MILWAUKEE – The weight was added, load by load, over four years. It had to have grown heavy.
As the Toronto Raptors morphed from fun, young team to a team with promise to a team with expectations, the only thing remaining was to actually go out and act like it.
This they haven’t always been good at. They had put together the resume of a team that could not only make the playoffs, but get there with the intent of doing damage. But there were the stumbles – the losses in Game 1s, the fumbles in Games 6s.
And always drama.
Their upside-down, fever-dream 92-89 win over the Milwaukee Bucks the most dramatic of all, although for the wrong reasons, but hey, maybe in the end the right ones too.
Short story: The job is done. The Raptors won a seven-game series in less than the maximum for the first time in franchise history, advanced to the second-round against the defending champion Cavaliers, a rematch of the Eastern Conference Finals starting on Monday in Cleveland.
Long story? Wow, just wow.
With all the ballast of past struggles on their shoulders the Raptor looked like they were going to shed it all in one glorious, signature moment. At the 5:15 mark of the third quarter the Raptors were a team in full flight. A 17-4 run capped by threes from Serge Ibaka, Norman Powell – his ninth straight since being made a starter in Game 4 – and by DeMarre Carroll put the Raptors up 71-46.
The Raptors weren’t just going to win a Game 6 on the road, they were going to have a victory lap en route.
There’s always a lot of talk about DNA when it comes to the Raptors. The core has been together for five seasons. Their strengths have become evident – their flaws too.
But after 29 minutes, it looked like the best versions of themselves were surfacing at the most important moment. DeMar DeRozan was carrying the mail offensively – he had 22 of his eventual game-high 32 to help the Raptors stake their lead. After the Bucks, and in particular Giannis Antetokounmpo, came out with a roar early – Milwaukee whipped the BMO Bradley Centre crowd into a frenzy to start as the multi-talented big Greek guard scored all eight points on a Bucks 8-2 run to start the game – the Raptors had settled nicely.
They took the Bucks’ early punches calmly and expertly countered. They looked like the veteran, mature, seen-it-all group they like to believe they are, even if they don’t always look convinced of it.
They led by four after the first quarter and 51-38 at the half and they surged even more after the intermission. They were showing no mercy. They were stepping on the young Bucks’ exposed throat. They were doing what winning teams do.
They had the Bucks hemmed, holding them to 37.5 per cent shooting in building their lead. The Raptors had a very respectable – for them – 11 assists on 26 field goals. Six different players had hit at least one three-pointer, and if Kyle Lowry was hindered by his sore back, he was still at that point plus-24 for the game, having dished out four assists without a turnover.
But then everything went wrong.
It’s hard to encapsulate exactly how fully, but the Raptors went from looking like the best of themselves to looking like the worst of the franchise, circa 1996-97. They won 16 games that year.
Or maybe even worse, they went from the best of themselves to a version of themselves that is all too familiar at times – usually at moments when the Raptors look like they have no business winning a playoff series.
“I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden they [the Bucks] woke up, made a great run and took over the game, had the momentum, had the crowd behind them,” said Patrick Patterson. “We were just discombobulated. A little too selfish on the offensive end, not communicating on the defensive side and they took advantage of that.”
That’s like saying the raccoon gets taken advantage of when it tries to cross the street at an inopportune moment. The Raptors went from looking like they were coasting to Cleveland to becoming road kill.
They looked panicky.
It took the Raptors all 13 minutes to cough up a big, fat cushion of a lead. They did all they could to help the Bucks. There were nine turnovers that turned into 13 Bucks points. And the Raptors did the Bucks the favour of not scoring – their only field goal in a 16-minute stretch as the game was being pulled out from under them was a Lowry lay-up that came off a steal by P.J. Tucker – nothing pretty in other words.
By the time the Bucks’ Jason Terry pulled up form 27-feet for a three that gave Milwaukee their first lead since the first quarter at 80-78 with 3:06 to play the Raptors had surrendered a 34-7 run. A 25-point lead went poof.
The question was what the Raptors were going to do. Having been so determined to avoid having to play another Game 7, they now had something close to the same pressure in the final three minutes of the game.
