Following hectic offseason drama surrounding Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, leading to the trade that ended up bringing The Klaw back to Toronto, the Clippers and Raptors have been in plenty of headlines together. The new eras of both clubs met up on Saturday for the NBA Preseason in Vancouver, where Toronto took down Los Angeles, 114-106.<\/p>\n
While Rui Hachimura continued to prove that he plans to have an offensive breakout year with LA this season, putting up 14 points, the Raptors, in large part, relied on RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley, who are attempting to prove they can be valuable role players around Kawhi and Scottie. In 23 minutes, Barrett put up 20 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists. Immanuel Quickley had 18 points in 19 minutes, with a respectable 4 rebounds and 4 assists. Colin Murray-Boyles was a leading offensive leader as well, going into the second half with 9 points. CMB is a special defensive player, but if he can continue to work on his offensive game, the sky\u2019s the limit.<\/p>\n
The Raptors played some of their best basketball in the first quarter, holding the Clippers to only 18 points as a team. A player who got fans riled up, many of whom have never even heard his name before \u2014 Nimari Burnett \u2014 made fans loud when he hit a corner three that bounced off the backboard before landing home late in the first quarter. Burnett, the 6\u20195\u201d undrafted player from this year\u2019s 2026 draft class on an Exhibit 10 contract with the Raptors, put up 10 points on 4 of 6 shooting from the field and 2 of 3 from three-point range.<\/p>\n
Burnett\u2019s surprise performance was a nice boost for the team in the first quarter, but the team\u2019s offence definitely picked up speed starting the second quarter. Barnes asserted his presence in the paint, especially evident through his 10 rebounds. The new Raptor, Kyle Anderson, was scoreless in his offensively lackluster performance; however, he made great heads-up defense and even passing plays, like his touch pass to Jakob Poeltl late in the second quarter. The ball movement in general last night was mesmerizing and quite clean, with only 15 turnovers compared to Los Angeles\u2019 20. Regarding Poeltl, all his buckets came from nice positioning on the court. However, he only had 9 points, 3 of which came from his 3 out of 6 performance from the free-throw line. Poeltl continues to seem not present enough to be the centre of this basketball team, especially only ending the night with 4 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Another player with a noteworthy performance was Jamal Shead. In 19 minutes, he scored 13 points and 2 assists, and displayed nothing but good defence. His steal around the 4-minute mark in the second quarter, leading to a pass straight to Jaden Bradley \u2014 who had a productive game himself \u2014 is an example of his incredibly high basketball IQ.<\/p>\n
The game culminated in a slight slump from the Raptors in the second half of the game, but they got the job done. The preseason has been more than a valuable experience for the Raptors to find out who will fit on this team and what their roles will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following hectic offseason drama surrounding Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, leading to the trade that ended up bringing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,492138,85],"class_list":["post-924459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-raptors-scores","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}