One night after Kyle Lowry was named to his third consecutive NBA all-star team, the Toronto Raptors guard proved why.
Playing a third consecutive game without DeMar DeRozan, Lowry scored 32 points to lift the Raptors to a 102-86 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday, finally ending Toronto's losing streak at five games.
Norman Powell added 19 points for Toronto (29-18), while Patrick Patterson had 10. Jonas Valanciunas grabbed 11 rebounds to go with eight points.
Jabari Parker had 21 points to top the Bucks (21-25), while Giannis Antetokounmpo finished with 19.
DeRozan is sidelined with a right ankle sprain, but Lowry & Co. fared just fine without him Friday night.
The Raptors had already beaten the Bucks twice this season, but had showed during this ugly stretch that no game is a given, no team can be taken lightly.
In their last two losses — two-point losses to San Antonio and Memphis — the Raptors sputtered out to horrible starts then rallied in the dying minutes.
Friday, they roared out of the gate, as Lowry led a 31-6 run in the first quarter to give them their biggest lead of the game —19 points. But the feisty Bucks weren't going down without a fight and Toronto led just 77-70 with one quarter left to play.
Nogueira and Terrence Ross had the Air Canada Centre fans flying out of their seats with a beautiful passing play — Nogueira stole the ball, passed to Ross on the run, who threw up a lob that Nogueira finished with a dunk. The highlight-reel play gave the Raptors a 12-point lead.
A three-pointer by Rashad Vaughn with 5:11 to play cut Toronto's lead to nine points, but that was as close as the Bucks would come.
The Raptors, who haven't lost six in a row since Dec. 3-12 of 2012, missed out on an opportunity to make up ground on the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have held onto the top spot in the Eastern Conference despite a big-time slump of their own.
"It sucks, but we can't work like that," Lowry said of the lost opportunity. "They're having their difficulties, we're having our difficulties."
Lowry couldn't put his finger on why some teams are struggling.
"I don't know, you write the story and tell me," he joked with a reporter. "I can't tell you. I think the first two months is a push and everyone's just going and going and going and that third month is like 'OK.' That's when the better teams keep going. Spurs, Warriors, those guys are playing extremely well right now so we've got to make sure we get to that level as well."
The Raptors briefly trailed the Bucks, but a dunk from Nogueira was the punctuation mark on their huge run that put Toronto up by 19 points. The Raptors took a 36-19 lead into the second.
The Bucks showed some fight to cut the deficit to single digits for large chunks of the second quarter. But the Raptors had stretched their lead back to 53-39 at the halftime break.