless Pacers – The Globe and Mail
It was the second consecutive win for the NBA reigning champions, their 17th in 18 games, and their ninth in a row at home. All-star Pascal Siakam led Toronto with 21 points, leading six Raps in double digits. That included the sharp-shooting Matt Thomas (17), Kyle Lowry (16 points with 11 assists and five steals), Serge Ibaka (15 points and 15 rebounds), Terence Davis (13), and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (12).
That’s three wins for Toronto in four meetings this season against Indiana, a team that is sixth in the Eastern Conference standings. The Raptors are second behind the Milwaukee Bucks.
“That’s a wakeup call, man. That team is playing for something big,” Pacers coach Nate McMillan said of the Raptors. “They came with the intensity. They play with a sense of urgency. That team is connected out there.”
The Pacers and Raps were also meeting for the third time in three weeks. Pacers star Victor Oladipo was out with back pain. Yet the Pacers did have T.J. Warren, who had missed the previous two games against Toronto with a concussion. Warren had been on a hot streak in recent weeks, including 35 points against the East-leading Bucks.
Warren wasn’t scoring early on Sunday, and neither were any of his teammates. Signs of a dominant Toronto win were on the horizon right off the tip.
The home squad jumped to a 13-1 lead in the blink of an eye. Ibaka was demolishing Indy’s Myles Turner in the paint, and then the Raps’ big man bounced outside to score from beyond the arc, too. Ibaka was relentless while collecting six rebounds and 11 points in his opening nine minutes – just a point shy of what the Pacers scored as a team in their disastrous opening quarter.
Pascal Siakam leads Raptors to historic rout over Pacers | CBC Sports
Lowry, who’d made his sixth appearance at the all-star game last week in Chicago, had 16 points and 11 assists Sunday, and the Raptors throttled the Indiana Pacers 127-81.
“I’ve never coached or seen anybody play as hard as this guy does in basketball,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said afterward. “It’s the ultimate compliment and it rubs off on the other guys, and not only does he do it that way, he plays smart, he knows the coverages, he knows the opponents, he studies film, he gives his body up, right?
“All those things kind of transfer to the other guys . . . leadership, right?”
Lowry stretched his career-best streak of consecutive double-doubles to six games in the Raptors’ ninth straight victory at Scotiabank Arena. It was also the Raptors’ ninth win in their last 10 outings.
Pascal Siakam added 21 points while Serge Ibaka chipped in with 15 points and 15 rebounds. Matt Thomas finished with 17 points, Terence Davis had 13, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson added 12, and Chris Boucher hauled down 11 rebounds to go with nine points for Toronto (42-15).
Raptors put on clinical performance in record-setting win over Pacers – Sportsnet.ca
In a game that featured a franchise-record 46-point margin of victory, the performance from the Raptors was as clinical as you might expect.
“[We were] flying and executing the coverages, [the] ball was popping, and every single guy that went in there was on, ready to go,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said of his team’s wire-to-wire victory.
Coming out of the gate quick, Toronto got off to a 13-1 start that saw the team hit three triples — including one by Serge Ibaka, who had seven points alone during the spurt.
This was a fitting prelude for what was to come as the Raptors kept up the pressure, with the team finishing the first 34-12. Ibaka and Pascal Siakam had 11 points in the opening frame alone, while Toronto held Indiana to just 4-of-23 shooting.
“We played well, our defence, and they missed some shots early, they missed some layups, and we just kinda played really physical and kept our pace up early,” Kyle Lowry said. “So it was a good start for us.”
And after that hot start, it was Lowry’s turn to pick things up for the Raptors, as he scored 11 points on 4-for-6 shooting in the period leading Toronto to a 63-32 advantage at the half and a curtain call for the Pacers – who have lost all three encounters with the Raptors in the month of February.
Lowry finished Sunday with 16 points and 11 assists, Ibaka had 15 points and 15 rebounds while going 7-for-12 from the floor and Siakam followed up his brilliant 37-point outing against the Phoenix Suns Friday with a game-high 21-point job on only 12 field-goal attempts.
Raptors set franchise record with 46-point blowout win over Pacers | Toronto Sun
Toronto led 34-12 after a quarter, 63-32 after a half (the second-best Raptors half of the season) and 85-55 after 36 minutes. Toronto had that 30-point edge despite only making two more three-pointers than Indiana through three, before hitting eight fourth quarter treys to turn a laugher into whatever is the next notch after one of those.
As good as Toronto has played all year?
“Ooh, probably yeah, flying and executing the coverages, ball was popping, and every single guy that went in there was on, ready to go,” said head coach Nick Nurse afterward.
Serge Ibaka (15 points, 15 rebounds) agreed with his coach, in part because the Raptors never took their feet off of the necks of their opponents.
“We set a tone earlier, normally when we start good like this we kind of relax, but tonight as a team we did a great job staying focused on us and keep working together,” Ibaka said. The big man was superb, rolling again as the starter in place of the injured Marc Gasol.
Kyle Lowry (16 points, 11 assists, seven rebounds) and Pascal Siakam (21 points) were also dominant for Toronto.
Raptors roll to their biggest win ever, beat Pacers 127-81
That streak will be tested when Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks come north of the border Tuesday night, the first of three meetings between the teams down the stretch. The NBA leaders have won seven of eight heading into Monday’s game at Washington.
“They’re a well-coached team, they’re a well-oiled machine,” Lowry said. “All we can do is worry about ourselves.”
Lowry’s double-double was his 13th of the season. He’s averaging 19.3 points and 10.8 assists over his current six-game run.
“I’ve never coached or seen anybody that plays as hard in basketball as that guy,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said.
