The Austrian Jakob Pöltl celebrated a clear victory against the New York Knicks with the Toronto Raptors – and convinced with a strong performance.
One of the key success factors for Toronto Raptors in the current season is clearly the strong bank. The Canadians also proved this against injury-stricken Knicks, who lost their fifth consecutive defeat in the Air Canada Centre. In addition to Kristaps Porzingis, Enes Kanter and Ron Baker also dropped out. The good performance of Michael Beasley with 21 points by far did not help to stand up to the extremely dangerous Raptors away from the bank.
The hosts’ reservists won the bench duel with a score of 61:35, so Toronot’s starters were able to miss the entire fourth quarter in their third game in a row.”That’s very good. We enable the older boys to take a few breaks”, Jakob Pöltl joked afterwards. The Austrian played a very strong match and scored 13 points (6/7 FG) and 5 rebounds.
In addition to Pöltl, six other Raptors players scored double-digit points, and Jonas Valanciunas was the best scorer with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Pascal Siakam scored a career high with 14 points, while Fred VanVleet (10) as well as Delon Wright and C. J. Miles (11 in each case) rounded off the strong performance of the Raptors Bank.
This was especially important against the Knicks as DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry had a used evening. Both had enormous problems with their litter and only got to 8 (DeRozan, 2/11 FG) and 7 (Lowry, 2/8 FG) points respectively.”They play with a lot of heart and don’t care who scores,”said Head Coach Dwane Casey, who was satisfied with his second unit.”If you play like that, then a lot of good things will happen.” For example, a blowout win against the Knicks.