NEW YORK – Something had to give. The New York Knicks were the hottest team in the NBA with an eight-game winning streak on the line, the product of strong play, good health and good luck.
The Toronto Raptors? Well, you know that story: all the things teams need to go well haven’t been happening, or at least not at the right time or in the right combinations. Their six-game losing streak was the longest in the league as the ball went up Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden.
But Pascal Siakam, the evidence would show, had had enough.
The Raptors veteran and two-time all-NBA player put together the game of his career where the lights shine brightest. The Raptors rode every one of his career-best 52 points to stop the Knicks’ streak, stop their own streak and give Toronto a badly needed 113-106 win.
Siakam delivered in every way and in every moment, including down the stretch in the fourth quarter. The Raptors gave up an 11-point lead with 8:29 left but after Canadian men’s national team star RJ Barrett gave the Knicks the lead with 3:21 to play, Siakam responded with a pair of free throws and got some support from Fred VanVleet’s triple (assisted by Siakam) with 1:36 left to put Toronto up by four.
Two more free throws by VanVleet, three more by Siakam and a driving lay-up by the latter in the final seconds sealed the win and made sure Siakam became just the fifth Raptor to score 50 points or more. He added nine rebounds and seven assists in his 41 minutes of work.
VanVleet added 28 for Toronto while Julius Randle and Barrett each had 30 for the Knicks, who fell to 18-14 with the loss. Toronto improved to 14-18 before heading to Cleveland on Friday to finish its pre-holiday road trip.
Siakam has been growing increasingly frustrated with the Raptors’ plight and for the second game in a row single-handedly put his team in position to win. He helped them got off to a solid start with a nine-point first quarter to help match the Garden crowd’s energy. He tried to end the game early with a 17-point second quarter that gave Toronto a double-digit lead going into the half.
When the Knicks clawed it all back and were down two midway through the third, Siakam scored another 17 points to give Toronto a seven-point cushion to start the final period. He was sitting on 43 points then, one off his career high and within range of VanVleet’s franchise record of 54 set during the 2020-21 season, or at least joining VanVleet, DeMar DeRozan, Vince Carter and Terrence Ross as the only Raptors to have scored 50 points or more in a game.
The benefit of winning is that in erases doubt. Each victory in a streak confirms that everything is it should be.
“It’s really, really, difficult to do first of all,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said of the Knicks’ streak. “Any streak that gets up in this number is really difficult because there’s probably a bunch of games, or a handful or whatever that could go either way and you just happen to be making the plays at the end and being on the right side of those.
“But obviously, it’s a lot of fun, right?” added Nurse, whose team had an eight-game winning streak last season that turned its year around. “It gets to a point where you’re just trying to keep the streak alive. … That provides a lot of energy from day to day. You know, no matter who you’re playing, where you’re playing, you’re thinking come on and let’s keep this thing going.”
Losing has the opposite effect. As the streak grows, the search for answers deepens. Doubts expand.
The Raptors are at the point where they’re trying to remind themselves of their identity and what makes them good when they’re playing their best.
“The biggest thing for me is trying to get us back to this defensive team that I wouldn’t say people feared but they at least knew what was coming night to night: a lot of ball pressure, a lot of length, a lot of deflections, a lot of turnovers and all that kind of stuff,” said Nurse. “We got to remember who we are. It’ not quite who we are right now … but that’s where we got to keep striving to try to get back to because that still is our core of identity … That will get us out of this other streak.”
The Raptors began to show signs in a dominant second quarter that was sparked by Siakam, who almost lifted Toronto to a win in Philadelphia on Monday with season highs of 38 points and 15 rebounds only to have Toronto fall short in overtime.
Siakam’s solution? Do a little more. “Whatever ever it takes to get out of this thing we’re (going to do),” he said in the Raptors dressing room in Philadelphia. A man of his word, clearly.
Toronto led 28-27 after the first quarter and Siakam already had nine points before he really got serious. He helped Toronto jump out to an 11-point lead to start the second quarter as he scored 12 points and assisted on a Malachi Flynn triple in a 15-5 run that gave Toronto some breathing room.
As if fueled by the taste of success, the vision of the Raptors Nurse has for his club began playing out. For a roughly four-minute sequence at the end of the half, the Raptors looked like the Raptors.
VanVleet made a smart hustle play to secure a loose the ball after a jump ball and pitched it ahead to a breaking Scottie Barnes, who found the trailing O.G. Anunoby for the dunk. Then VanVleet and Barnes doubled Jalen Brunson on the baseline to force another steal and another dunk by Anunoby. Shortly after VanVleet doubled Knicks centre Mitchell Robinson to force another turnover, Anunoby hit a three set up by Siakam. The Raptors led by as many as 14 before Barrett’s fourth triple of the half just before the clock expired cut the lead to 63-53.
It was a hint of what the Raptors are supposed to look like.
“We gotta do it a little better, gonna have to get a little more creative, change and adapt,” said VanVleet. “The game changes, the NBA changes. We’ve been causing havoc for the last how many years, the rest of league is watching that and … they’re looking at what we do … so we’ll continue to sharpen it. Thank God we don’t have to hit our stride right now, we’d be in trouble. But we’ve still got a lot of time to clean it up.”
The pressure to do so never relents. When a team is rolling like the Knicks are, they believe anything is possible and they came out in the second half and played like it. Immanuel Quickley hit three triples in the first three minutes of the third quarter as part of a 13-2 run that erased the Raptors’ high-octane second quarter and gave the Knicks a three-point lead.
The Raptors couldn’t shake them, but they never wilted.
Siakam wouldn’t let them. He led and his team followed.
