NEW YORK — On a cold Sunday morning in downtown Manhattan, the Toronto Raptors stepped into an alternate reality.
Barely 36 hours removed from the peak of NBA regular season basketball and their successful 1-vs-1 showdown against the Houston Rockets, Toronto took the floor at Madison Square Garden.
Normally it’s a thrill for any player. Raptors head coach Dwane Casey got excited before the game, recalling in bright detail his first visit to ‘The Mecca’ as a player with the University of Kentucky in the 1976 NIT tournament. The aroma left over from the elephant dung from the just-departed circus was a highlight.
“Man, this place stinks,” was his first impression, he said, but that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm.
But it was hard to make the case this time around, even with the famous marquee on the outside and the trademark theatre lighting within.
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The Knicks are like the Bizarro-version of the Rockets, or the Raptors, for that matter. Whereas Houston and the Raptors are trying to figure out how make it to the NBA Finals, the Knicks are draft lottery bound — full and eager participants in the NBA’s great tank race, having entered Sunday’s game 1-14 in their last 15 starts.
Add in the 1:00 p.m. tip and the hour lost to daylight savings time and for all the games that could get tagged ‘trap game’, it might have been the ultimate. The Raptors had a focused team meeting in lieu of a shootaround and overcoming the circumstances – early start against a bad team after a tough week – was the message.
“We talked about it this morning for a long time,” said Casey. “We have had these scenarios before and hopefully we have grown and matured and can be professional. As I said when we were here last time and they beat us, this team can beat anyone here. They are a very different team at home. No matter what the goals are like looking at young players and all that other stuff, we can’t fall for that.”
The Raptors got the message, and the Knicks played their part – fail while trying hard – perfectly as Toronto was able to head into the first of two off-nights in New York City with a never-really-in-doubt 132-16 win in their pockets.
They had avoided the trap game.
“It was the perfect example of one,” said Raptors guard Fred VanVleet, who finished with 11 points on five shots in 16 minutes coming off the bench. “They’re struggling a little bit and it was an early game after two big emotionally and physically draining games [an overtime win over Detroit and their Friday night win over the Rockets], so you just have to lock in mentally and we did that. It was kind of a back-and-forth, grind-it-out first half and then we were able to pull away in the second half. If you want to win championships you have to be able to get through any type of game, any type of situation and that’s what we were able to do today.”
With the win the Raptors improved their record to 49-17 while dropping the Knicks to 24-43 and — after the Boston Celtics’ loss to the Indiana Pacers – improved Toronto’s lead atop the Eastern Conference standings to 3.5 games. Toronto shot 16-of-35 from three and counted 32 assists with 11 players registering at least one helper.
It was the Raptors’ eighth straight win – their longest streak of the season and their 15th in their past 16 games as they continue their surge towards the franchise’s first 60-win season. They stay in New York for another couple of nights and with a date against the lowly Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday, have a chance to extend their NBA-best mark against sub-.500 teams to a ridiculous 29-2.
Their cause was helped by the return of Delon Wright, who had to leave Tuesday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks and sit out of the Pistons and Rockets games due to a sprained big toe. He was a late addition to the rotation but was instrumental in helping the second unit overwhelm the Knicks. He helped the Raptors bench score a season-high 69 points.
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After the two clubs played most of the first half even – Toronto led 65-57 at the end of the second quarter – the game cracked open in the third as the Raptors went up by 16 and then broke things open in the early moments of the fourth with Wright helping push the pace. Midway through the fourth the Raptors went up 24 and the blowout was official.
“Honestly, sitting out that game against Houston was kind of like a wake-up call to stay in attack mode,” said Wright, who had 12 points and four assists and made both his threes in 20 minutes. “Just watching the way both teams were attacking each other reminded me of how I can impact the game and I tried to do that today.”
It was a welcome element on an afternoon when it would have been easy or tempting for the Raptors to coast.
The biggest emotional spark in the game came when the Raptors’ Serge Ibaka picked up a technical foul after getting into it a little bit with the Knicks’ Tim Hardaway Jr., just before half. The Raptors were already in reasonable control of the game but on an afternoon where adrenaline needed to be manufactured, it helped.
A dominant second half meant the only Raptors starter to see minutes in the fourth quarter was Norm Powell, marking the sixth time since the beginning of February Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan didn’t have to play in the final period.
It was a useful break after each of them saw their minutes spike in their overtime win over Detroit and against Houston.
“It’s definitely going to benefit us in the long run,” said DeRozan, who finished with nine points and five assists in 28 minutes, while Lowry had 16 points and seven assists in his 28 minutes. Jonas Valanciunas led seven Raptors in double figures with 17 points and nine rebounds in 22 minutes.
“It’s great to see them guys out there playing and give us a chance to sit over there and kind of be cheerleaders so to speak. It’s cool to see that.”
For a team coming off what Casey called an “exhausting week” there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon in Manhattan.
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