Down two, Raptors head coach Dwane Casey called timeout and the players, amongst themselves, reminded themselves to stay calm.
“I was just saying during that timeout, because the scene was a little bit intense, guys looked tight on the bench, I was telling them relax, let’s move the ball, “ said Cory Joseph. “Let’s run some plays, let’s do the things that got us up that high in the first place and just try to calm them down.
“It’s human nature to get a little tense when things aren’t going your way. And the whole building is against you on the road. It’s human nature. You have to fight against that to calm yourself down and still play the game.”
And here is what might be the most encouraging part of the whole affair – not how the Raptors blew their lead, but how they recovered it.
Before the game, Bucks coach Jason Kidd made the point that under-pressure teams, players – everyone really – tend to become predictable.
“We’re all built on habits,” Kidd said. “And this time of year you’re not going to change, you’re going to go to your strengths.”
And what habits emerged after the Raptors had pissed a way a perfectly good 25-point lead and allowed a building to catch fire in the process?
How about trust? How about unselfishness? How about calm under the most extreme pressure?
Trailing by two with two minutes to play the team that finished last in the NBA in assists, which relies on contested twos and isolation so often, were saved by a gorgeous passing play that set up Patterson for a wide-open dunk, and another moment where the ball whipped around the perimeter before finding Joseph for a wide-open corner three that he cashed for his only field goal of the game.
“Both plays started me and DeMar in double teams,” said Lowry, who finished with 13 points and four assists in 44 minutes, echoing the theme of the series. “[The first play] he [DeRozan] swung it, and threw a high pass to me and Jason Terry was coming and I threw it to Pat, and he basically had a two-on-one and Pat finished aggressively.
“Same on the other side. DeMar got a post-up, threw it back to me, and we just [kept] throwing the ball. I think that’s how we had built the 25-point lead – moving the ball and zipping it around. We gave up the lead by not passing the ball and not moving the ball as much. You live and you learn.”
Joseph’s three gave the Raptors a three-point lead with 1:27 to play. After a Bucks turnover, DeRozan showed why it’s still nice to have a guy who can create his own shot as he attacked a Bucks double-team in the corner, got his shoulders around Thon Maker and smashed home a dunk that put the Raptors up five with 48 seconds left.
It was still dicey. Ibaka fouled Khris Middleton on a three and the Bucks forward made two free throws and there was another Terry three that cut the Raptors lead to two with 16.5 second left, but DeRozan took care of business at the free-throw line.
The Raptors won in a game where they were their best and their worst and their best again in the space of about 20 minutes. They survived a 34-point onslaught from Antetokounmpo in part because the young Bucks star missed six of his 13 free throws and the Bucks missed 10 for the game, to four by Toronto.
And survived because in crunch time they remembered how they thrive.
“Moving the ball got us the lead,” said Tucker. “Not moving the ball got us in a slump; moving the ball at the end got us a win.”
The win put to bed nearly four years of demons for the Raptors. They may not have finished off the Bucks in textbook fashion, but they completed the job. The work got done.
What they earned is an opportunity to test drive the championship potential of a lineup that – on paper – covers all the bases, providing scoring, defence, depth and versatility.
A year ago, Raptors-Cavs was a mismatch, and not just because the Cavaliers have LeBron James and the Raptors don’t. Sure they won two games, but the victories were a bit hollow given the average margin of defeat in their four losses was 28.5 points.
The circumstances are different now. Thanks to the Raptors wrapping up the Bucks in six the Raptors get three full days to rest and prepare for the Cavs on Monday in Cleveland. Lowry’s back should only get better.
DeRozan called the rest for Lowry “critical.”
They’re taking on the Cavs with Ibaka at power forward instead of some combination of Luis Scola and Patterson as starters. Tucker provides another body to throw at James.
But perhaps, most importantly, they’ll arrive in Cleveland aware of what works, what can happen when they get away from it and confident that in the tensest moment of a playoff game, with the crowd roaring on the road and everything going wrong at once, they can trust each other.
The Raptors’ first Game 6 win of the Lowry and DeRozan era didn’t go to script, but the part where they didn’t have to carry the whole load alone?
That might have provided the best ending of all.