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It was a Toronto Raptors' special this afternoon at the Air Canada Centre as the Dinos used a 27 to 12 second quarter to jump out to a big lead, only to see their opponent roar back and nearly steal it. However as opposed to the story for most of this 2012-13 campaign, the Raptors held on in this one, winning 93 to 87.
I won't jump into a good, bad and ugly summary for this one as I'm not sure the interest is there at this point -hell, it was the quietest liveblog we've had at least this season, maybe last two- but suffice to say that Toronto doesn't get this win without lots of "good" from their wings. DeMar DeRozan and Rudy Gay hit 22 of their 41 shots, including an outstanding six of 10 three-pointers en route to a combined 62 points.
This was the big difference, especially early, as the Nets had no answer for either player, and gave little resistance to Toronto's attack. Lots of credit there has to go to Kyle Lowry too. He hit only two of his 10 shots, but had nine rebounds and six assists in the win, and again looked a lot more comfortable running the team's offence, finding easy alley-oops for Gay and Amir Johnson.
Of course as mentioned, this wouldn't be a Toronto Raptors game from the 2012-13 season without the club allowing the opponents back in it. The Raps lead was 17 with about two minutes to go in the third and by the early fourth quarter it was down to six.
The Nets kept coming on the back of Deron Williams' 30 point outing, getting as close as two before a Rudy Gay triple put the Dinos up for good.
The win was the team's 32nd on the season and now means that if the Raptors win their final two outings, they'll have actually posted an above .500 record since December 12. Of course, they still have to win those games and for a variety of reasons (including the Vegas pre-season bet of over 33 wins), it just feels like the Dinos only get one of those two doesn't it?