RJ Barrett and Scottie Barnes scored 23 points each Tuesday night and the Toronto Raptors easily defeated the visiting Milwaukee Bucks 128-100 for their third straight win.

Immanuel Quickley added 15 points for the Raptors and reserve Sandro Mamukelashvili also scored 15. Gradey Dick scored 14 points and Brandon Ingram had 13 points.

Toronto center Jakob Poeltl returned after missing three games with lower back tightness and contributed eight points and nine rebounds in 20 minutes.

The Bucks had won the four previous games between the teams.

Giannis Antetokounmpo had 22 points and eight rebounds for the Bucks in 24 minutes after his buzzer beater beat the Indiana Pacers 117-115 on Monday.
Kyle Kuzma contributed 18 points, Cole Anthony scored 12 points, Ryan Rollins scored 11 and Myles Turner added 10 points and eight rebounds for Milwaukee.

The Raptors dominated the game and led by as many as 21 points in the second quarter. They used an 18-7 run to extend the lead from 54-45 with 5:08 remaining in the half to 73-52 before a Antetokounmpo dunk cut the Bucks’ deficit to 73-54 at the half.

The lead was 25 entering the fourth and the Raptors continued to cruise and led by 30 with 4:13 to play.

Barnes ended a loosely played first quarter with a 13-footer that capped a 15-5 run with Antetokounmpo resting and gave Toronto a 39-29 lead, but went to the dressing room holding his left hand with 2:29 in the first half and returned for the second half with the thumb wrapped.

Toronto had a 19-5 advantage in fastbreak points in the first half as Milwaukee looked the part of a team on the second half of a back-to-back.

The Bucks chipped away at the lead and Rollins’ running layup cut the margin to 13 with 6:56 remaining in the third quarter. Ingram’s 15-foot jumper stretched the margin to 21 with 3:22 left in the third and Toronto kept building the margin until it was 105-80 after the third quarter.

–Field Level Media

The Miami Heat started their four-game road trip with consecutive losses but can finish with two wins when they face the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night.

Miami lost to the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Lakers to kick off the trip but rallied to beat the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday night. The Heat will try to duplicate the success against the franchise that beat them in the 2023 NBA Finals.

Miami’s roster has evolved since that series, with Bam Adebayo being the only rotation player remaining from that team. Adebayo has played well this season, averaging 22.4 points and 9.1 rebounds in six games, and is one of five Heat players averaging double figures in scoring.

One of those is Norman Powell, who returned Monday night after missing the previous three games with a groin injury. He leads the team with a 24-point average in the three games he has played. He scored 21 points to help beat his former team Monday night, 120-119.

Powell played three-plus seasons in Los Angeles and was the second-leading scorer on last year’s squad before being traded to Miami in the offseason.

The Heat will attempt to do something they haven’t done in nine years — win a regular season game in the Mile High City. Miami has lost eight straight there outside of its Game 2 victory in 2023. Prior to that its last win in Colorado was Nov. 30, 2016, when Nikola Jokic was a rookie.

“It’s been a long time,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra after Monday night’s win. “We’ll play it on Mount Everest if we have to.”

Miami will have to stop Jokic to have a chance to break the streak, but the Nuggets can win in different ways. They needed Jokic’s offense to beat Sacramento on Monday night — he had a season-high 34 points — but they haven’t had to rely as heavily on the three-time MVP this season as they did last year.

Jokic is averaging a triple-double in the first seven games — 22.7 points, 13.2 rebounds and 11.3 assists — but Jamal Murray (24.2 points a game) is off to a strong start and Aaron Gordon has played well after an injury-plagued 2024-25.

Gordon scored a career-high 50 in the season opener and leads the starters in 3-point shooting at 48.4 percent. Bruce Brown leads the team at 50 percent from deep but his value to the team is his all-around game off the bench.

He showed it Monday night with 13 points and six rebounds against the Kings.

“He was really good for us. He had amazing energy, of course, like he always does,” Jokic said of Brown. “It’s good to see him playing that way. He’s going to help us a lot playing that way the whole year.”

Denver’s bench has been vital to a good start. Four reserves are averaging double digits in minutes and give the starting unit a chance to stay fresh. Jonas Valanciunas has allowed Jokic to sit longer stretches without a huge drop-off.

“Having Valanciunas is such a big deal,” said Nuggets coach David Adelman.

–Field Level Media

A pair of early-season Western Conference powers will meet Wednesday when the San Antonio Spurs visit the Los Angeles Lakers.

