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‘Can’t make it (Game 7) sound like a funeral,’ and other post-game notes

One team understood the moment. The other team has to fight off history, demons, ghosts, momentum, and a boatload of bad play.

Well, that sucked. And one side seems to recognize it.

Once again, the game swung heavily on the intangible, with the Raptors finally getting out to the hot start they wanted and then heading back to Toronto midway through the first quarter. How, for all the talk all week about this being treated like a Game 7, for all the assurances that this team would come out hungry, for all the lessons supposedly learned from 2014

Pacers understood the moment

“We understood the moment,” Paul George said on ESPN after the game, and that about sums it up.

It took a long time for quotes to start coming out from the Raptors’ side of Bankers Life Fieldhouse, so needless to say, there was plenty to talk about after such a thoroughly dispiriting loss.



I hate that the series has consistently hung on this stuff that isn’t measurable or adjustable or able to be analyzed. I’m around the team some, yeah, but I don’t know these guys, their hearts, their spirits, their psyches. Nobody does. Maybe it’s just random, or physical, or Indiana was just that up for it. Or maybe the Raptors are wilting. We really don’t know until Game 7. So, hey, team anxiety!

The stars were decidedly not out tonight

Kyle Lowry tried his damndest to carry the Raptors in the first half, and he put on a master’s class in how to impact a game when your shot’s not falling. Ultimately, though, the game caught up with him, and he was rendered mostly a non-factor in the decisive third quarter. He finished the night with 10-5-10 on 4-of-14 shooting, becoming the first qualified player to shoot below 40 percent in the first six games of a series, per Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun, probably because players who shoot enough to qualify and shoot that poorly rarely make it six games.

Again, Lowry shooting poorly doesn’t mean he’s playing poorly, and he’s been much better than his stat line would suggest in the series. He lost that edge in the second half, though, and unfortunately, the Raptors need him at KLOE levels right now. It was bad enough that the ESPN broadcast was speaking openly and at length about their believe that Lowry’s playing hurt, and it’s easy to draw a line from the bursa sac he had drained in his elbow to the shooting struggles. The Raptors aren’t saying anything publicly, and Lowry would never admit it anyway (“It’s not limiting me at all,” he said after the game), but it’s definitely a concern the longer this goes on (and it extends back into the regular season).

It would be easier to withstand if his counterpart, DeMar DeRozan, was playing better, but after a bounce-back Game 5, DeRozan turned in his worst game of the series. He was 3-of-13 for eight points with one assist and four turnovers, and he and Lowry were a -14 and -17, respectively. You can get by with them both playing “OK,” or one being off and the other on, but it’s proving too daunting a task to play consistently when neither can get things going.


And look, nobody really played that well in this one. It’s no one player’s fault when the entire team no-shows and there’s not a single unit that’s bringing energy outside of the opening stretch of play. The margin for bad nights from the supporting cast is just rendered Bruno Caboclo-thin when the stars, the two ball-dominant, drive-oriented stars the offense is built on, both don’t have it going. It’s tough, and there’s not a good answer for it yet.

“It means everything for us to advance,” DeRozan said. “The season would be a failure if we don’t make it out of the first round, give ourselves a chance to play in the second round. We understand that.”

Hope so.

Pacers growing confident

Well, this isn’t what you want an opponent feeling heading into Game 7 in your barn.


The Pacers may be growing confident, but in pure series terms, all they did was hold serve. Game 7 is Toronto’s to lose, and there will be equal pressure on both sides.

Keep the faith

Here’s the thing: Game 7 is at home. You play hard all year for home-court advantage for exactly this reason. Yes, it’s concerning as hell that the Raptors have played maybe 15 good minutes over the last two games, that their stars are struggling, that they seem to be grasping for this ethereal toughness and fortitude that only occasionally makes itself known the last two weeks. All of that is worrisome.

But this is also a team we were just lauding for their toughness and resiliency in Game 5, one that’s won with poor performances from Lowry and DeRozan before, one that’s come back from down double-digits and beat better teams and pulled you back in when your faith was wavering. They’re 6.5-point favorites at open, they won 11 more games, they’re at home…and they can’t possibly play worse, right?

And really, as awful as tonight was, if you’re not going to get behind your team and put your blind faith and optimism into a Game 7, what are we all really doing here? These are the moments, and you can either go in expecting defeat or go in hoping. DeRozan sums up my attitude about the game.

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