On Sunday, the Raptors hosted potential Rookie of the Year Blake Griffin and his Los Angeles Clippers in Toronto and defeated them 98-93. This snapped a 3-game losing streak for the team. Once again, they found themselves in a tight game in the 4th quarter, but this time, Toronto held on to win. Blake Griffin dunked to make it an 87-85 game with 4 minutes to go, but Andrea Bargnani finished off a 3-point play (bucket plus a free-throw) to make it a 5-point game. L.A. tried to keep up after that with free-throws and another dunk by Blake Griffin, but were unable to do so. The game hero of course was Andrea Bargnani. Besides his 3-point play, he also put in 4 more points afterwards in the 4th quarter, and also attempted 9 free throws which is surprising because he usually only attempts 4 per game. Overall, he scored a game-high 27 points, but only shot 9-21 from the floor. Andrea's biggest helper was rookie Ed Davis. This was due to foul trouble by starting power forward Amir Johnson throughout the night. This opened up the court for Ed to perform, and he did just that. He scored 13 points, grabbed a career-high 14 rebounds, and 3 blocks. 6 of Ed's rebounds were on the offensive end. The best thing about Ed's game was that he did all of this in just 36 minutes of playing time. Finally, some extra numbers...
- The victory over the Clippers was the 500th Raptors game to ever be played at the Air Canada Centre. Toronto is 268-232 all-time on their home court.
- It also marks the 5th straight win over the Clippers.
- Jose Calderon also played well for Toronto: game was 5th this season with 10 or more assists - all in the last 6 games too.
- Offensive rebounds were 14-9 in favour of the Raptors.
- The game was DeMar DeRozan's 6th straight where he scored at least 16 points.
Toronto Chews up L.A.
Next, Toronto has to play at home vs the Miami Heat on Wednesday. Yeah, that's right: traitor LeBron James and Chris Bosh both make their first visits as Heat players to Toronto. Expect the fans to be poor sports about Bosh. Also expect LeBron and Chris to both put on big shows at the end of the game in order for Bosh to rub it in Toronto's collective face, to tell us, "You shouldn't boo LeBron and I and you shouldn't have let me go from your team. I busted my butt for you and THIS is how you treat me? Of course, I DID tweet you half to death in the offseason, but hey, it was 'just for fun' you know." To tell you the truth, I don't know if I even want to watch the game because of those potential two factors. If you want to, the game starts at 7 PM and will air on TSN2. As for me, I'll be waiting to see DeRozan perform in the Rookie Challenge and the Slam Dunk Contest. Join me next time as I hopefully recap the NBA All-Star Weekend for those two aforementioned events. We may even get some London Knights recaps in there. Later!
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