With the Raptors down 13 entering the fourth quarter of a nearly must-win Game 5 against the Indiana Pacers, a lead that was only marginally better than the 17 they were stuck earlier, head coach Dwane Casey went searching. The team had been playing without the requisite energy all game, getting off to yet another poor start despite a change to the starting lineup designed to help in that regard, and their backs were up against the ropes. To be honest, given the anxious energy inside the Air Canada Centre, they probably had their upper half through the ropes, grabbing at the turnbuckles and begging for a break.
What Casey came up with was a lineup that didn’t play a single second together during the regular season. Not a little-used unit he toyed with just enough to have it as a weapon, not a theoretically strong lineup that had struggled and had been shelved, one that hadn’t played at all. Not a damn second.
The start of the fourth quarter is typically time for the “Kyle Lowry and reserves” unit, but Patrick Patterson had joined the starters and nobody took up his mantle in the regular rotation. So Casey called on two usuals in Cory Joseph and Bismack Biyombo, kept DeMar DeRozan on the floor with Paul George sitting on the opposite bench (a smart strategy that worked well in the second quarter), and tapped spark plug Norman Powell to fill out the super-small unit. It wasn’t the strangest of groups, but it looked a bit eclectic, definitely small, and overwhelmingly unfamiliar. It also looked like it might work.
“That toughness, the want-to, that inner ‘OK, I”m tired of getting my butt kicked, and we’re gonna go to war.’ That group that was in there, I thought had that,” Casey said. “It was just about mixing, finding, searching for a group that was doing it, because we weren’t getting it in the first three quarters.”
It started working. The lead was cut to 10, and then Casey called on Terrence Ross, a shooting guard by trade, to be the nominal power forward in DeRozan’s place. That lineup hadn’t played together all season, either. Naturally, within a blink, the lead had been cut to seven. Then five.
“I think it was just like, a group out there that was playing hard and playing together, we were all one string,” Lowry said. “That group, we just played. We just was like, ‘Alright, we ain’t got no choice. Try to just grind it out, get stops, and push.’”
They got stops. They pushed. And then Rodney Stuckey fell into Drake on the sidelines, earning a furious clap in his face for his efforts, and for the first time, the night felt like Toronto’s.
“His shoes went out, he stepped out of bounds, and ran over Drake on the side. I was more worried about Drake than I was Stuckey,” Casey said.
Ross hit a three on the ensuing possession, and then Powell stole the ball and stormed for a furious, game-tying jam that almost never was (Powell admitted after the game that the ball nearly slipped out), one that absolutely rocked the ACC. Except for perhaps the closing moments of Game 7 against Brooklyn in 2014, it’s tough to remember a time when the arena was that loud, reacted that violently, and was that unrelentingly – and unexpectedly – confident.
That energy would play a big part down the stretch, as George would concede.
“I just think as a team, I think the crowd, intensity, it took away from us being in attack mode and being confident,” George said. “I thought we played a little nervous, a little tight, on our heels. ”
The game now tied and momentum in their favor, the next few possessions would be paramount for the Raptors. When Ross clanged triples in triplicate over a stretch of two possessions, there was a sense that maybe the Pacers had bent but fate wouldn’t allow the Raptors to complete the break. Three squandered opportunities, good looks that Ross had to take but the natural up-and-down of the high-variance 3-ball, and maybe that was it.
And so Casey went back to DeRozan, who had turned in his best performance of the series so far, perhaps shaking off the demons of two playoffs past in the process. The Raptors added a few new wrinkles to help free DeRozan while also pushing the tempo a little, and while Casey would say the big difference was DeRozan making shots – and he did – the 13 free-throw attempts were the driving factor in his 34-point night.
“I felt like my normal self,” DeRozan said. “Me and this guy (Lowry) work extremely too hard to not have them come. It’s all about patience. You can’t get flustered, you can’t get frustrated, you gotta stay the course.”
Immediately upon DeRozan checking back in, the Pacers committed a shot-clock violation, the Raptors’ defensive intensity turned up to a level that hadn’t been present since the first half of Game 3. DeRozan canned a three, and then Monta Ellis was forced into a late-clock heave that missed. Joseph hit a three. George missed one out of a timeout.
The Raptors led by six, but a tough DeRozan miss, where he could have found a screen-slipping Lowry, gave George the chance to pull the Pacers back within four with just 2:27 to play. Eventually, the detriment of playing smaller showed up, with Myles Turner scoring off of an offensive rebound and Solomon Hill getting a corner three off of a subsequent offensive rebound to cut the lead to one.
Again, momentum was teetering. This was a moment, if there ever were one for this team. Rebuilt on the idea of toughness, both mental and physical, with the edict to get things done at both ends of the floor instead of just with scoring, with the chance to close out a pivotal playoff game with a stop. This was the chance to show that Casey’s image for the team, the one Masai Ujiri appeared to have custom-tailored the roster to, was the right design, the right course. They were bludgeoned in the first and third quarters, a harsh reminder of last year’s final act, but here they were, the Pacers stuck at just nine points for in the frame, with the opportunity to take firm control of the series. With their defense.
After DeRozan used the team’s foul to give, the Pacers had the ball with 11.8 seconds to play. Ellis went full Ellis and looked for a too-difficult pass that never materialized, and Lowry masterfully used verticality to force a miss on the descent of Ellis’ jump.
