Lakers’ scorching shooting gives them first win vs. Raptors since 2014

Who said the Lakers need LeBron James and Anthony Davis to get blowout wins? In their ninth game without James and Davis, Los Angeles handily beat the Toronto Raptors 110-101 on Tuesday. Their biggest lead was 34 points. They’re now 4-5 in the games James and Davis haven’t played.

Tuesday also marked the Lakers’ first win over the Raptors since Nov. 30, 2014, when Kobe Bryant had a triple-double, Nick Young had 20 points off of the bench and the game went to overtime.

As impressive as both of those stats may be, they do need some context. The Raptors went into Tuesday’s game with just nine players, and that number quickly dropped to eight when OG Anunoby was ejected in the first quarter for his suplex on Dennis Schröder. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly a suplex, but it was definitely a wrestling move.

Montrezl Harrell was also ejected for escalating the situation, as the above tweet notes. Harrell ended the night having only played two minutes. Fortunately, the Lakers were able to find scoring elsewhere on their roster; most notably through Talen Horton-Tucker.

With Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet sidelined for the night, Horton-Tucker was able to beat his defenders off of the dribble with relative ease on Tuesday and, as a result, he ended the game with a team-high 17 points on 6-10 shooting from the field and 3-4 shooting from behind the arc. He’s now scored at least 15 points in his last three games.

In total, seven different Lakers scored at least 10 points and as a team, they shot 49.4% from the field and 45% from behind the arc. The Raptors had no way of slowing them down.

The Lakers will try and carry their shooting from Tuesday into their game against the Miami Heat on Thursday. They’re hoping to have some reinforcements by then, too.

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