Raptors news: Scottie Barnes eyes playoffs, hypes up Pascal Siakam

The Toronto Raptors were able to get some much-needed reprieve thanks to the All-Star break, and they got to spend it watching Scottie Barnes win the Rising Stars Game and Pascal Siakam put up 12 points and seven rebounds in a victorious All-Star Game showing.

While watching Barnes flex his muscles against some of the best young players in the NBA and Siakam finish off passes from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was fun to watch, the Raptors need to regroup and push for the postseason. While they started off poorly, Barnes thinks they can get back on track and make it to the playoffs.

“We’ve been in so many close games, so many tight games that we should’ve won,” Barnes said, via Sirius XM. “We know how good we can be; we know that we got off to a really bad start and we know we can get things going. So we feel really good in ourselves and our ability to still try to make that push.”

https://twitter.com/TSN_Sports/status/1626745881486655488

More Raptors news

• Barnes was not the only Raptors player in Salt Lake City over the last week, as Pascal Siakam was named to the All-Star game roster for the second time in his career. Siakam likes the adulation he got, but he is clearly later focused on getting the Raptors back into the playoffs.
• “Obviously the player that I am, it goes with the team success,” he told Doug Smith of the Toronto Star. “I want to win, that’s the only thing I’m really focused on.”
• Barnes took time out to hype up his star teammate, saying that Pascal should have also made the All-Star team with Fred VanVleet last year. Voters seemed to worry about the fact Siakam missed time with an injury early in the season. Pascal had one of the rarest seasons in the history of the NBA, as he earned All-NBA honors without making an All-Star team.

https://twitter.com/theshift_sports/status/1627380405924921347

NBA news

• Reviews of the All-Star Game, which Siakam and the rest of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s team won 184-175, were lukewarm at best and extremely negative at worst. Nuggets head coach Mike Malone decried the contest as “the worst basketball game ever played” afterwards, and Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown compared it to a “layup line.”
• Many of the top buyout candidates that were percolating around the NBA rumor mill have found new homes. After he gets bought out by the Jazz, Russell Westbrook will sign with the Los Angeles Clippers. Another former Laker in Patrick Beverley, who the Magic bought out, chose to sign with the Chicago Bulls.