The Toronto Raptors had found it. They’d figured it out. Whatever elusive energy that had escaped them for parts of the Game 3 closeout, the entirety of Game 4, and all but one quarter of Game 5 was back, the team finally delivering on their promise of a hot start. The reasons behind the switch to Patrick Patterson at power forward were on display, Jonas Valanciunas looked comfortable once again, and the Indiana Pacers, fresh off of a historic collapse, looked breakable.
This is what the Raptors had talked about over the previous two days. It’s what they had talked about over the last 12 months, really. Having not played their best basketball to date in the series, their backs not against the wall but close enough to reach out a hand and touch it, they were answering the call.
And then that beautiful, ethereal chemistry and intensity and energy, they all dissipated.
Frank Vogel called for a timeout, down 18-6 after 6:36 of play. Things started sliding from there, with the Pacers defense locking in and turning Toronto into a prodding and frenetic offense at the same time. The Raptors sent Kyle Lowry to the bench, the Pacers went on a run. The modified Lowry and reserves unit started to settle things down in the second, only for New Raptor Killer Solomon Hill to reenter the game and, credit due or not, swing things back in Indiana’s direction like he had in the first. The latter parts of the second quarter saw each coach make substitutions quickly, looking for a sustainable edge or that fleeting momentum Toronto had early and Indiana nearly snatched. The Pacers may have gotten just that by somehow playing to a plus-five in the minutes Paul George sat, a minor miracle and a massive wasted opportunity for Toronto, who played more than two minutes of that five-plus-minute stretch with DeMar DeRozan on the bench (the Pacers only played 2:15 with George Hill and Monta Ellis simultaneously sitting and somehow kick-started an 8-0 run like that).
When halftime rolled around, the Raptors had to be disappointed to only be up four, but they were up four. They’d let a 14-point lead slip away, but they were in the driver’s seat on the road, despite not shooting well, and despite their All-Star backcourt once again struggling from the floor. Lowry was teaching a master’s class in how to dominate a game when your shot is broken (or, if you prefer, when your elbow’s injured), and the Raptors had done a great job making life difficult for George. They needed to stop turning the ball over to fuel the non-George parts of the Pacers’ attack, and they needed to asset themselves in the third like they did the first.
They opted not to, and what followed was perhaps the most disappointing and frustrating half of basketball in the team’s history, and certainly of their season.
The Pacers came out a collective house afire, quickly taking their first lead of the game and building it to seven heading into the fourth quarter. Lowry and his lobs to Jonas Valanciunas had been neutered, DeRozan was made a complete non-factor (but only on a scale that doesn’t go below zero), and nobody was able to step up in their place, despite Cory Joseph’s best efforts. The new starting lineup didn’t work – the Pacers opened on a 15-4 run – nor did a smaller, DeRozan-led group – they closed on a 6-0 run.
Entering the fourth, the Raptors still had hope, but not a great deal of it, especially when Vogel opted to keep George on the floor for his usual rest period. After 83 seconds, a seven point lead had ballooned to 13. Dwane Casey called a timeout, searching for anything to rediscover the fire he lit under the Raptors in the first, an eternity ago, or the fourth quarter of Game 5, in this exact spot, a veritable age ago. Rodney Stuckey, who’s spent most of the series helping the Raptors swing momentum back their way, canned a three. Lowry misfired again, and Stuckey set up Myles Turner for a diving and-one. Stuckey drew a charge on Joseph.
Things were spiraling, the lead then 19. Casey kept clawing, looking for any semblance of a spark, playing big, playing small, making quick subs, but the Pacers cruised. A 12-0 run to start the quarter built into a 26-6 run, which was really just a part of the larger 95-65 “run” the Pacers went on after that initial first-quarter timeout. Casey opted to empty his bench with 3:27 to go, down 26. That group would cut the lead to 18, working only to mask just how brutal a performance this was.
With the opportunity to close out a seven-game playoff series for the first time in franchise history, to vanquish the demons of this team’s past that unfairly but firmly sit atop their shoulders, with a chance to deliver on days of talk in the face of poor play, the Raptors gave it seven good minutes. And then they broke.
