Rockets pull away as Raptors’ bench falls to Earth

The Raptors bench, in bygone months one of the team’s true strengths, is all of a sudden a liability.

And its inefficiency was much of the reason for the team’s latest defeat.

Houston’s James Harden, pulling down a rebound in front of Pascal Siakam, led the Rockets with 35 points.Unable to even sustain what the starters had done in erasing a deficit as large as 22 points, the backups faltered in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter at the Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday in what turned into a 107-95 loss to the Houston Rockets.

A resurgent starting group, which was far from blameless in Toronto getting behind, had outscored the Rockets 34-14 in the third quarter to take a two-point lead into…