Three-point shooting has been a major need for the Toronto Raptors this season, who are shooting the worst percentage in the league. But that was not nearly the case tonight.
The Raptors’s offense erupted in Chase Center Tuesday night, fuelled by a red-hot 21/34 shooting night from beyond the arc and crisp ball movement that resulted in a season-high 42 assists on 51 made field goals. Leading the charge was Immanuel Quickley, who tied his career-high 40 points along with 10 assists on 11/13 shooting.
Scottie Barnes also had a great performance, putting up 26 points, seven rebounds and 11 assists on 12/18 shooting.
The Raptors finished with a season-high in points, beating the Golden State Warriors 145-127, and are now 1-1 to start their five-game Western Conference road trip.
The game was a true wire-to-wire win, with the Raptors jumping out to an early 10-0 lead and holding a double-digit advantage nearly the entire game. The impressive effort came despite yet another short-handed effort: Toronto was without two of its starters in RJ Barrett and Jakob Poeltl, and two of its rotation players in Ja’Kobe Walter and rookie Collin Murray-Boyles.
As a result, head coach Darko Rajakovic went with a new starting lineup for the eighth consecutive game, this time with Gradey Dick getting his first start of the season.
The Warriors, meanwhile, had injury woes of their own. While they entered the game on a four-game winning streak, this was their first contest since Jimmy Butler suffered a season-ending torn ACL that has dramatically altered their hopes of making noise in the postseason.
Indeed, the Warriors started the game looking like a team that had just gotten bad news. The Raptors were not simply hitting their shots, but they were also out-running and out-passing the Warriors out of the gate. The Warriors’ defensive rotations were slow in the halfcourt, and they offered little resistance in fastbreak and even semi-transition defense.
Meanwhile, Butler’s absence allowed the Raptors to hone in on Stephen Curry, who generally had one of Jamal Shead or Ochai Agbaji glued to him throughout the game. Curry is averaging 27 points per game this season, but managed just 16 points and three assists against the Raptors. (Butler’s absence also meant that Warriors coach Steve Kerr freed Jonathan Kuminga from purgatory; Kuminga, who hadn’t played since December 18, put up 20 points and five rebounds.)
Quickley’s career night got off to a quick start, going 3/3 on threes halfway through the first quarter.
Jamison Battle played some solid minutes off the bench. Barnes did an excellent job playing off the attention Battle commands off-ball as a shooter. On one play, Barnes drew a defender’s attention by looking at Battle on the perimeter – then fired a no-look pass to Agbaji under the basket for two easy points.
The Raptors finished the first quarter with a 41-28 lead.
That lead was blown open as the second quarter wore on and the Warriors looked even slower, their helpside defense even more absent. Sandro Mamukelashvili hit back-to-back threes, AJ Lawson and Jonathan Mogbo found easy buckets in transition, and Quickley hit his fourth three (on as many attempts) to extend the lead to 59-31. The Raptors were not only getting easy looks by pushing the ball off turnovers and misses, but even off of made baskets.
The Warriors brought the lead down to 20 heading into halftime. But Toronto grabbed the momentum right back, playing some of their strongest basketball of the game to start the third quarter and taking a 30-point lead.
That stretch included another pair of threes for Quickley, who made his first six threes of the game. Quickley was dangerous as a catch-and-shoot threat – a threat which we’ve seen be further unlocked when Quickley plays alongside Jamal Shead, who scored 10 points and eight assists. Quickley also had a nice lefty and-one layup off a dribble hand-off from Barnes – and the team followed that possession by forcing the Warriors into a 24-second shot clock violation.
Meanwhile, the Raptors’ best sequence of the game came on a 2014 Spurs-esque possession in which all five Raptors touched the ball, ending in a Brandon Ingram three in the corner.
Ingram provided his usual injection of necessary shot-making, scoring on a mix of catch-and-shoot threes and tougher mid-range looks that helped supplement the offense, albeit during a rare game that had practically no dry spells. He finished with 22 points, four boards and five assists.
But with Curry on the bench, the Warriors finally displayed some energy and fought back, going on a 29-13 run that brought the Raptors’ lead to 104-90. The same defensive breakdowns that had plagued the Warriors were now hitting the Raptors, who allowed easy transition buckets, plus a Kuminga layup to end the quarter after he ran the full length of the court right past the defense.
The Warriors managed to tighten the lead to just nine points about halfway through the fourth quarter. But the Raptors were able to survive the onslaught of Buddy Hield threes thanks to timely shot-making by Barnes in the mid-range, and clutch three-pointers by Ingram and Mamu that put them up by 15.
Mamukaleshvili finished the game with 14 points and 12 rebounds, including a couple of offensive rebounds that helped extend key possessions in the fourth.
Dick, in his first start of the season, shot ⅖ from beyond the arc, which was a promising return to form in a season where he’s shooting just 30% from three.
While Dick’s shooting night was a promising return to form, the team’s offensive performance as a whole would be more aptly described as a remarkable display of shot-making and togetherness. Sure, the 62% three-point shooting is an unsustainable clip. So was their 22/22 night from the free throw line. But the buzzing ball movement, which contorted the defense and led to assists on four in every five buckets? That’s something this team can keep up.
The Raptors and Warriors entered the game with identical 25-19 records. This was the first night of a back-to-back for the Raptors, who are now 26-19, and are set to take on the 12-32 Sacramento Kings on Wednesday night.
