Canada Sports News

• The Toronto Raptors are restarting their NBA season against the Los Angeles Lakers.
• They have seven more games with the schedule being released yesterday.
• Raptors are still one of the best teams in the league and one of the top contenders for winning the NBA title.

Raptors Against LeBron on August 1

The opening game for the NBA champions will be against one of the biggest rivals and top contenders for winning this year’s title – the LA Lakers. Their matchup is scheduled for August 1, and it will be aired on ESPN at 8:30 ET.

The first game of the campaign played in LA ended with the guests winning, 104-113, with Pascal Siakam posting 24 points and 11 boards, and Fred VanVleet being near a triple-double, 23 buckets, 10 assists, and seven boards.

Apart from this game, Toronto has seven more matches in this new format. The opponents are going to be the Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers and the Denver Nuggets in the closing contest of the year.

The players are all anxious to start competing, and the Raptors are the only team who had to leave home in order, to begin with, training sessions. As mentioned in previous articles, the Canadian COVID-19 measures prevented the players from coming back to Toronto, as they needed to go through a 14-day quarantine before joining the team and returning to the public.

That is why the entire organization arrived in Florida much earlier, on June 23, setting up a training base in Fort Meyers’ Florida Gulf Coast University.

According to Adam Silver, all the health protocols are at the highest possible level, and the restart of the league should be without any problems.

“We ultimately believe it will be safer on our campus than outside it,” Silver said Friday afternoon. “But the signal we are sending is this is definitely not business as usual. This is far from an ideal way to finish our season, and it will require tremendous sacrifices from all those involved.”

Raptors’ Still Among the Biggest Candidates for Larry O’Brien Trophy

With 46 wins and 19 losses, the champs have minimal chances for reaching the Milwaukee Bucks in the first place of the Eastern Conference. But they have contests with all a couple of teams who are stalking them from behind, among them the Celtics and the Heat. Boston is now three games away from Nick Nurse’s side and hopes to jump over the divisional rivals.

During these playoffs, there won’t be a home-court advantage as we got used to in the past, because there won’t be any fans in the stands. Still, the final standings are going to be very important because of the playoff path, which is why each game in this shortened format is going to be “do or die” for some teams. These odd circumstances might provide some massive surprises.

In the following part of the article, you can see the detailed schedule of the Raptors.

Aug 1 – Lakers on ESPN

Aug 3 – Heat on NBA TV

Aug 5 – Magic

Aug 7 – Celtics on TNT

Aug 9 – Grizzlies

Aug 10 – Bucks on ESPN

Aug 12 – 76ers on ESPN

Aug 14 – Nuggets