The Toronto Raptors have celebrated a blowout victory against the Atlanta Hawks. Jakob Pöltl scored 14 points and 7 rebounds. The Austrian was thus largely responsible for the early decision of the game.
Considering the fact that the reserve players of the Raptors were on the floor for as many minutes as the starters, it is easy to see when the game was about to be decided. The answer: Early. Very early, actually. After a well-balanced first quarter, Toronto overcame the hosts in the second round by every trick in the book.
The Raptors won the second section with 39:14 (!), after the break tea the lead even increased to 45 points. After their comeback win against the Knicks the night before, the Hawks were simply without a chance against the Canadians’ offensive fireworks. Toronto not only hit 54.8 percent of the field, but also scuttled 40.6 percent of downtown (13/32 threesomes). Last but not least, Atlanta also allowed 50 points in the zone.
“I had the feeling that our defence – not only in the Zone, but overall – was not good enough for a game at NBA level today,”concluded Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer. On the other side of the court, Dennis Schröder also had little to oppose the Raptors. The German was with 14 points (4 rebounds) top scorer of his team, but with the blowout he was only 26 minutes on the stage. Otherwise, Taurean Prince and Marco Belinelli (10 points each) were the only ones to score double-digit points in the Hawks.
In the Raptors category, Kyle Lowry (15 points, plus a career high with 13 rebounds in 27 minutes) and Norman Powell (17 points) as well as Jakob Pöltl were particularly convincing. In the first half of the year, the Austrian made a good contribution to Toronto’s standing out with a few good actions. In total Pöltl played a strong 14 points (7/9 FG) and 7 rebounds in 19 minutes. With this, the Viennese player stopped his career high.