Contending Raptors, Clippers out to boost playoff positioning
The Toronto Raptors close out a pivotal, five-game road trip on Wednesday against a Los Angeles Clippers team jockeying for positioning in the Western Conference postseason race.
Toronto (40-31) can finish on the right side of .500 to conclude its swing, coming into Los Angeles off a 143-127 win on Monday at Utah. The Raptors dropped back-to-back decisions Friday and Sunday at Denver and Phoenix, but delivered their second-highest scoring performance of the season against the Jazz.
RJ Barrett's 27 points led four Raptors scoring at least 20 points, joining Sandro Mamukelashvili (23 points), Ja'Kobe Walter (21 points, 6-of-8 3-point shooting) and Scottie Barnes (20 points).
Barnes also dished 10 assists, complementing Jamal Shead's 15 as Toronto totaled a franchise record 49 assists on 54 made field-goal attempts. Barnes and Shead, along with Immanuel Quickley, who missed Monday's game with a foot injury, all average more than five assists per contest.
"That's something we really like to do and emphasize, the ball movement, the body movement," Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic said.
Toronto averages just shy of 29 assists per game, fourth-most in the NBA.
The Raptors' balanced scoring effort came without two of the team's season-long leading scorers, Brandon Ingram and Quickley. Ingram, Toronto's leading scorer at 21.6 points per game, sat with a heel injury one night removed from scoring just six points in the loss at Phoenix.
Quickley was a late scratch from the lineup Monday due to a foot injury.
Ingram and Quickley are both listed as questionable, after Rajakovic said following Monday's win that Ingram's heel issues are "not a big concern."
Toronto embarks on its final 11 games of the regular season in fifth place in the Eastern Conference, a half-game ahead of Atlanta for the final guaranteed playoff spot and just 1 1/2 games ahead of Philadelphia entering Tuesday.
The impending stretch will determine if the Raptors go into the postseason locked into the playoffs or facing the play-in round.
The Clippers (36-36), meanwhile, clinched a place in the Western Conference play-in round on Monday with a 129-96 home blowout of sputtering Milwaukee. The blowout followed a 138-131 overtime win over host Dallas, which snapped a four-game skid.
Los Angeles entered Tuesday 7 1/2 games behind Houston for the West's last guaranteed playoff spot, with 10 games remaining on the Clippers' schedule. While catching the Rockets may prove unlikely, Los Angeles was four games behind Phoenix for the top seed in the play-in round as of Tuesday.
"Executing down the stretch and making limited mistakes," Los Angeles forward Kawhi Leonard told reporters was the team's focus heading into the final 10 games of the regular season.
Leonard scored 28 points on Monday to follow his 34-point performance against Dallas. He has notched at least 23 points in every appearance since the beginning of February en route to a team-high 28.3 points per game.
Leonard is leading a roster that underwent considerable midseason change, sending former Most Valuable Player James Harden to Cleveland in a deal that brought Darius Garland to Los Angeles. The Clippers also added Bennedict Mathurin from Indiana in exchange for big man Ivica Zubac.
Mathurin has been sidelined with a toe injury, but scored 21-plus points in five of his six appearances since March 7. Garland, who finished with 15 points and six assists on Monday, went for 41 points on Saturday vs. Dallas.
"This group likes to play basketball," Leonard said of the current Clippers lineup. "They have fun and compete."