You’d love to be able to use a lack of familiarity together as an explanation. You can’t, but it’d go something like this: The Toronto Raptors ' starting lineup on Wednesday entered the game having played 19 minutes as a group in over a year on the roster together; the New York Knicks ' starting lineup had played 19 minutes as a group, per-game, over 33 games this season. Were this a closer game that game down to a few possessions or late-game execution between those groups, you could chalk it up to the cost of an injury-plagued year and the growing pains in a rebuild.
Call it a fun learning night, dust your hands off, get ready to do it all again against another Eastern Conference beast Thursday. Instead, the Raptors did as they’ve done too often lately, looking overmatched enough to rub the veil of rebuilding threadbare. After a pretty strong first half and a nice response early in the third quarter as things started teetering, the Raptors lost their footing, hung their heads, and saw a superior Knicks team run away with it.
The modest 112-98 final comes thanks to Chris Boucher going on an all-time “get-me-out-of-bench-purgatory” three-minute, 10-point, plus-11 run; when the game was over enough for Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau to actually play Tyler Kolek, it was a 26-point hole. For a while, there were positives to build on. Immanuel Quickley looked solid, scoring 22 points on 7-of-12 shooting, and was active enough to finish a bad loss with a plus-7.
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