So, of course, the Pacers were awarded the ball after a reviewed rebound, and the Raptors had to do it all over again. They’d shown toughness all quarter in fighting back from a massive deficit, when every indication during the third quarter was that the team was ready to fold. They had taken the lead for the first time all game, and they had held it with a stop. Whatever mental toughness Casey has instilled in this team was being tested with the Pacers’ second chance, as much a challenge of the spirit as of the body.
The call was to foul. Up three with 2.7 seconds left, fouling on the floor would force the Pacers to the free-throw line for a pair, where the game would devolve into a very short free-throw shooting contest, with Toronto owning the edge. Powell, a second-round pick and rookie drawing the assignment on Paul Freaking George on the most important possession of the season to date, couldn’t manage to foul, but he did the next best thing: He forced the ball out of George’s hands.
“It’s very tempting,” George said. “That’s the shot you want. But at the same time, I seen the open man, and it wasn’t on me to make the hero shot.”
And Solomon Hill hit the shot, but if you’re reading this, Solomon, it’s too late.
“He made the right basketball play, it was a great play,” Frank Vogel said. “Just a great play. One frame shy of getting the tie game and going to overtime.”
Hill didn’t quite get the shot off in time, and while winning on a walk-off review is not necessarily how you want to win, neither is being forced to come back from down 17, and neither is closing with two lineups you’ve never used before. Assessing results without the context of the process is a dangerous game (see: the starting lineup), but with the season quite literally on the line, you take the wins how you can get them.
In this case, how the Raptors got it was searching, grasping, tinkering, and experimenting until they found the right energy. They played their backup center, a one-way terror but one you almost have to play small with to keep spacing tolerable. They rode their struggling All-Stars, buoyed by the faith that they’d eventually find their shots, or make important plays – like a well-timed charge drawn on a third attempt – when the moment called for it. They didn’t just play small, they played a two at the four. They played a rookie who was plying his craft as a D-League regular just a few months ago, and they put him on the best player in the series so far when it mattered most.
They went way outside of the box and way outside of their comfort zone, and maybe there are lessons in searching so viscerally.
“Somebody asked a question, ‘Where did that come from?’ I gotta look at that,” Casey said. “We want to bottle that up. Because that toughness is what you’ve gotta play with no matter who’s in the game. We gotta use that as an example of how you have to play. Because, again Friday night’s going to be a war, it’s going to be a battle, it’s going to be like it was last Saturday. If we don’t come in with that mentality like we had in the fourth quarter, it’s going to be a long day.”
Chemistry and momentum are unexplainable, fickle, fleeting, ethereal things. The Raptors captured them for the most important 12-minute stretch of the season and, quite possibly, for the most important 12-minute stretch for long-term future of this core. They’ll need to search for it once again in Game 6 with the recognition that this series still isn’t over, whatever the historical odds may say (they say the favorite, once up 3-2, wins 92.1 percent of the time).
The hope is always that you don’t need a quarter like the fourth quarter the Raptors turned in on Tuesday, because you play a better first 36 minutes and find that energy and hunger and desperation earlier. They shouldn’t have needed it. But it was beautiful that they did.
Other post-game notes and quotes
*Joseph had a great reaction to the final shot:
“saved by the bell, we call that.” – cory joseph on the final possession
— James Herbert (@outsidethenba) April 27, 2016
*Nobody was willing to give poor Powell much credit. Casey and Vogel were both quick to give credit to team defense on George over any individual efforts, and DeRozan and Lowry were dismayed when asked if maybe Powell’s not considered a rookie anymore.
KL Yes.
DD He’s for sure a rookie.
KL He’s a rookie
DD For sure he’s a rookie
KL He’s a rookie until next, whenever the opening game is.
Lowry was willing to give the UCLA product his due, eventually:
He played well. The kid’s been doing well. He’s been doing this for the last month and a half, two months now. He’s been phenomenal throughout this whole season. I always told him ‘stay patient.’ When he went to the D-league, did his stints very well, he did them no problem, he didn’t sulk. He did them, came back up, and then he got a chance to play. His confidence has been growing. I really am proud of him because of how hard he’s worked and how much he’s willing to learn and accept coaching from the coaches and accept our criticism and our critiquing and also our constructive criticism.
The Powell story is one that I’ll never get tired of experiencing. What a ride for that rookie.
*It sounds like Patterson starting may get the plug pulled on it. Here’s Casey after a rough outing for the super-sub:
You know, Pat was a -20. I love him death, but I don’t know if it took him out of his rhythm or whatever. But I thought it would give us some speed and quickness to start the game. So we’ve gotta reevaluate that. I love Pat. He gives us so much. I don’t know if starting him messed up his rhythm or whatever, but he’s a very valuable piece for us coming off the bench.
I still maintain that it’s the best approach for the Raptors, albeit one that presents a risk (which is why I wrote much earlier in the season that they should have done it earlier, to avoid this late, forced-hand, on-the-fly adjustment). But yeah, they were outscored by two points in 16 minutes and Patterson had maybe his worst game of the series. One game samples and process over results and all, but I understand and accept that there’s some egg on my face after this one.
*Game 6 goes Friday in Indiana at a time to be determined.
Photo Courtesy @KrisReports.
