Raptors’ Fred VanVleet has deep respect for NBA-best Milwaukee Bucks, looking forward to Sunday’s challenge

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Challenges don’t come much tougher than visiting the Milwaukee Bucks these days as the Raptors will on Sunday night.

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Milwaukee is 28-7 at home and is the only NBA team this season that has won at least 70% of its games (71.4% to be precise), including a recent 16-game winning streak.

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And while Raptors leader Fred VanVleet said it’s a little late in the season to describe the game as a “measuring stick” he appreciates the challenge the Bucks present.

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“It’s a good opportunity for us and I think that if we go get this win against one of the top teams in the league that’s a great standard to see where we are,” VanVleet said after the Raptors cruised to a win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night before hitting the road for a much bigger test.

Milwaukee mostly gets it done with dominant defence (the team has three legitimate candidates to make an all-defensive team), but also combines one of the league’s most unstoppable singular forces in Giannis Antetokoumpo — in the race for a third MVP win — with a bevy of capable shooters (only three teams average more three-point makes per game than Milwaukee’s 14.8 and two of them are last year’s finalists Golden State and Boston).

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VanVleet has a lot of respect for the Bucks.

“They make it so tough, they got Giannis, they got Jrue Holiday, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, they got a lot of talent and a lot of vets that have done it,” VanVleet said. “They’re champions (2021), they have a championship calibre team and championship calibre coaching staff. Consistency, right? I think they were the first to 50 (wins), so, that’s a very impressive feat to have and hopefully we can catch them sleeping a little bit,” VanVleet said.

The Raptors moved within a half game of Atlanta for eighth in the standings with Saturday’s win and stayed 1.5 games up on Chicago, also a winner Saturday. Indiana and Washington both lost and fell three games behind the Raptors. It’s looking highly unlikely that Toronto will fall out of a play-in spot and if the Hawks can be caught, the team will get two cracks at making the playoffs (the 7-8 game and then potentially hosting another game if the 7-8 game is a Toronto loss).

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VanVleet said he isn’t keeping a close eye on the standings yet. “I think right now I’m just focussed on playing good for our team, we kind know who we are so whatever that is — six through 10 or seven through 10 — it’s kinda up and down, pretty close there,” VanVleet said.

“Just playing good basketball and not really worrying about who’s in front of us or who’s behind us. If we play good we’ll win and if we win, we’ll climb the standings, that’s just how it goes this time of year. We got our work cut out for us but I like where we’ve been at and we’ve been pretty focussed the last couple weeks, gotta keep that up.”

VanVleet’s right. As recently as February 5 Toronto sat 12th in the standings in the East. A 10-6 run since has propelled them right back into the mix.

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