Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry, from left, collects a rebound in front of Minnesota Timberwolves Ricky Rubio and Zach LaVine during the first half of an NBA basketball game in Toronto on Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016. AP
TORONTO, Canada—DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and the Toronto Raptors pushed aside the Minnesota Timberwolves – again.
With Toronto down 95-94 with 8:46 left, DeRozan and Lowry keyed a 17-4 Raptors run that took the game away from the youthful Timberwolves. Toronto eventually pulled out a 124-110 victory, handing Minnesota its 13th straight loss at the Air Canada Centre.
“We just picked it up,” DeRozan said. “We kicked in our experience of understanding how we have to win games. We can’t underestimate a team like that that plays extremely hard.”
DeRozan had a team-high 27 points for the Raptors, Lowry added 25 points with 11 assists, and Jonas Valanciunas registered his team-leading sixth double-double on 20 points and 10 rebounds.
“We just have guys that are used to it, trying to come through at the end of games and sticking with the game plan and sticking with the course of action,” Lowry said.
After Toronto fell behind 11-2, coach Dwane Casey sat all his starters except for DeRozan in an attempt to get kick-start his team into action. Toronto still trailed by 10 at the end of the first quarter, but it sent a message.
“We can be a good team, but we can’t be special if we allow things to happen that happened in the first two quarters,” Casey said.
His counterpart, Tom Thibodeau, shared that sentiment, especially after seeing his team enter the final 12 minutes with the lead, 89-88. However, the Timberwolves could only shoot 38.9 percent in the final quarter, allowing the Raptors to outscore them 36-21.
“I thought the first three quarters were very good, connected, making the right reads, right plays, ball movement and screening a lot of good things happened,” Thibodeau said. “Then in the fourth quarter we got away from that.”
Zach LaVine led all Timberwolves scorers with 29 points, while Andrew Wiggins, playing in his homtown for the third time in the NBA, had 25.
However, the loss didn’t take off too much of the shine playing in front of family and friends for the Canadian, who is still waiting for his first taste of NBA victory on home soil.
“We need to get that first win here for it to be really good, but it’s always good to play back home,” he said.