A pivotal matchup in the hotly contested Eastern Conference playoff race sees the Toronto Raptors welcome the Orlando Magic to Canada on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Toronto (41-32) defeated New Orleans 119-106 on Friday. The Raptors hold the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference but are only 2.5 games ahead of the 10th-seeded Miami Heat.<\/p>\n
Toronto’s win, coupled with the Atlanta Hawks’ 109-102 loss at Boston, moved the Raptors a half-game ahead of the Hawks in the No. 5 seed. Atlanta plays the second game of a back-to-back with a Saturday night date against Western Conference cellar dweller Sacramento.<\/p>\n
The margin between earning a guaranteed playoff spot and facing the play-in round is even narrower heading into the final stretch of the regular season. Philadelphia, the East’s seventh-place team through Friday, is only half a game behind the Hawks.<\/p>\n
Orlando (39-34), meanwhile, is tied with Charlotte and only trails Toronto by two games ahead of Sunday’s matchup.<\/p>\n
The Magic rebounded from a six-game losing skid — which came on the heels of a seven-game winning streak — with a 121-117 win over Sacramento on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lot better to learn the lesson in a win than a loss,” Orlando coach Jamahl Mosley said. “To get the win and find a way through it all, that’s important right now for us.”<\/p>\n
Paolo Banchero flirted with a triple-double, posting 30 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, while Wendell Carter Jr. recorded a 10-point, 11-rebound double-double. Desmond Bane added 23 points in the win.<\/p>\n
For Banchero, Thursday’s outpouring marked his third straight game of 30-plus, as he shoulders a sizable portion of Orlando’s scoring load with Franz Wagner sidelined due to an ankle injury.<\/p>\n
“If we want to be a playoff team, we’ve got to be able to do stuff like that,” Banchero said of making plays, particularly in crunch time. During the six-game slump, the Magic dropped four decisions by five points or fewer.<\/p>\n
On the flipside, Toronto comes in having scored each of its last four wins by double-digit margins. The Raptors’ dominant victories have been sprinkled among three losses, two of which came in blowouts to the Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Clippers.<\/p>\n
The 22- and 25-point setbacks against the Suns and Clippers were part of a five-game road swing in which Toronto finished 2-3. The Raptors closed the stretch with Immanuel Quickley sidelined due to a foot injury, which kept him out Friday.<\/p>\n
Scottie Barnes helped alleviate some of the pressure on the Toronto backcourt with Quickley out, going for 23 points and 12 assists against New Orleans.<\/p>\n
“He’s a pass-first player,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said of Barnes. “He likes to find his teammates, (and) he’s exceptional in transition. … His size and his athletic ability allows him to play over the top of the defense.”<\/p>\n
Barnes led a contingent of five Raptors scoring 18-plus points, including Ja’Kobe Walter.<\/p>\n
Walter has scored at least 18 points in each of the last three Raptors wins.<\/p>\n
“He’s just shooting the ball really well,” Rajakovic said of Walter. “The whole team trusts him (because) he plays so hard.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pivotal matchup in the hotly contested Eastern Conference playoff race sees the Toronto Raptors welcome the Orlando…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,6,681,680,476,3820],"class_list":{"0":"post-684788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-raptors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-raptors","11":"tag-toronto","12":"tag-toronto-raptors","13":"tag-torontoraptors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116308861595555957","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684788","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=684788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}