Toronto’s largest lead was 49 points, its biggest of the season. The Raptors led by 40 in a home win over Utah on Dec. 1. The 46-point margin of victory surpassed a 36-point win over Charlotte on Nov. 18.
Matt Thomas scored all of his career-best 17 points in the fourth quarter, Terence Davis had 13 and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson 12. Chris Boucher had nine points and 11 rebounds.
Indiana’s 81 points were the fewest by a Toronto opponent this season. Orlando scored 83 points in a home loss to the Raptors on Nov. 29.
“One of those nights, you know?” Indiana’s Doug McDermott said. “They played extremely well and we probably played our worst game of the year.”
The stakes are high for the upcoming Toronto Raptors vs. Milwaukee Bucks showdown – Raptors HQ
With 26 games remaining in the regular season, the Raptors are currently seven games back of the Milwaukee Bucks for first place in the Eastern Conference. To their credit, the Bucks have been an absolute steamroller this year, crushing teams with their league-leading defense and third-ranked offense. For the Raptors to catch them, they’d have to win Tuesday night’s game in Toronto — and then hope that Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, uh, just completely fall apart down the stretch. One half of that statement is unlikely.
The other half, however, could very well come to pass. What’s more, that part also contains meaning regardless of where these two teams end up in the final accounting of the East’s standings. The Bucks are coming to Toronto on Tuesday night, up 1-0 in the season series against the Raptors, and looking for all the world like a team ready to claim the 2020 NBA title. They’re first in the league, a 48-8 juggernaut, and they play with a fury reserved by only the best teams.
But why are the Bucks so angry? Ah, well, that’s easy to explain. It’s because the Raptors are the team that derailed their supposed title hopes last year. In 2018-19 the Bucks were a presumptive title favourite too — they’d won 60 games, they had the league MVP, and they played with the best defense and fourth best offense. Up 2-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Bucks seemed ready to go all the way to the championship. But “seemed” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. We all know what happened next: four straight wins for the Raptors, a surfeit of remarkable turning point moments, and Toronto in the Finals instead of Milwaukee. It must still sting for the Bucks.
In that broader context, Tuesday’s game in Toronto takes on all kinds of added signficance. The Raptors want to prove, after winning 16 of 17 games (including a franchise-record 15 straight), that they can measure up to the Bucks’ league-leading ways. They want to prove they can (and will) beat the Bucks again when it counts. They want to send that kind of message. The Bucks, meanwhile, want to win and send their own message. They want to fervently insist that’s all in the past. That those games in that series were an aberration. That while the Raptors are most definitely different this season, they’ve changed too.
1. A win of historic proportion
46 points. Forty-six.
Prior to Sunday, the Raptors’ largest margin of victory was 44, a mark set in December 2016.
By dominating from start to finish, Toronto bested the prior mark, earning a 127-81 win over Indiana, a team that will find itself in the playoffs come April.
2. Toronto sets the tone early
A good start is often the key to victory.
From the opening tip, Toronto asserted its dominance on both ends of the floor, getting out to a 34-12 lead at the end of the opening frame. The Pacers’ 12 points were the fewest allowed by the Raptors in the first quarter all season.
Slow and methodical doesn’t begin to explain his gait, his pace, his stroll. It’s not painful to watch, but it sure seems painful to do, and it doesn’t make sense given the fact that VanVleet is a 25-year-old professional athlete still waiting to get to the prime of his career.
But it does make sense because it exemplifies just how hard VanVleet plays every single night, and how much he coaxes out of his six-foot, 195-pound frame.
He just doesn’t seem to care what the cost is. He goes all out, all the time. And if you can time his short walk from his locker to the showers with a sundial, it’s a small price to pay.
“You get used to it, so it’s hard to describe. It’s just a constant grind,” VanVleet said after Toronto’s ridiculously easy 127-81 win over the Indiana Pacers on Sunday, the most decisive victory ever by a Raptors team. “You go home and your legs are pounding, gotta get treatment and you gotta get massage and you gotta ice.
“You wake up in the morning, your knees hurt and you can’t walk up and down the stairs. That’s part of it. Some days are better than others, and you pray that you don’t have anything serious,” he added.
“You play as hard as me and Kyle (Lowry) and certain guys do at our size, and falling around and flying around like that, there’ s flip side to that. You take a beating.”
The Raptors have come to expect toughness and a competitive nature from VanVleet for about three seasons now, and fans have come to expect to see him flying around the court at both ends. He gets hammered at the rim while finishing drives more than anyone on the team, and he’ll chase shooters around screens or fight through them every time it’s needed.
Raptors’ Pascal Siakam refines his decision-making in the post and elsewhere – The Athletic
When you’re as skilled as Pascal Siakam is, decision-making can become easy for you, at least once you’ve seen all the possible counters to your excellence. As with a lot of the other best players in the league, the broad equation that leads to Siakam’s production is not complicated: the skills of a guard plus the size of a forward or centre creates a player who is very hard to stop.
Ensuring Siakam gets those touches before the playoffs has become a priority for Nick Nurse, especially since the Raptors returned from the All-Star break.
“You’ve probably seen all the stuff he can do. He’s certainly our primary scorer. He’s our-late game initiator, depending on how we get it to him. It’s just a matter of giving him more and more of those reps,” Nurse said Sunday before the Raptors beat the Pacers 127-81, setting a record for the largest margin of victory in franchise history. “He needs to make the right reads. I think the only thing that gets him better is the continuation of high-volume reps. I mentioned this last week: Maybe at the expense of just playing or making the (correct) general read, we may force it through him a little bit to ensure he gets those reps because we’re looking long term to get him better as a late-game playmaker. And he’s very good. I just think he can never get enough of that stuff.”
Siakam made his coach’s strategy look good in the short term as well as being a worthy long-term goal.
