Danny Green on Tuesday night watched helplessly from the paint while Evan Fournier dribbled past and dunked a tying basket with 2.3 seconds left.
Feeding off the confidence of first-year coach Nick Nurse, Green got redemption on the very next play.
Green made a fade-away jumper with less than a second remaining to lift the Toronto Raptors over the Orlando Magic 93-91. He caught Kyle Lowry’s inbound pass with 2.3 seconds left, pulled up on the left side of the lane and hit a jumper with 0.5 seconds showing.
Photo: Kim Klement-USA TODAY
Orlando’s Nikola Vucevic missed on a 67-foot heave as time expired.
“Most coaches wouldn’t go to a guy who makes a mistake at that point in the game, but Nick has 100 percent faith in all of us,” Green said. “He continues to encourage us and allows us to play through our mistakes. It was nice to make one after missing quite a few the whole game.”
Kawhi Leonard led Toronto with 18 points and Pascal Siakam had 15. Serge Ibaka added 14 points and nine rebounds, while Green finished with 13.
Fournier led the Magic with 27 points, 22 of them in the second half when he was about the only offense Orlando could generate. Aaron Gordon had 16 points, and Vucevic had 14 points and 18 rebounds for the Magic, who ended a three-game winning streak.
Both sides struggled offensively much of the game, especially in the fourth quarter.
The Raptors committed eight turnovers in the final period and Orlando missed 11 straight field-goal attempts during a rough four-minute stretch. Some of that had to do with the defense.
“Our defense was unbelievable the first 24 minutes and the last 12,” Nurse said. “We were an absolute disaster in the third quarter, but some of that was our offense’s fault.”
The Magic outscored the Raptors 38-26 in the third quarter to wipe out what had been an 18-point deficit.
Orlando led 77-75 early in the fourth quarter before missing 11 straight field-goal attempts. Their only points during that time were two free throws from Jonathan Isaac.
“The story of the game was the first six minutes of the fourth quarter,” Magic coach Steve Clifford said. “We did a good job fighting at the end, and that last shot was a difficult shot and he just knocked it in.”
Toronto did not take much advantage of the drought. The Raptors could only put together a three-pointer from Green and a layup by Jonas Valanciunas during that stretch to take an 80-77 lead.
The teams traded baskets from there until Ibaka drilled a jumper from the top of the key to put Toronto in front 91-89.
Toronto led by 18 during a first half when both teams struggled to find or maintain an offensive rhythm. The Raptors made enough shots to jump out to a 40-22 advantage in the middle of the second quarter, as Orlando labored with less than 30 percent shooting.
Fournier started the second half with a three-pointer, the first of six treys in the period for the Magic.
Another three-pointer from Fournier tied it at 59 with 5 minutes, 5 seconds left, and his free throw gave Orlando a 75-73 lead going into the fourth.
Fournier had 14 points in the quarter.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier