First up for the night: the 42-15 Toronto Raptors wish to keep their hot home winning streak alive against their Eastern superiors, the 49-8 Milwaukee Bucks, live on TNT at 7:30 p.m. ET.
As it goes for Toronto, it’s probably the safest bet to award Nick Nurse with his second coach of the year award, considering how successful this Raptors team has looked after dealing with the departure of a gravitational star like Kawhi Leonard. They are surely following up last season’s championship with an equally memorable year, representing the second seed in the East during a season many speculated they would take off and rebuild, develop their new core of younger guys, and confide more minutes into their championship-caliber pieces in Fred VanVleet, Norman Powell and first-time All-Star Pascal Siakam.
And what makes this team even more special now: the league-best Bucks only got a small whiff, let alone a taste, of this more developed, poised team since their first game against Toronto back in October. Nick Nurse is never afraid to throw a corkscrew in his unique lineups to offset any defensive scheme he can find his way to decipher, as his Raptors are quite on pace to crack 58, maybe 60+, wins this year without the presence of an All-NBA talent like Leonard playing in the Northern city.
Their defense is startling — now posing as the second-best defensive team in the league behind Milwaukee — potentially turning this one into a slugfest that’s likely to competitively go the distance to the fourth quarter. Milwaukee won the first matchup at the Fiserv Forum with a 115-105 result, even with the Raptors collectively scoring the ball at a 41.7 percentile. And of course, that difference in that game just so happened to be Giannis Antetokounmpo, who posted 36 points, 15 rebounds, and eight assists in a regulatory MVP showing.
But, it should be realized: this marks a Back-to-Back for the Bucks, who just got lucky in scraping away a win against the Washington Wizards, as it took an overtime period to do so. Second-man-in-command Khris Middleton took things into his own hands, scoring the team’s final nine points in OT to draw the Bucks one game closer to 50 wins on the year.
Tonight’s game should very well be a chess match of two coaches who are overtly proficient at spacing the floor for their wing scorers, so tune in to TNT at 7:30 to find out who prevails in matchup No. 2 on the year between these Eastern powerhouses.
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