This, despite George’s quietest scoring night of the series, a subtle yet masterful 21-point, 11-rebound, six-assist performance that also saw him somehow do an even better job on DeRozan than he has been. He played 40:26, nearly the entirety of the important parts of the game, trusting his teammates, putting them in good positions, and absolutely locking down one of the best scorer’s in the league. Again. DeRozan responded with a terrible outing, and with Lowry’s shot abandoning him and the Pacers adjusting to his early artfulness with even more aggressive hedging (and serious credit due to George Hill), both stars were erased completely. Toronto had three assists in the non-garbage time portion of the second half. They committed 17 turnovers in the game. They grabbed 15 offensive rebounds and gave nearly all of them back at the other end.
They quit, really. They may not have tapped out at midcourt, but they certainly stopped struggling for a rope break. They turned in nearly two wholly, completely, utterly bad performances, responded with, what, 18 minutes of good play, and then completely lost the plot again. And now they come home for a Game 7, carrying the sins of past editions of the Raptors, threatening to be just the second two-seed since 1999 to drop a seven-game series to a seven-seed, the kind of inglorious historical note that already papers the walls of the Air Canada Centre and, apparently soon, BioSteel Centre.
George said after the game that the Pacers “understood the moment.” The Raptors didn’t. Clearly. There’s no explanation for it. The Raptors are a better team, or they should be. They didn’t turn in performances like this in the regular season, instead showing fight, and heart, and resilience, and versatility, and flexibility, and, in the early words of Bismack Biyombo, that they would not be punked. They are being summarily punked in the second half of this series.
I can’t remember such a disheartening Raptors performance, and the only loss I can recall that’s worse is Game 7 of the Brooklyn series. But at least that team fought until the very end, and at least last year’s team had the decency to erase any expectations about a playoff run quite promptly. This team has drawn people in, fostering belief on scorched earth of years passed, to the point that the end of Game 5 seemed to be a rallying cry and an affirmation of the fortitude and toughness the Raptors have long sought but never showed until this season. After Game 6, that outburst looks and feels more like an aberration, because for as much as the Raptors will say the right things ahead of Game 7, they did so ahead of Games 5 and 6, too. It’s not that they can’t or won’t respond, but that there’s really no way to know, because figuring this team out day-to-day has become an impossible endeavor.
And still, there’s reason to believe. They fought all year to have home-court advantage in a game like this, whether they wanted to need it or not. They remain the better team, allowing for the idea that DeRozan and Lowry might be able to look something more like themselves. It seems like forever ago, but at one point they tuned in strong games, back-to-back. They’re 6.5-point favorites in the game. They won 56 games.
None of those things matter, though, as far as investment in Sunday is concerned. What matters is that this is it, what fandom is predicated on. It would be easier, of course, if the Raptors were playing better and playing harder and seeming to reward the faith and the volume and the gas mileage of the fan base, and you’re completely welcome to feel and respond however you want to feel and respond to the last three games. As a fan, you have the right to throw in the towel, to lament the here-we-go-again. Just remember how all of that changed on a dime late in Game 5, how much you’ve enjoyed this ride and this team, and how it might feel if they can get it done in Game 7. This series is still winnable, unlikely though that may feel, and if you’re not going to put your heart on the line for the team in a moment this huge, what are we all really doing here? You just have to hope the Raptors put their hearts on the line, too.
“It’s not hard to stay positive,” Lowry said after the game. It is, but hard things are hard, and often worthwhile.
They returned home late last night and had to “have a long, hard look in the mirror,” in the words of Patterson. They’ll have to face each other Saturday at practice and “realize what basketball team do we want to be,” again, from Patterson. They’ll prepare for Game 7 on Sunday while looking out on a suddenly hazy long-term future of this core, knowing “the season would be a failure if we don’t make it out of this first round,” as DeRozan admitted. They’ll see a Jurassic Park filled with fans and a raucous ACC, knowing how meaningful that is and that they let down a large traveling contingent in Indiana. And they’ll bear the cross of the Raptors’ past, though certainly not of their own volition.
It’s the biggest game in franchise history to date, and they have to get visceral, deciding what they want their story to be. They’re either the team that welcomed 21 years’ worth of bad memories and what-ifs and almosts and then bat-flipped them to kingdom come, or they’re the team that simply built all of that moribund history to a crescendo before absorbing all of it to become its avatar.
They better be coming with no strings.
