CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Every now and again, Terence Davis reminds himself that 30 NBA teams passed on him in the 2019 draft.
Wednesday was one of those nights.
Davis made the most of his first NBA start with 23 points and 11 rebounds, Serge Ibaka made two free throws with 5.1 seconds left in overtime and also finished with 23 points and 11 rebounds, and the banged-up Toronto Raptors escaped with a 112-110 overtime win over the Charlotte Hornets.
Davis said going undrafted wasn’t ideal, but “it adds fuel to the fire.”
“I told my family when I didn’t get drafted, ‘Hey, those guys that got their name called still have to lace them up and go play in the Summer League,’” Davis said. “… So did I. That was my mindset going into the draft night was just to get to the Summer League.”
Davis said he was “surprised” when coach Raptors coach Nick Nurse told him before the game he was going to start.
The Raptors were without Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, Marc Gasol, Dewan Hernandez and Norman Powell due to injuries, leaving them depleted on the second night of a back-to-back.
“He was really good,” Nurse said of Davis. “This isn’t that easy to figure out who to play with all these guys out constantly and trying to figure out some ways to keep guys ticking. When they are really fighting hard for minutes they play better. …. There are all kinds of things going on, but with me I am going to rattle your cage if you deserve to have it rattled.”
Davis picked up the slack for the Raptors, getting into a rhythm early with 13 points in the first quarter. The rookie from Mississippi also finished strong with two big 3-pointers in overtime.
“I was being aggressive without trying to force things,” said Davis, a second-team All-Southeastern Conference selection last season. “Guys were finding me and I knocked a couple shots down and got to the paint.”
OG Anunoby added 19 points and Kyle Lowry had 15 points and nine assists while having to play 43 minutes due to injuries in the backcourt. Patrick McCaw added 13 points and 11 assists as the Raptors bounced back from a home loss to Portland on Tuesday night.
Terry Rozier led the Hornets with 27 points, but his 3-pointer at the buzzer in overtime that would have won the game fell just short.
Rozier exchanged words and pointed fingers at Davis on the court after the game and the two had to be separated by teammates before heading back to their respective locker rooms. Both players declined to discuss what was said after the game.
Miles Bridges added 26 points and nine rebounds for Charlotte, and P.J. Washington had 12 points and 12 rebounds.
This was a much different game than on Nov. 18 when Toronto defeated Charlotte 132-96 at home.
After leading by as many as 12 in the third quarter, the Raptors fell behind by 10 in the fourth quarter when Rozier hit a long 3 from the left wing with 5:25 remaining.
But the Raptors battled back to take the lead 100-99 with 17 seconds left when Lowry drove the lane and scored on a left-handed layup in traffic. On the Hornets’ ensuing inbounds pass, Ibaka was called for a foul away from the ball after grabbing Washington’s jersey. Rozier sank the automatic free throw to tie it, but Devonte Graham’s runner at the buzzer was short, sending the game into overtime.
Ibaka scored the game’s go-ahead points after grabbing an offensive rebound and drawing a foul on Rozier. Hornets coach James Borrego said he thought Ibaka might have travelled on the play, but added he would have to watch the film to be sure.
“You have to keep playing for 48 minutes and that’s the bottom line,” Borrego said. “No matter if you’re up or down, you have to keep playing.”
TIP INS
Raptors: Had 34 assisted baskets. … Davis was 8 of 16 from the field in his first start.
Hornets: Bench outscored Raptors’ reserves 28-19 despite only playing eight players overall.
ROZIER STAYS HOT
Rozier has scored at least 27 points in four straight games for the Hornets. He started slow against the Raptors, but picked up the pace in the second half and in overtime, where he made a series of big plays, including a steal and an assist for Devonte Graham for a transition 3-pointer.
“I think he came back with a vengeance,” Borrego said. “He was terrific down the stretch. He had great will, just to chase down that transition possession for them was fantastic. He kept attacking the rim. He got to the rim. I liked the ball in his hands late.”
BACK-TO-BACK PROWESS
The Raptors have not lost on back-to-back nights since Dec. 26-27, 2017.
Lowry attributed that to the team’s resiliency.
“We played hard and Coach Nurse has a good mentality,” Lowry said. “We have a lot of guys hurt right now and we got some guys coming back and we will just keep plugging away.”
BRIDGES OVER TROUBLED WATERS
Bridges knocked down a career-high six 3-pointers. “I wasn’t hesitating on the shots and the last few games I was hesitating,” Bridges said. “I was just shooting them.”
UP NEXT:
Raptors: Get a three-day rest before hosting the Spurs on Sunday.
Hornets: Head west to face the Jazz in Utah on Friday night.
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PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
