Heat 102, Raptors 96 | Box Score | Quick Reaction
With a quick turnaround between series, Game 1 between the Miami Heat and Toronto Raptors always had the potential to be weird. It delivered on that potential and exceeded it, like so many Norman Powells or Josh Richardsons.
It’s tough to pick a place to begin, but the shot that forced overtime seems a reasonable choice. Kyle Lowry, struggling mightily with his shot and, uncharacteristically, with some of his decision making on the night, was 0-of-6 from long-range when he received an inbound with three seconds to play in regulation. Naturally, the shot that required Lowry to simply turn his brain off and let fly from half-court is the one that dropped, and everyone in the arena seemed to know it right away.
“As soon as it left his hand, I think everybody in the building kind of had an idea that it’d go,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
Dwyane Wade, in the middle of carrying the Heat to victory on tired legs, looked like he’d been struck in the chest with a slow-motion arrow (Jamal Murray cries gimmick infringement, Lowry).
“I unfortunately had a very good look at it, and I was like no way, this is not gonna happen,” Wade said. “When it goes in, you’re crushed for a minute.”
Of course, hitting a half-court, buzzer-beating, game-tying heave isn’t strange enough on its own. As Lowry dribbled to half court, it appeared he may have possibly stepped out of bounds in the process. An official was right there, and replay angles are tough to make out for certain, but had the Raptors went on to win the game, Heat fans would have been all a-Twitter in outrage. Maybe they have a gripe – it’s tough to tell from any of the still-frames or angles – and this would probably be the focal point of the post-game had the Raptors shown up for the early parts of overtime.
There were oddities to set up Lowry’s moment, too. The Raptors never trailed more than 10, but the Heat felt fairly in control late, up six with a little over three minutes to go. DeMar DeRozan then temporarily eschewed his diet of tough jumpers to score back-to-back would-be and-ones, only for the 85-percent free-throw shooter to miss both freebies, keeping the lead to four instead of two.The teams traded misses for a while, and then Cory Joseph cut the lead to two with a quick-hit cut against a sleepy Joe Johnson out of a timeout. The Raptors, having played terrific defense for the last several minutes and really most of the night, then abandoned the red-hot Goran Dragic in the corner to send unnecessary help to the weak side, giving Dragic an easy triple.
Things seemed more or less decided with the Raptors down six with 22 seconds to go, but Luol Deng was whistled for a travel, and Joseph quickly hit another quick two (the attempts itself was strange, down six with only a 20-second timeout left). Josh Richardson pushed the lead back to six at the line, only to throw the ball out of bounds after a quick Raptors miss. That was an opportunity for Terrence Ross, of all people, to hit a clutch triple, three of his 19 points on the night, blowing past his previous playoff career high of 11 (seriously).
And then Richardson got called for a loose ball foul trying to recover an errant Deng pass.
Ross hit the first and then missed the second – unintentionally, based on the Raptors’ rebounding alignment – but Patrick Patterson was able to foul Hassan Whiteside before he could pass off the rebound. The big man, a 65-percent free-throw shooter, split the pair, and Lowry had his moment.
“They hit some crazy shots,” Whiteside said. “We just said, ‘Let’s do it again.’ That’s how things go sometimes, we had to stay composed.”
Staying composed was easier for the Heat, who boast a ton of experience. With Johnson and Wade to lean on – they essentially split overtime touches 50-50, with a little Deng sprinkled in – Miami quickly opened another eight-point lead. That’ll happen when seasoned vets get a moment to recalibrate and attack a more frenetic group.
“We’re going to win in overtime. I felt like we had positive momentum on our side. Everyone was hyped in the arena. The crowd was loving it. We were talking about it amongst ourselves on the bench just saying we put ourselves in a position to win and let’s go out there and get it done,” Patrick Patterson said. “We started off strong. I thought the first unit did great. Came in, maintain that energy. Then Dwyane Wade woke up, Joe Johnson, Goran Dragic hit some shots, Hassan Whiteside and Deng. I thought we played well for the most part but we allowed those guys to get going and when those guys get going it’s kind of hard to get them out of that groove and by then it was too late.”
It wouldn’t have fit the identity of this game for it to be as simple as that, though. Once the Heat were up eight with just 81 seconds to go, the Raptors came out of a timeout newly aware the game hadn’t ended in a draw. DeRozan hit from mid-range, Ross blocked a Wade pull-up (again: seriously), Whiteside was forced into a jumper, and then Jonas Valanciunas found a cutting Carroll for a dunk (another curious quick-two call, down six with only a 20 left). Richardson split a pair again, Valanciunas threw down a dunk from Lowry (again with the odd game-situation twos that the Heat gladly surrendered), and then Deng turned the ball over on an inbound play the Raptors had well-scouted.
“I always take it in. I always look for D-Wade,” Deng explained. “He wasn’t caught but I felt that (DeMarre) Carroll was all over him, but I guess he made a good play…We’ve ran that out of bounds a lot of times.”
Unlikely as it was, the Raptors once again had a chance at a miracle, down three with possession and nearly 10 seconds on the clock.
Lowry heroics? A Valanciunas post-and-kick? Another Ross flex action for a wing three? Nope. DeRozan lost the handle on a crossover as Wade crowded him, snuffing out the play (designed to get Ross a corner look) before it started. Wade then took it the distance for a pseudo-dunk, and-one. Ballgame.
“Those plays were back-breakers. We gets stops, he gets the steal, we turn it over, he’s right there at the right time,” Dwane Casey said. “He just knows how to play the game within the game. Those are the plays and possessions we have to take care of. There’s no magic pill, it’s little plays like that.”
If all that happened on the court in the game’s final minutes wasn’t odd enough, the Heat credited Chris Bosh – sitting out due to blood clots, travelling with the owner rather than the team, and allegedly involved in a weird disagreement with the team over his health that the NBPA is getting involved in – with playing a major factor ahead of overtime.
“Everybody was quite except C.B.,” Johnson said (per Manny Navarro). “C.B. was telling us, ‘Man, this shit ain’t over. We got to keep grinding.”
The writing should have been on the wall quickly when the Heat committed a shot-clock violation on their first offensive possession. That’s something the Heat did just four times in their seven-game series against the Charlotte Hornets, and they’d commit three such infractions in the opening quarter. The Raptors’ defense deserves credit for those stops, and if there’s a positive to be taken from the eventual 102-96 series-opening loss, it’s that the Raptors showed they can definitely defend the Heat – the new starting lineup proved mostly effective, they kept the Heat from shooting threes (they were 8-of-11, but the “11” there is a terrific number), and the Raptors will look to adjust to Dragic’s dribble-penetration and continue to build from there.
Of course, defense may not matter all that much if Lowry continues to struggle shooting. He played well in the second half despite the shot, and the team would be better off with him than without even at zero-percent shooting, but Lowry’s misfires have a trickle-down effect. Whiteside can more comfortably drop back into the paint, for example, and Valanciunas will need to continue to be dominant to make life tough inside for Miami. More notably, it seems that DeRozan, who said this week that the better Lowry plays, the better he plays, tries to take on a bit too much of the load when Lowry can’t. All of DeRozan’s 22 points were paramount Tuesday, but they came on 27 possessions and brought the usual DeRozan negative externalities with them. There’s no solution to that beyond Lowry needing to shoot better, and there’s no obvious path to that end.
Whatever happens with the offense, what the defense will at least allow the Raptors to keep things close. And when games are close and the Raptors are involved, there’s an enormous window for weird things to happen.
“We had to win that game twice,” Wade said.
And look, the Heat can’t beat the Raptors eight times in a seven-game series.
