Lewis’ 41 saves Sonics
TORONTO – Rashard Lewis hated the thought of losing to the lowly Toronto Raptors, so he played his best game of the young season.
Lewis scored 41 points Sunday, and the Seattle SuperSonics recovered after blowing an 18-point lead in the fourth quarter to beat the winless Raptors 126-121 in overtime.
“It would have been real bad for us if we didn’t win,” Lewis said.
Nick Collison started and had 20 points for the Sonics, who lost by 41 points to Washington on Friday. Their only other victory this season was in overtime against Minnesota on Nov. 4.
“They were 0-5 and we had one win. Both teams really felt like this was a chance to get a win,” Lewis said.
Lewis said they still have a lot of work to do.
“This win doesn’t mean nothing,” he said. “We’ve got to go out there and beat a legit team, a real good team. This team hasn’t won a game.”
Mike James had a career-high 36 points for the Raptors, 0-6 for the first time in their 11-year history. Rookie Charlie Villanueva added 26 points and 12 rebounds.
“Nobody wants to be 0-6. We tried to get our first win, and we came really close,” Villanueva said.
Seattle led by as many as 18 in the fourth, but James cut the lead to a point with a 3-pointer with 26 seconds left. Vladimir Radmanovic made two free throws with 4.2 seconds remaining to make it 117-114, but James made a free throw before intentionally missing the second.
Chris Bosh grabbed the offensive rebound and made a jumper, tying it at the buzzer. Collison scored four points in the final two minutes of overtime to seal the win.
“We got lucky,” Radmanovic said. “It would have been really bad if we had lost this one.”
Collison started in place of Reggie Evans, and Johen Petro started in place of Vitaly Potapenko. Coach Bob Weiss said he would make changes after Friday’s loss.
Seattle shot 50 percent, the first time this season it shot better than 45. The Sonics improved to 1-3 on their six-game East Coast road trip.
“It’s definitely great to get on a winning track, but it seems like there is miles to go,” Ray Allen said.
Seattle went 41 for 49 from the line while Toronto was 18 for 26.
Lewis went 1 for 2 from the line and finished with 17 points in Friday’s loss. He went 14 for 16 from the line against Toronto.
“We lost the game because they shot 49 free throws to our 26,” Toronto coach Sam Mitchell. “That’s hard to recover from that.”
Toronto’s Jalen Rose went 3 for 12 from the field for seven points and didn’t play in the fourth period.
Notes
Seattle has won four of its last five visits to Toronto. … Aaron Williams, Toronto’s starting center, had two points and six rebounds in 12 minutes. Rafael Araujo, the eighth overall pick in the draft two years, ago had two points and no rebounds in three minutes. … Toronto coach Sam Mitchell started forward Morris Peterson instead of rookie Joey Graham, but Peterson went 4-for-13 from the field.