Super Bowl Sunday in Toronto means an early Raptors game, and showing up at the arena for 1pm media almost feels like being here before the sun is up. It was a quiet one at Scotiabank Arena today, with a lot of the usual suspects around instead taking the day off to watch some guys play football before and after a Bad Bunny concert.<\/p>\n
Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers were in town, and it immediately seemed like coach Rick Carlisle also had another sport on his mind\u2026 but it wasn\u2019t football. He came into the Raptors\u2019 media room and immediately launched into some thoughts about Olympic curling, saying he was watching this morning and couldn\u2019t help but \u201clive or die for the Canadian Curling team.\u201d Unfortunately, Canada\u2019s mixed pairs curlers were eliminated later in the afternoon. Sorry, Rick.<\/p>\n
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As for the actual basketball, Coach Rajakovic says that while Jakob Poeltl was still being held out of today\u2019s game, he was progressing well. After missing over 20 games with a sore back, the team is working to recondition him for a return to the lineup. Unfortunately, Collin Murray-Boyles also ended up leaving the game early due to a lingering thumb injury. The Raptors prepared for this, though! This is why they went out and traded for Trayce Jackson-Davis! He was able to make his Raptors debut in light of CMB leaving the game.<\/p>\n
He did well, too, scoring 10 points and 10 rebounds in 15 minutes. After the game, Darko Rajakovic said that while it was the plan all along to give him some minutes today, losing CMB gave them a little bit more freedom to do so. There was no pressure from the coach on his newest player, as TJD himself said that Darko texted him after yesterday\u2019s practice and told him to just \u201cplay free.\u201d As for CMB, he was hit on the hand, reaggravating an existing injury, and is considered day to day.<\/p>\n
After a slower start and a close halftime score, the Raptors found themselves again in the third quarter. Of course, the scars from Wednesday night\u2019s crumble were fresh, and no one was about to prematurely call this a dub before it was official. They seemed to have learned their lessons from last week, though, and were able to keep their 20-point lead throughout the rest of the game. In the end, Toronto took it 122-104 over Indiana.<\/p>\n
It was a fantastic game for Scottie Barnes, who scored 25 points on 12-20 shooting from the field, adding 12 rebounds and 6 assists. RJ Barrett scored 20 of his own, and Mamukelashvili scored 17 points off the bench.<\/p>\n
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Rajakovic had the same words of praise for his All-Star player that he usually does, emphatically saying that \u201cScottie Barnes is the Defensive Player of the Year\u201d and will one day win the NBA\u2019s MVP award.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Darko for you,\u201d Scottie said of his reaction to Darko continuing to sing his praises this season (and always). He went on to talk about how much he appreciates Darko as a coach, saying that having a coach that you can consider a friend, someone you can get deep with in conversations, someone who rides for you \u2014 it makes a huge difference.<\/p>\n
Darko has been saying stuff like this for years, of course. He has always had faith in his star, knowinf his potential and talking him up to the max. Now that Scottie is starting to reach that potential, Darko\u2019s faith in his super star is only getting stronger.<\/p>\n
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Overall, it was a good win, and one that was expected of this team. The Pacers are 13-40 on the season and headed for the lottery \u2014 similar to the Raptors from one year ago. Having back to back wins going into their first meeting with the No. 1 seeded Detroit Pistons on Wednesday (the last game before the All-Star break) will hopefully give them a boost as they take on a tough opponent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Super Bowl Sunday in Toronto means an early Raptors game, and showing up at the arena for 1pm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,4821,964,10760,188,568,126,1399,13635,6,279,681,1714,1041,39994,1261,680,476,3820,2966],"class_list":["post-592081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-raptors","tag-basketball","tag-canada","tag-collin-murray-boyles","tag-darko-rajakovic","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-getty-images","tag-indiana-pacers","tag-jakob-poeltl","tag-mamukelashvili","tag-nba","tag-pascal-siakam","tag-raptors","tag-rick-carlisle","tag-rj-barrett","tag-scotiabank-arena","tag-scottie-barnes","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-raptors","tag-torontoraptors","tag-trayce-jackson-davis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116039618719402999","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}