Seattle ? The Seattle SuperSonics proved they don’t need All-Star guard Ray Allen to win the close ones.
Antonio Daniels’ driving 8-foot shot with 7.2 seconds left gave the Sonics an 88-87 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Friday night.
Vince Carter missed a driving reverse layup as time expired that would have won it for the Raptors.
Allen, who fouled out with 5:20 to go and the Sonics trailing 76-75, led Seattle with 29 points, including five 3-pointers.
“That’s big,” Daniels, Seattle’s backup point guard, said of winning without Allen. “All year we’ve been preaching unity. We have to believe in ourselves. If we don’t believe in ourselves, who will?”
The Sonics (5-1) won their fifth consecutive game after a 30-point, season-opening road loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Daniels scored a season-high 16 points, including eight in the final quarter. Rashard Lewis had 15 points, and Reggie Evans had 13 and a season-high 16 rebounds, one shy of his career total, for Seattle.
Vladimir Radmanovich had a season-high 11 rebounds for the Sonics, who had a 46-35 advantage on the boards.
Daniels said Sonics coach Nate McMillan gave him two options on the play that produced the winning basket.
“When the play was drawn up, we were going to try to get Rashard on the block,” he said. “He told me if I saw an opportunity, to turn the corner and take advantage of it.”
That’s what he did, but he kept his celebration in check since there was still time remaining.
“There were seven seconds left,” he said. “In this league, anything can happen. You get excited when the horn goes off.”
Allen fouled out on an offensive charge when he ran into Toronto’s Morris Peterson near the base line. He said Peterson flopped on the play and he shouldn’t have been called for a foul.
But he said it was important for the Sonics, whose margin of victory was 22.5 points, to win a close one.
“We kept our heads in the game,” Allen said. “The four games we won previously, we won by large margins. It’s easy to play when you’re a front runner.”
Chris Bosh scored 19 points for the Raptors, who got 15 each from Rafer Alston and Carter.
A 17-footer by Matt Bonner put Toronto ahead 87-83 with 1:16 to go before Lewis sank a 3-pointer with 1:01 left to make it 88-86.
The Raptors trailed most of the game, but Carter put them ahead 73-71 when he made a 3-pointer with 6:14 left. It was Toronto’s first lead since 7-4 in the first quarter.
First-year Toronto coach Sam Mitchell was furious with his team.
“We are going to find some guys in that room who are going to play team basketball,” he said. “Guys who aren’t going to play team basketball are not going to play. If I don’t do it my way, I’m going to get fired. If I’m going to get fired, I’m going to do it my way.”
The Sonics led by 13 points in the opening quarter and were ahead by 14 at halftime. But the Raptors came back in the third and scored the final seven points in the last 2 1/2 minutes to cut their deficit to 66-62.
McMillan’s team is off to a 5-1 start for the second straight season. But last year the Sonics didn’t have Allen for the first 25 games because of left ankle surgery.
“Both teams scrapped and hustled,” he said. “It just came down to who could make the last play. We needed a game like this.”
The Sonics beat the Raptors for the fourth straight time at home.
Notes: NBA Commissioner David Stern attended the game. Stern was in Seattle to talk to civic leaders on behalf of the Sonics. Sonics principal owner Howard Schultz has said his ownership group has lost “tens of millions” of dollars since buying the franchise from The Ackerley Group in the spring of 2001. The team has a lease to play at the Key Arena through 2010. Stern said before the game that the Sonics could sell every ticket to every game this season and still lose money because of the way its lease is written. But he said he thinks “a solution” can be reached to help the Sonics’ owners.