Only the defending league champion Oklahoma City Thunder sit higher in the West standings through two weeks of the season than the Spurs and Lakers.

San Antonio will have to use the visit as a status check after the Spurs lost for the first time this season on Sunday at Phoenix. After allowing 103.8 points per game through their first five contests, they fell 130-118 to the Suns in a game where they trailed by as many as 31 points.

The Spurs were backpedaling from the jump, allowing 31 points on 61.1% shooting from the Suns in the first quarter. It only got worse as the Suns led 70-52 at halftime on 63.2% shooting. Phoenix opened the third quarter on a 27-14 run to take a 97-66 lead.

Spurs star Victor Wembanyama was held to a season-low nine points on 4-of-14 shooting after he had just one single-digit scoring game last season. He was also held to a season-low nine rebounds while committing a season-high six turnovers.

“I think it’s a great time for us to take away a lot of things from this game,” said Wembanyama, who credited the Suns’ double-teaming defense for disrupting the offense. “We’re going to see this again and again, so every single game is a battle to prepare. … I know our next opponent watched this game, so our preparation starts now.”

Rookie Dylan Harper scored 12 points in 11 minutes before going down with a calf injury for San Antonio, which was hoping that point guard De’Aaron Fox (hamstring) would make his season debut Wednesday but reportedly is still out.

Stephon Castle, last season’s NBA Rookie of the Year, has progressed even further in Fox’s absence to average 20.0 points with 6.2 rebounds and a team-high 5.3 assists.

Los Angeles knows all about injury issues and yet has fashioned a 6-2 record without LeBron James (sciatica) so far this season. Luka Doncic has missed four games, leaving the Lakers without two of the league’s top stars, and yet they won three of those games.

The latest game without James and Doncic (leg) came Monday at Portland when Los Angeles also was without Austin Reaves (groin). They still fashioned a 123-115 victory while playing on the second night of a home/road back-to-back.

Deandre Ayton scored 29 points with 10 rebounds in the victory and Rui Hachimura had 28 points. Nick Smith Jr. had 25 points off the bench on 10-of-15 shooting, including 5 of 6 from 3-point range.

“They’ve seen what I can do in training camp, and the coaching staff is definitely putting an emphasis to go out there and play my game,” Smith said. “If they’re pressuring you, go make a play. That’s something that I haven’t gotten in a long time.”

Smith, who is on a two-way contract, was playing in his third NBA game this season.

“He just took the game over,” said Lakers coach JJ Redick. “… Truthfully, it was a perfect game for him.”

Ayton, who was signed by the Lakers in July days after he was released by the Trail Blazers, had a season high in points with his third double-digit rebounding performance.

–Field Level Media

The lone winless team in the Western Conference was dealt another huge blow to the beginning of their season.

New Orleans Pelicans star forward Zion Williamson has been diagnosed with a Grade 1 left hamstring strain that will sideline him for at least seven to 10 days, the Pelicans announced Tuesday.

Williamson will be reevaluated after that time frame.

Williamson, 25, was having a slow start to the season by his standards, albeit with just five games played, averaging 22.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 4.6 assists on 48.7% shooting from the field, all down from previous seasons.

Injuries have long plagued the first overall pick from 2019, as he has played more than 60 games in a season just twice. Williamson played just 30 games last season, missing the large majority of the year due to a bone bruise in his back.

The Pelicans will miss their leading scorer to start the year after dropping their first six games. New Orleans is currently ranked last in the league with a minus-18.2 point differential.

With Yves Missi dealing with an illness, the Pelicans will be thin in the frontcourt. The No. 13 pick in this year’s draft Derik Queen will be poised to get his first career start with the absence of Missi and Williamson.

–Field Level Media

The Memphis Grizzlies play host to the Houston Rockets on Wednesday but find themselves mired in a three-game losing skid with an unhappy superstar.

Grizzlies All-Star guard Ja Morant, who served a one-game suspension for comments directed to the Memphis coaching staff after Friday’s home loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, returned to the court Monday and finished with 18 points and 10 assists in a 114-106 home loss to Detroit.

But Morant, addressing the issue after the game, seemed perturbed by the situation. He said he was having no joy playing basketball. Grizzlies coach Tuomas Iisalo did not discuss the matter Monday, saying it was being handled internally.

Morant, in his seventh season with the Grizzlies, was somewhat vague when asked about the situation after Monday’s game with the Pistons.

When a reporter asked Morant in the locker room afterward if the matter had been resolved, he responded: “Yeah, they told y’all that, right? Obviously, they can’t go and tell y’all something I didn’t say.”

