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Wednesday, Apr. 18 7:00pm ET
Raptors win, but fail to rise

RECAP | BOX SCORE | GAME FLOW

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Toronto Raptors finished the most successful regular season in franchise history. The payoff? Another playoff series against the New York Knicks.

Chris Childs
Chris Childs flips in two of his 11 points against the Wizards.

Vince Carter scored 34 points Wednesday night as the Raptors beat the Washington Wizards 98-92. The victory guaranteed a fifth-place finish in the Eastern Conference and a first-round series against the Knicks, who clinched fourth by beating Detroit.

The Raptors, who entered the league in 1995, made the playoffs for the first time last season and were swept by the Knicks in three straight games.

"It's kind of ironic that we're playing the Knicks," said Chris Childs, who was traded from New York to Toronto in February. "It seems like the rivalry we had when I was in New York with Miami has transformed into a New York and Toronto rivalry. ... I'm just going to go and play and see a lot of good friends."

The Raptors won three of four regular season games against the Knicks this season.

"That doesn't mean nothing," center Antonio Davis said. "We beat them 3-1 last year and they swept us from the playoffs.

"This Raptors team is little more experienced. There's a kind of calmness about us as far as being down and panicking. We've been down in certain situations and things didn't seem to be going our way, but somehow we seem to pull together and win the ball game. Last year when we got down and things weren't going away, we scrambled and couldn't find a way to get back in and win the game."

Toronto finished the season 47-35. The 47 wins tops the previous franchise mark of 45 set last season, and the 20 road wins beats the record 19 from last season.

The Wizards (19-63) set a franchise record for most losses in Michael Jordan's first full season as president of basketball operations. The 63 losses is one more than the 1961-62 Chicago Packers, who finished 18-62 in an 80-game schedule two years before the team moved to the Baltimore-Washington area.

After the game, Leonard Hamilton stepped down as coach.

The game was surprisingly competitive, considering the Raptors had postseason motivation against a play-out-the-string Wizards team that dressed only eight players. Toronto didn't put the game away until Carter and Chris Childs combined for a 7-0 run that made the score 91-80 with 6:55 to play.

There were signs the Raptors were taking the Wizards too lightly. Morris Peterson passed up an easy fast-break layup and instead misfired on an alley-oop attempt to Carter six minutes into the game. Carter finished with four dunks, including two reverse dunks and a one-handed breakaway monster dunk in the third quarter that brought the biggest cheer of the night.

"I try to tell the guys to go out and play hard, but sometimes it's hard," coach Lenny Wilkens said. "Subconsciously, you just can't get going some nights. In the end there, we turned it up a little bit. But we certainly didn't play with the kind of intensity we normally play with."

Peterson added 20 points for the Raptors, who have won seven of their last nine games.

Courtney Alexander scored a career-high 33 points to lead the Wizards, who lost nine of their last 10. Among the players not dressed for the final game were Richard Hamilton (sore left elbow), Jahidi White (strained right Achilles) and Christian Laettner (bruised left big toe).

Game notes
The Wizards became the first team in six seasons to play an entire regular season without an overtime game. The Los Angeles Lakers didn't have OT in 1994-95 season. It's only happened eight times since the league went to an 82-game schedule in 1967. ... The Raptors swept the four-game series against the Wizards. ... Washington's Michael Smith scored a season-high 18 points, and Popeye Jones had a season-high 16 rebounds for the Wizards. ... Charles Oakley was 0-for-9 from the field for Toronto. ... Although the Wizards had only three reserves available, one of them didn't play. Hamilton kept Loy Vaught on the bench the whole game.

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RECAPS
Charlotte 97
Boston 92

Chicago 92
Philadelphia 86

Toronto 98
Washington 92

Indiana 105
Cleveland 101

New York 94
Detroit 88

Miami 103
Orlando 91

Dallas 120
Minnesota 100

Denver 110
Sacramento 100

Seattle 105
San Antonio 67


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