Raptors Leave Dome With Win
The Raptors said goodbye and good riddance to SkyDome with a rare quality performance.
Tracy McGrady had an assortment of high-flying dunks, Dee Brown hit three timely 3-pointers and Doug Christie scored 20 points as Toronto outplayed the hottest team in the conference Friday night in a 90-82 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks.
The win was just the second of the season for Toronto, which had been playing at SkyDome since entering the league in 1995. The Raptors will move Sunday into the new Air Canada Center.
Will they miss it?
"Not at all," said McGrady, who despite being 19 is one of the senior members of the team. "This place is one of the worst. "
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"It's not a basketball facility. The fans are too far away, it's too big and it's not a good atmosphere for basketball," McGrady said. "This place is so dead, you can hear everybody in the stands talking."
The victory gave the Raptors a record of 40-77 in the cavernous building built for baseball's Toronto Blue Jays. For the Bucks, it was just their second loss in seven games this season.
The play of McGrady and rookie Vince Carter exemplified how the Raptors outhustled and outleaped the Bucks.
McGrady scored all his third-quarter points on dunks as Toronto began to take over the game, and Carter slammed home an offensive rebound with 53 seconds left to give the Raptors an 88-77 lead that ended all dout.
"I like dunking the ball, and that was my chance," Carter said.
Carter finished with 13 points, and McGrady and Kevin Willis had 12 apiece. Willis added 11 rebounds to help Toronto to a 51-34 edge on the boards.
"I'm young and the energy was there," McGrady said. "My adrenaline was flowing and I really wanted to win tonight. The last couple of games I've played the hardest I could."
Dell Curry led the Bucks with 17 points. Terrell Brandon added 14 and Ray Allen 10, while Glenn Robinson struggled through a 3-for-16 shooting performance.
Milwaukee led for most of the first half, although a 3-pointer by Brown gave Toronto a 39-38 lead with 43 seconds left in the second quarter. Brandon answered with a 3-pointer and a layup to give the Bucks a 43-39 halftime lead.
Brandon started the third quarter with a jumper, upping the lead to six points, but the Bucks couldn't hold on to the momentum.
McGrady had three dunks in the period, the last an emphatic slam of an offensive rebound for a 61-56 lead as Toronto was on the way to a 63-58 advantage entering the fourth quarter.
Brown had his final two 3-pointers early in the fourth to help the Raptors lead by at least five points the rest of the way.
"When you get a team down, this kind of team that's 1-5, they were there to be broken up," Tyrone Hill said. "In order to be a good playoff team you've got to knock these kind of teams off." Notes: Attendance was 14,888 for the final SkyDome game. At the team's first game in 1995, the crowd as 33,306. The largest crowd ever was 36,131 for a March 24, 1996, victory over the Chicago Bulls...The Bucks were playing in Toronto for the second time in 10 days. They beat the Raptors 91-77 Feb. 9 at Maple Leafs Gardens...Prior to the game, Toronto waived guard Mark Baker, placed rookie forward Sean Marks on the injured list (lower back strain) and signed Australian Paul Rogers, who has a fractured right ankle and will be on the injured list for 5-8 weeks.
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