And he said his relationship with the franchise, despite the early issues, remains solid.

“If I didn’t have a good relationship with them, I wouldn’t talk to them at all,” he said.

Morant has struggled through injuries and league-issued suspensions since being named an NBA All-Star in 2022 and 2023. His two suspensions by the league — 33 games total — were from flashing guns on his social media account. He missed the first 25 games to start the 2023-24 season.

During his return Monday against the Pistons, Morant was instrumental in the Grizzlies mounting a comeback in the fourth quarter that fell short. Memphis trailed 99-86 midway through the period before Morant, along with Jaren Jackson Jr., spearheaded a rally that trimmed Detroit’s advantage to three points.

Rally highlights for Memphis included Morant’s dunk off a lob from Vince Williams Jr. that cut the deficit to 101-94 with 4:23 remaining, and Jackson’s three-point play made it 103-100 at the 3:09 mark.

The Grizzlies will need Morant to be engaged, as are they without reserve guards Scotty Pippen Jr. (toe) and Ty Jerome (calf) because of injuries.

Houston, led by Kevin Durant and guard Amen Thompson, enters Wednesday on a four-game winning streak. The Rockets have outscored their opponents by an average of 20.3 points per contest during the streak.

Thompson has been impressive during the past three games, averaging 20.7 points, 7.7 rebounds and 6.3 assists and shooting 55.8% (24 of 43) from the floor. He scored a season-high 27 points with five rebounds and four assists in the 110-102 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Monday.

“He’s done it all since he’s been here for three years: on the ball, pick-and-rolls, playing the corner, playing the dunker,” said Houston coach Ime Udoka. “And he’s really improved in all those areas.”

Udoka said Alperen Sengun, who had 26 points and 11 rebounds against Dallas, has aided Thompson’s stellar play.

“Alpe always seems to find him when he’s down (near the basket),” Udoka said.

Durant, an 18-year veteran and 15-time All-Star in his first season with the Rockets, is averaging a team-high 25.2 points per game in six outings.

–Field Level Media

With a few more wins in their respective conference finals series last spring, the New York Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves would have advanced to the NBA Finals and figured out the ultimate way to determine the winner of their blockbuster October 2024 trade.

But the evidence continues to mount the deal between the teams was a mutually fruitful one.

A trio of players familiar with one another will take the floor Wednesday night, when the Knicks continue a season-high seven-game homestand by hosting the Timberwolves.

The key players in the trade all had impressive nights while leading their teams to victory in the metropolitan New York area on Monday night. Karl-Anthony Towns posted a double-double as the Knicks pulled away for a 119-102 win over the Washington Wizards, while Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo were among the leading scorers as the visiting Timberwolves beat the Brooklyn Nets 125-109.

Towns finished with a season-best 33 points to go with 13 rebounds for his sixth double-double in seven games this year. He had 58 double-doubles in 72 regular season games last year before posting 13 more in the playoffs, when the Knicks reached the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000 before falling to the Indiana Pacers in six games.

Towns, a native of nearby Edison, N.J., who spent his first nine NBA seasons with the Timberwolves, has also taken well to the white-hot New York spotlight that often seemed to make Randle uncomfortable.

“‘KAT’ was a monster,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said Monday night. “He was a monster on the glass, he was really good defensively, he was a monster inside, outside. He’s starting to feel and find his rhythm in what we’re trying to do.

“I’m telling you, there’s a lot of room there to grow, not just for him but for us around him.”

Randle and DiVincenzo have also thrived with the Timberwolves, who reached the Western Conference finals for the second straight year last spring and lost to the eventual NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder in five games.

DiVincenzo, who averaged 11.7 points per game as a key reserve last year, set season highs with 25 points and six 3-pointers Monday, when Randle (19 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists) posted his first regular-season triple-double with Minnesota.

Randle had 14 regular-season double-doubles last year and two more in the postseason, including a triple-double against the Golden State Warriors in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals.

“Those are always fun,” Randle said after he closed out the triple-double by dishing to Naz Reid for a 3-pointer with 3:18 left on Monday. “It’s a credit to my teammates making shots. Can’t do it if they don’t make shots. They made shots. They were in the right places, made it easy for me and I was able to make it happen.”

DiVincenzo and Randle may get some additional help Wednesday. Guard Anthony Edwards, who has missed the last four games with a strained right hamstring, returned to practice Tuesday and is listed as questionable.

Knicks center Mitchell Robinson was inactive Monday night as the team continues to manage his workload following a pair of left ankle surgeries. Robinson has played in two of New York’s seven games.

–Field Level Media