MONTREAL (AP) — The preseason is over for the Toronto Raptors, and they finished it in style.
DeMar DeRozan scored 15 points, Jonas Valanciunas added 13, and Toronto beat the New York Knicks 83-80 on Friday night at the Bell Centre in the final preseason game for both teams.
“The intensity was up,” said Lou Williams, who had 12 points for Toronto, including a crucial, go-ahead jump shot in the game’s final minute. “Everybody was focused tonight. We really felt like this was a tune-up game going into Wednesday against Atlanta.”
The Raptors open the regular season Wednesday night against the Hawks at Air Canada Centre, where Toronto will play nine of its first 12 games. The Knicks’ first game is against the Chicago Bulls at Madison Square Garden, also on Wednesday night.
Kyle Lowry also had 12 points for the Raptors (7-1), who won six straight in the preseason and matched their exhibition victory record of seven.
“We’re a team that’s going to compete, and that’s going to be hungry,” Lowry said. “We’re going to go out there every night and making sure we’re doing our job.”
Carmelo Anthony had 24 points for the Knicks (3-4), and Amare Stoudemire had 11 points and six rebounds.
It was a tight contest, with 17 lead changes, including the final one late in the fourth quarter.
The Knicks tied it 68-68 with seven minutes left, then answered Toronto’s seven-point run with five consecutive points of their own.
With the Knicks ahead 78-77 with less than a minute to play, Williams drained a jump shot to put Toronto in the lead for good.
“The effort tonight was where we want it to be,” said Knicks coach Derek Fisher. “But we need to focus on our attention to detail. We let it go in the third quarter. We got frustrated with the ball not going in our offensive end, and our defense got really poor.”
A giveaway by New York’s Shane Larkin with eight seconds remaining in the game sealed the victory for the Raptors.
Knicks center Samuel Dalembert, one of only 14 Canadians in the NBA, got the start for New York. Born in Haiti, Dalembert moved to Montreal when he was 14. The 6-foot-11 center finished with two points and 10 rebounds in 18 minutes.
A Raptors victory looked unlikely early on.
Anthony was unstoppable at the start, setting the tone with an early 3-pointer, and finished the quarter 5 of 8 for 14 points in a game tied at 24-all.
Late in the second quarter, Dalembert’s tip-in, a layup by Anthony, and Langston Galloway’s 3 gave the Knicks a 46-38 halftime lead.
The Raptors responded with a 17-point run in the third period. Two slam dunks by DeRozan and eight points by Valanciunas gave Toronto a 57-48 lead.
Down 63-57 to start the fourth quarter, the Knicks slowly came back, pulling within a basket with 10 minutes remaining and tying it with seven minutes left. But the Raptors scored five unanswered points late and held on.
Prior to the game, fans observed a moment of silence to honor Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who was gunned down Wednesday at Canada’s national war memorial in Ottawa, and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, a Canadian soldier killed by a young convert to Islam in a hit-and-run accident in Quebec on Monday.
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