Bosh pours in 28 points against former team as Heat beat Raptors 100-85
Posted February 3, 2013 4:50 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Chris Bosh scored 13 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter against his former team Sunday to lead the Miami Heat to a 100-85 victory over the Toronto Raptors.
LeBron James poured in a game-high 30 points in the Heat’s 10th consecutive victory over Toronto.
The loss spoiled strong efforts by new Raptors forward Rudy Gay, who scored 29 points, and DeMar DeRozan, who added 27.
Kyle Lowry added 10 points for Toronto (17-31), while Aaron Grey had a game-high 12 rebounds to go with six points.
Dwyane Wade added 23 points for the Heat (30-14).
Raptors coach Dwane Casey knew the Heat would be hungry, coming off a 102-89 loss Friday in Indiana.
“They’re going to be like a bunch of wet hens,” Casey said before the game. “They’re going to be really really ready to play.”
Toronto, meanwhile, was coming a thrilling 98-73 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers in Gay’s Raptors debut.
And while the Heat needed overtime to beat Toronto 123-116 when the teams met on Jan. 23 in Miami, that wasn’t the case Sunday.
Toronto led by eight in the second quarter, but were trailing 71-67 by the end of the third, and six consecutive points by Bosh — who was received by a chorus of boos during team introductions — gave the Heat a six-point lead with 5:41 left.
A DeRozan dunk made it a three-point game about a minute later. But a Bosh three-pointer, a dunk by James, and a three by James put the Heat up by 12 and the game out of reach with 1:28 left to the disappointment of an Air Canada Centre capacity crowd of 19,800.
James had attended the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 1-0 loss to Boston the previous night — he tweeted that it was the first time he’d seen an NHL game live. Pictures of James holding the Grey Cup at a local sportsbar, where he joined some Toronto Argonauts players, appeared on Twitter later in the night.
The Heat grabbed an early lead punctuated by a monstrous James dunk that put the visitors up by 10 points midway through the first quarter. The Raptors chipped away at the deficit, eventually trailing 24-21 head into the second.
Toronto opened the second with a 14-4 run to take a seven-point lead and would go up by eight before taking a 50-44 lead into the dressing room at the break.
Six turnovers proved costly in the third quarter. The Heat — Bosh leading the way with nine points — outscored Toronto 27-17 in the frame and led by four with a quarter left.
