Raptors begin post-All-Star break push vs. Pelicans on TSN
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The Toronto Raptors look to continue their playoff push as they host the New Orleans Pelicans in their first post-All-Star break game on Thursday.
The Raptors currently sit 10th in the Eastern Conference and occupy the final spot in the play-in tournament.
The club appears to be at full strength for the first time in nearly a month, as O.G. Anunoby (wrist), Gary Trent (calf), and Thaddeus Young (knee) are all expected to return on Thursday.
The acquisition of centre Jakob Poeltl at the trade deadline signalled Toronto is committed to a post-season run, as general manager Bobby Webster and president Masai Ujiri chose to shore up the team’s most glaring weakness instead of selling on its pending free agents.
With 23 games remaining on their regular season schedule, the Raptors will be hard-pressed to avoid the play-in tournament, as they sit 4.5 games back of the sixth-place New York Knicks.
“We don’t have time for a learning curve,” point guard Fred VanVleet said Tuesday. “We’re excited to have our full team back and see what we can do. It’s not gonna be perfect, we know that… but we gotta do it quickly and fast. Hopefully these couple practices here will get us up to speed a little bit more and then we’ll have to shake it out throughout the first couple games [back].”
The Washington Wizards, Atlanta Hawks, and Miami Heat currently sit ahead of the Raptors in the play-in seeding. Finishing in seventh or eighth would mean only needing to win one play-in game to qualify for the playoffs while jumping the Wizards for ninth would mean getting to host one of two must-win play-in games. In their current position, the team would need to win a pair of road games to qualify for a first-round playoff matchup against the Eastern Conference’s top seed.
“It’s not gonna be easy,” VanVleet continued. “At this point, we’ve just gotta put our heads down and go to work and focus on one day at a time.”
The Raptors (28-31) have won two in a row and five of their past six as they head into the most crucial stretch of the season. Head coach Nick Nurse believes the team has been steadily improving and can line up with anyone if they are able to make the playoffs.
“Obviously we need to win and cheer for the teams around us to not win to climb up [the standings],” Nurse said. “The biggest thing is we’ve got to make sure we get in [the playoffs], in some form or fashion. And then just get better. We played pretty good basketball here of late. We’ve had a couple slip-ups here and there. I just want to keep progressing. I really feel like we can line up with anyone. We certainly haven’t made it easy on ourselves, and it hasn’t been easy. So what? That’s the hand we’re dealt at this time. We’ve got to dig in and continue to play better and see where the chips fall.”
Coming off of his second All-Star nod, forward Pascal Siakam is averaging a career-high 25.2 points and 6.1 assists to go along with 7.8 rebounds per game.
The Pelicans (30-29) sit seventh in a very tight Western Conference, two games back of the fourth-place Los Angeles Clippers but just a game and a half ahead of the 11th-place Utah Jazz. New Orleans is hoping the All-Star break can help reset the club’s fortunes after dropping 12 of their 16 games prior to the break.