It’s rare to someone who is relatively insignificant as Terrence Ross have a performance that might be regarded as one of the best from anyone this season. Unfortunately, his 51 points didn’t help the Toronto Raptors overcome the Los Angeles Clippers.
Ross becomes the he fourth player in the last five seasons to score 50 points in a game his team lost; the Clippers came away with the 126-118 win in Toronto thanks to a special performance as well from Jamal Crawford, coming off the bench to score 37 points and add 11 assists. It’s his second 30-10 game of the season, and since the 1970-1971 season, no player had had multiple 30/10 games as a sub in one season.
Crawford felt he could have upstaged Ross if he wanted to, but the game pulled him into a different direction.
Honestly, this could have been a 50-point night. ou kind of know when you have it and this could have easily been a 50-point night, but the way the game went, they started doubling a little bit, I started finding my teammates more. There’ll be other opportunities.
Blake Griffin had another big performance, scoring 30 points on 10-of-18 from the field (which included the usual mix of alley oops and dunks) as the Clippers found it quite easy to score in the paint (42 points), getting 18 from J.J. Redick as well on another impressive 3-point shooting performance, hitting 12-of-22 from beyond the arc.
Ross is the third player this season with a 50 point game (along with Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony). What’s special about his? Players with a scoring average of under 10 points per game (now it’s at 10.2) aren’t supposed to be this lethal.
He’s the 1st player in NBA history with a 50-point game who was averaging less than 10 PPG that season, and is the first one since Tony Delk in 2001 to score 50 points or more with a career average of under 10 points per game. Delk was averaging 9.3 points when he pulled his big game off; Ross has a career average of 7.8 points a night, and besides winning the dunk contest isn’t remembered for doing much up to this point in actual basketball games.
Toronto held a one point lead (107-106) with 6:36 remaining in the fourth quarter, but the Clippers turned it up on offense from that moment. The Clippers went on a 11-2 run that swung the game in the other direction, and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there thanks to Redick hitting from long range and Griffin connecting on jumpers instead of his usual points from inside.
The Raptors missed DeMar DeRozan for most of the second half because of a foot sprain after landing badly on Hedo Turkoglu. He tried coming back but couldn’t really help his team, leaving the game for good early in the third quarter. Jonas Valanciunas was the only one to really help Ross out, adding 17 points and 12 rebounds, but the Raptors non-existent defense made it too easy for the Clippers to score (54.8% from the field) and feel hardly any pressure on the ball, turning it over only six times in the game.