Raptors at Trail Blazers
The Portland Trail Blazers are winners of five straight games as they creep back toward .500 and cement themselves in the top eight in the Western Conference. One of the few hotter teams in the league at the moment is the Toronto Raptors, who have won 12 of their last 13 games and will visit the Trail Blazers on Thursday.
Portland is doing a good job of beating the teams it is supposed to beat during a stretch of nine wins in 11 games, with only one of those victories – a 115-110 home triumph over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Jan. 10 - coming against a team with a current winning record. Thursday’s tilt against the Raptors marks the end of a seven-game homestand for the Trail Blazers, who have taken advantage of the opportunity since dropping the opener to the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 20. Toronto had a franchise-record 11-game winning streak come to an end at Denver in the opener of a six-game road trip on Monday but quickly bounced back with a 104-97 triumph at Phoenix the next night. All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry struggled to 10 points on 3-of-12 shooting against the Nuggets but recovered to lead the way with 26 against the Suns.
TV: 10 p.m. ET, TSN (Toronto), KGW (Portland)
ABOUT THE RAPTORS (33-16): Lowry and fellow All-Star guard DeMar DeRozan were named Eastern Conference co-Players of the Month for January on Tuesday and the two showed why with a combined 48 points against Phoenix. The Raptors are using several smaller lineups with guard Norman Powell joining DeRozan and Lowry in the starting lineup and point guard Cory Joseph getting plenty of minutes off the bench alongside or in place of the two stars. Joseph logged 20 or more minutes in each of the last 15 games and scored in double figures in five of the last six contests.
ABOUT THE TRAIL BLAZERS (24-26): Portland leans heavily on its own backcourt duo of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum but is also seeing increased production from backup guard Gerald Henderson. The Duke product delivered 14 points and nine rebounds in 22 minutes off the bench in Tuesday’s 107-95 win over Milwaukee. “I’ve felt good the last couple weeks,” Henderson told the team’s official website. “It was really just me going out there thinking about defense. We’ve made an emphasis the last couple weeks to really lock in on our defense and we’ve done a really good job so I think it’s helping everyone play better.”
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Trail Blazers PF Noah Vonleh suffered a sprained left ankle on Tuesday and is day-to-day.
2. Raptors PF James Johnson (ankle) sat out Tuesday and is also day-to-day.
3. Portland took both meetings last season and four straight in the series.