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Raptors vs Wolves Final Score: Raps Eke Out 95 to 93 Win

The Toronto Raptors snuck out of Minnesota with a win over the T-Wolves. Mohamed Mohamed breaks this one down...

By Adam Francis
Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

With the chance to possibly push the T-Wolves onto OT, Ricky Rubio missed the second of 2 FT's and Amir Johnson grabbed the rebound and iced the game at the line. This obviously proves once again that the clutch gene is in fact real! Any ways, the Raps squeaked out a nail bitter out at the Target Centre (at least that's what I think they still call it) 95-93 on the backs of DeMar DeRozan and Rudy Gay combining for 51 points. Ya they took 46 shots to do it, but it's the thought that counts Let's get to the Good, Bad and Meh of tonight's encounter.
Good:

  • Ricky Rubio statistically wasn't spectacular and he wasn't just seeing him on the court, but my god is he a gifted passer. If you have the chance, watch the Wolves sometime not just cause of Rubio (although he plays a part of it), but because they move the ball a lot before they initiate their PnR sets with Ricky and Pek at the top of the key. If only they had Kevin Love healthy and a SG who can create his own shot, the wolves would be awesome. Maybe Tyreke Evans?????
  • The resurgence of AK 47 this yr has been an awesome story. He wasn't in the league last yr, he looked like a guy whose prime might've been slipping and wouldn't have known it, he kills it in Europe, plays well in the Olympics, and now, his PER coming into this game was the highest since 2010. His TS and eFG% are the highest since 07-08, he has a back tattoo, and he's back to being a menace defensively. In fact, according to 82 Games' website, AK 47 has been holding SF's to a PER of 14.5 coming into tonight's action.
  • The Raptors won a game!
  • JV got to the line 10 times tonight. The rest of the team? 16! God this kid is going to be very good soon
  • Nike Pekovic took 16 FT's tonight, and I swear, at least half of them were on the rip move in the mid/low post. Brook Lopez does this a lot as well and the Raptors almost bit the bullet tonight!
  • Another fun fact; Derrick Williams took more FT's than Gay, Lowry, Amir, and DeMar combined (6-4). He also made all 6. Aren't fun facts awesome?


Bad:

  • I really don't want to pick on DeMar DeRozan and Rudy Gay cause they're fine basketball players and they seem like good people; but DeMar and Rudy Gay took 46 shots to get their 51 points! In fact, Lowry, DeMar, and Rudy combined to take 57 shots to get their 62 points. By the way, you know how many shots Amir and JV took combined? 7! Rudy and DeMar combined to take 30 shots that weren't in the paint and weren't 3's. They made 16 of them which is a damn good percentage but the fact that these 2 guys had to resort to this staggering amount of mid range shots is just ridiculous.
  • Actually, this deserves some more ranting. Remember when Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings were first teammates; the general rhetoric and narrative to come out was that it was borderline stupid and pretty much a more saner version of Marbury/Francis in NY? Well what the hell is this then? The SG/SF version of it? I repeat, they took 30 mid range jumpers tonight! over a 3rd of their shots were either Rudy Gay or DeMar DeRozan taking a mid range jumper. I give up!
  • The "Ask Matt" segment just needs to go, or get better tweets, one of the two. They had a question asking what was Ross's ceiling and Matt and Jack pretty much ducked the obvious answer which is for him to work on being able to create his own shot and not rely on getting open on sets for 3's. It's segments like these that might drive me to my early grave
  • Why did Aaron Gray play 15 minutes tonight? Why?


Meh:

ny ways, that's all I got for tonight's matchup. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch some Boy Meets World and complain about not having a GF!
Until Next Time Canada!

MOHAMED MOHAMED

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