The Toronto Raptors lost to the Houston Rockets in a close one 114-110.
Ja’Kobe Walter career night
Walter had a spectacular performance against the Rockets. He was on fire in the first quarter, scoring the Raptors’ first 14 points. He made four three-pointers in the first 4 minutes of the game. Walter went on to score a career-high 27 points on 9-for-18 shooting from the field and 6-for-11 shooting from deep. The rookie fouled out in the final minutes of the four quarter, but walked off the court to a round of applause from the Toronto crowd. Walter has been showing a lot of good things for the Raptors and he should start again against the New York Knicks if RJ Barrett is unable to return from his illness. Even if Barrett returns, expect Walter to see plenty of minutes following this outing.
Rough game for Scottie Barnes
Barnes turned in one of the worst performances of his career on Sunday night. Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic said he wanted to see Barnes shoot more threes, however, the 23-year-old was 0-for-8 from three and 2-for-15 from the field in this one. He scored just 6 points, but did manage to pull in 10 rebounds to go along with 3 steals. When Barnes doesn’t have his outside shot falling, he needs to be more aggressive. He’s simply too good of a player to put up this type of poor offensive performance. Maybe Barnes wasn’t 100 percent for this game and Rajakovic alluded to that postgame. “As you can see, he’s not being himself. He’s banged up. He got that hit in his hip the last game… he’s still not himself,” Rajakovic told reporters after Toronto’s loss via Toronto Star. If Barnes isn’t fully healthy, it’ll be interesting to see what his workload will be against the Knicks on the second night of a back-to-back.
Jamal Shead impresses
Shead has bounced back in a big way as of late. He has strung together a solid stretch of games and he had a nice outing against Houston. Shead came off the bench and put up 11 points, 10 assists, 6 rebounds and 2 steals. He shot 5-for-7 from the field and did a great job defensively as he spent most of his time guarding former Raptors guard Fred VanVleet. Although the Raptors have lost 7 games in a row now, it’s nice to see the rookies stepping up.
Next on tap
The Raptors will head to New York to take on O.G. Anunoby and the Knicks on Dec. 23.
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