Hawks Rock Raptors
Posted November 10, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A strong performance late by Chris Bosh couldn’t ground the soaring Atlanta Hawks, who beat the Toronto Raptors 111-102 on Friday night.
Bosh scored 19 points and had a career high 17 rebounds to lead the Raptors, but the Hawks, led by Joe Johnson who scored 34 points, proved too tough an opponent.
Josh Smith added a career-high 29 points to help Atlanta improve their record to an Eastern Conference best, 4-1.
Morris Peterson had 18 points for the losing side while T.J. Ford and Fred Jones had 17 apiece.
Jose Calderon had 13.
The Raptors didn’t look particularly sharp coming off a thrilling win against Allen Iverson’s Philadelphia 76ers. They shot a brutal 26 per cent in the first, falling behind by as many as 15 points.
Afterwards coach Sam Mitchell expressed dismay with his team’s trend of starting slow.
“We’ll change the starting lineup,” Mitchell vowed. “We’re not contemplating it right now, but we’ve played five games and we’ve had five bad starts, so we’ve got to do something.”
“We’re not good enough to dig ourselves a hole, we’re not that kind of team, we have to hit the ground running, we have to establish a tempo,” added Bosh, who botched seven of his first eight shots before turning his game around. “I can’t blame him. It might be me, if I’m holding us back … if something has to be done, he’s going to do it. He’s the coach, that’s what he’s supposed to do.”
The Hawks on the other hand, shot a strong 50 per cent on the night and outrebounded Toronto 49-40.
