Pascal Siakam scored a game-high 36 points, Fred VanVleet had a double-double with 20 points and a career-high 20 assists and the Toronto Raptors beat the shorthanded Charlotte Hornets 128-108 on Sunday to get one step closer to securing a spot in the NBA play-in tournament.
O.G. Anunoby contributed 23 points for the Raptors, who will clinch a spot outright if the Brooklyn Nets beat the Utah Jazz later Sunday.
The Raptors (39-39) came into the game tied with Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks for eighth place in the Eastern Conference and looking to move up in the standings to secure a better chance of advancing out of the play-in tournament. The team finishing eighth needs just one win; the team finishing ninth would need two victories to reach the postseason as the No. 8 seed.
“It’s really important for us” to get to the 8 seed, VanVleet said. “For the last couple of weeks, it has been really simple for us — we’re in a win-every-game mode. There’s not much to think about. You have to go out and perform and play your best and try to take care of business. We are just trying to play our best basketball at this time of the year.”
VanVleet, who now owns the franchise single-game records for both points and assists, made sure the Raptors were ready to go and on top of their game.
The Raptors blitzed the Hornets in the paint, 90-44, in the opener of a two-game series, which helped offset 8-of-28 shooting from 3-point range. The teams get together one more time Tuesday night in Charlotte.
“He was really good,” Toronto coach Nick Nurse said of VanVleet. “He got the ball a lot of places where it needed to go.”
Hornets coach Steve Clifford said VanVleet was “high intensity” from the beginning and his team could not stop him on the pick-and-roll.
“He just crushed us,” Clifford said. “Every pick-and-roll, it didn’t matter, angle, high side, he either scored, got fouled or they got a wide-open shot. So we’ve mixed up the schemes but none of that worked.”
Svi Mykhailiuk scored a career-high 26 points and Mark Williams added 15 points and 12 rebounds for the injury-riddled Hornets, who took the floor without all five of the team’s anticipated starters this season. James Bouknight added 21 points of his own and Theo Maledon had 14 dimes.
The Raptors dominated from the tipoff.
VanVleet made his impact felt early on, scoring 11 points and assisting on six other buckets in the opening quarter as the Raptors established a 35-25 lead.
The Hornets (26-53) had nine turnovers in the first half leading to 18 Raptors points, the highlight coming when last season’s Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes came up with a steal and provided an alley-oop lob to a cutting Precious Achiuwa for a fast-break dunk.
Charlotte sliced Toronto’s 18-point lead down to 10 midway through the fourth quarter after JT Thor knocked down a corner 3, but Siakam helped the Raptors push the lead back to 16 with eight points down the stretch.
“I thought we played really disciplined offensively,” Nurse said. “We didn’t make a lot of really good shots. We had some really nice two passes to corner 3s and we didn’t make one of them. We’re still doing the right things and getting it where it was supposed to go, and that’s all you can do.”
Raptors: Anunoby suffered what Nurse described as a “mild, mild sprain” of his ankle. Turned 18 Charlotte turnovers into 28 points. Bench was outscored 40-21.
Hornets: Were missing a number of impact players including all three-point guards in LaMelo Ball, Terry Rozier and Dennis Smith Jr., along with Gordon Hayward, P.J. Washington and Cody Martin. Bouknight now has 11 3-pointers in the last two games.
