Durant also had five rebounds and an assist as Houston (2-2) won back-to-back games. Jabari Smith Jr. added 25 points with five boards and five assists.<\/p>\n
Alperen Sengun neared a triple double with 18 points, nine assists and eight rebounds.<\/p>\n
Scottie Barnes also had 31 points as Toronto (1-4) dropped its fourth straight game. Barnes added five rebounds and two assists.<\/p>\n
Brandon Ingram had 29 points, four assists and two rebounds.<\/p>\n
Raptors starting centre Jakob Poeltl was ruled out hours before the opening tip-off with lower back stiffness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rookie Collin Murray-Boyles made his first career NBA start in just the third game of his career. He finished with 13 points and two assists over 25 minutes.<\/p>\n
The game’s start time was moved up by an hour to allow fans to watch the Toronto Blue Jays play the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series. Scotiabank Arena had the critical baseball game up on in-arena screens following the final buzzer of the Raptors game.<\/p>\n
Rockets: At different points in the night Houston was able to put five players all over six-foot-10, at least an inch taller than six-foot-nine Sandro Mamukelashvii, the tallest Toronto player. The size advantage held by Smith (6-11), Durant (6-10), Sengun (6-11), Steven Adams (6-11), and Clint Capela (6-10) over the entire Raptors roster allowed them to out-rebound the hosts 53-22.<\/p>\n
Raptors: Poeltl’s absence hurt Toronto in two ways. First, it allowed Sengun and Adams free reign around the basket, with Houston outscoring the Raptors 66-36 in the paint. It also hurt Toronto’s depth, with the Rockets getting 37 bench points to the Raptors’ 23.<\/p>\n
Durant’s driving layup 4:16 into the third quarter capped Houston’s 16-6 run to open the second half.<\/p>\n
Toronto lost despite being more efficient from three-point range, going 21 for 40 (52.5 per cent) from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
Raptors: Travel to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers on Friday.<\/p>\n
Rockets: Head to Boston to take on the Celtics on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Durant also had five rebounds and an assist as Houston (2-2) won back-to-back games. Jabari Smith Jr. added…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-249094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}