Indiana Pacers hold off a late charge from the Toronto Raptors to win 103-98 - NBA Recap
On Monday night at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN a capacity crowd of 11021 were treated with a great final quarter as the Indiana Pacers held on to defeat the Toronto Raptors 103-98. This completed the season sweep
for the Pacers for the first time since the 2003-04 season - they had won the previous two meeting with the same margin of 5 points.
Danny Granger scored 18 points, snapping his run of six games with 20 or more points. In his first start of the season, George Hill played well by adding 18 points; Paul George had 15 points while Leandro Barbosa came off the bench
to contribute 14 points against his former team.
Linas Kleiza who came off the bench was the leading scorer for the Raptors with 18 points; Amir Johnson scored 16 points. Ed Davis also came off the bench to notch up a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds. Alan Anderson,
who has signed a second 10-day contract with Toronto, scored 17 points in the game which included 4 of 4 shooting from beyond the arc. DeMar DeRozan contributed only 10 points, ending his run of 12 consecutive games with 15 points or more.
The Raptors were without their star Andrea Bargnani who could miss out on the rest of the season after he aggravated his old left calf injury in a loss to Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday. His presence was surely missed as he was
averaging 19.5 points, this season for the Raptors.
In the early goings of the match, both teams looked to take the lead. The scores were all tied at 10 each with 4:53 remaining in the first quarter. From that point in the quarter till 2:06 minutes remaining, the Pacers went on
a 7-0 nothings run. This enabled the Pacers to close out the opening 12 minutes on an 11-6 run, holding a 5 point advantage.
At the start of the second quarter, Indiana held the Raptors scoreless for more than 2 minutes while scoring 8 points themselves. This advantage remained for the rest of the half and was further extended in the closing stages
as the half ended with a score of 51-37.
In the third quarter, the Raptors never really looked close in the contest. They did match the Pacers fast paced offense, but never managed to produce that one scoring burst which was required to get within striking range. However
from the start of the fourth quarter, the Raptors went on a 17-4 run to pull to within two points with 6:46 minutes remaining in the game.
The game really started to warm up after that. Indiana responded back a 5-nothing run, but the Raptors pulled kept close before their efforts were put to waste by two bombs from long range, first from Barbosa and the second from
Hill which came very late with only 33.9 seconds remaining.
Hill nailed the final nail in the coffin as he dunked the ball on the last possession of the game as the Pacers held on in the end.
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