On June 13th, 2019, the Toronto Raptors and the Golden State Warriors took the court for Game 6 of the NBA Finals. The Raptors are up 3-2 in the series as it shifts back to Oracle Arena in the Bay Area. The Warriors rallied late in Game 5 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, thanks to two Klay Thompson three-pointers and a Steph Curry triple. The Raptors, however, were not concerned leading up to their second chance at winning an NBA Championship.
Nick Nurse (Raptors Head Coach): “They all hit you hard. Listen, I’m like anybody that was there that understands the outcome of that one changes things a little bit. But I’ll say this: I’m thrilled to be coaching in another Finals game. This is awesome, right? All these things when you look back on them, every single thing you do, if it doesn’t turn out, you wish you would have called another play or had somebody else in or got somebody else a shot, et cetera. I think if you remove that from it and you watch it, we ran a great play out of the timeout where Gasol got clobbered for a no-call. Kyle had a wide-open three with a minute to go. We ran some nice stuff and got exactly what we wanted? I’m not sure that that timeout had anything to do with about 14 plays after that. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t.”
Pascal Siakam (Raptors Forward): “Next game. That’s just something that we have learned from all our series. It went from losing the first game against Orlando to being down 2-0 against Milwaukee. We have been through a lot of things. I think for us, we know what’s ahead. I think that as a team we just kind of know how to turn the page and focus on the next thing. Now we have an opportunity. We didn’t win the last game, but we have another opportunity to win one game. I think that’s what we think about.”
Kyle Lowry (Raptors Point Guard): “Just go out there and do our job. We’re a professional basketball team. We have been in the same situation. We have been the same team all year. We don’t get too up. We don’t get too down. We live in the moment. We understand that today is today and tomorrow will be another test of who our group will be on the road. We’ll be against a team that will be ready to go, but we’ll be ready to play too.”
Klay Thompson (Warriors Guard): “I expect us to obviously come out and play as hard as we can. We’re not even thinking about the future. We’re just thinking about enjoying this last show at Oracle we’re about to give our fans. And I expect our fans to be the loudest they have ever been, especially in the name of Kevin and bringing his type of spirit he would bring to the fight and the competitiveness. I know our fans will do that because we deserve it, but more importantly, Kevin does for what he gave this team, this organization. There wouldn’t be banners if it wasn’t for his presence. So, we expect our crowd to be loud for him.”
James Redelmeier (Event Presentation Team, MLSE): Jurassic Park was electric. People had been lining up for over a day at that point through all kinds of weather and we knew going into the day that Bremner was going to be at capacity to York street. The idea that the Raptors could be winning Canada’s first NBA Championship, the whole city was a buzz.
Fans from around the world react to the @Raptors becoming NBA Champions!#RapsRewind pic.twitter.com/vVj6Tn3Jwj
— NBA Canada (@NBACanada) April 13, 2020
***
Game 6 began. Numerous fans at Oracle Arena were on their feet. Kyle Lowry silenced the crowd, scoring the Raptors first 11 points. He stepped into his shots and was attacking the basket with ferocity. The longest-serving Raptor wasn’t going to let the opportunity to win a championship slide on the road.
Fred VanVleet (Raptors Point Guard): “It’s unbelievable to have guys like Kyle Lowry on your team who step up and go for 15 in the first quarter. He should have had 50.”
Steve Kerr (Warriors Head Coach): “They’re a fantastic basketball team. Great defensively, share the ball, play a beautiful style, a lot of great two-way players and a lot of veteran players who have been in this league contributing for a long time.”
Redelmeier: Looking back on it, I don’t remember a ton of the game. Part of that was due to working with the dinosaur but also just the amount of different emotions I felt just kind of overloaded my body. The whole time I could not believe how lucky I was to be there that night, win or lose.
***
At the half, the Raptors lead 60-57 over the Warriors. Lowry leads the Raptors in scoring with 21 points. Pascal Siakam is close behind with 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting. But Toronto knows they need to do a better job guarding Thompson and Curry. The “Splash Brothers” combined for 27 first-half points on 8-of-14 shooting from the field.
Lowry: “Stay locked in. I think they got loose last game. Those guys are going to get off shots. They’re going to get up their attempts. They’re going to make shots. But you got to make them a little bit tougher sometimes. They got a couple of loose ball offensive rebounds, transition breakdowns. Listen, you’re not going to stop them from shooting threes, but you can make them a little bit tougher and try to contest them better.”
Nurse: “We got to figure out a way to control those two. There’s transition. There are pin downs. They’re excellent at pushing off to create space. Their screens are long, wide and moving that they’re coming around a lot. So you got to work doubly, triply hard sometimes. You got to absorb contact at the start. You got to absorb contact coming off the screen. Sometimes you put two on the ball screens. There’s lots of stuff going on out there. But we do need to do better.”
***
The Warriors outscored the Raptors 31-26 in the third quarter. However, it will forever be remembered for Klay Thompson falling and tearing his ACL. He remained in the game to shoot two free-throws, but then left and did not return. The Warriors were once again undermanned due to injury.
Steph Curry (Warriors Point Guard): “It’s just tough in terms of a guy like Klay that left it all out there. He was playing amazing tonight. And to see a freak play like that where he lands awkwardly. I don’t know the diagnosis yet, but you think about the person and the guy and how much he loves to play the game and that’s the only thoughts you have. It’s not about what it means in terms of playing basketball. It’s just I’m more concerned about him as an individual than — and hoping that’s all right.”
Draymond Green (Warriors Forward): “Oh, I knew it was just to shoot the free throws. But also with Klay he, if they would have let him stay out there he would have stayed. That’s just who he is. You see him try to run back down the floor like, what are you doing? But that’s Klay. How many people would play with a hamstring injury? No one. Like no one does that. So that’s just the way he is, man. That guy is — he’s a warrior and obviously, that’s no pun intended with that, but there’s no other way to describe him. He’s going to give everything he got every time he steps on the floor and even some things that he doesn’t have, which is his health. He was going to try to give it more. That’s just who he is. That’s why we love him.”
Kawhi Leonard (Raptors Forward): “Well, first, I’ll start with Klay. I hope he’s okay. I never want to see a good friend of mine go out like that. I hope he’s able to recover from it or it’s nothing serious. And when he went down I just really thought about him. I didn’t care about the game that much. Once he left, you just, we got to flip our mindset back to trying to beat the Warriors. So that’s what I did.”
***
Unlike in Game 5 when Kevin Durant went down, the Raptors responded with energy after Thompson left the game. Down two points heading into the fourth quarter, the Raptors attacked both ends of the floor. This was in large part due to Fred VanVleet’s performance off the bench, from his “Box-and-One” defense on Curry to hitting critical threes. He registered 12 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter, with the game on the line.
Fred VanVleet (22 PTS, 5 3PM) came away with HUGE buckets in Game 6 to help lead the @Raptors to victory! 😤#WeTheNorth pic.twitter.com/2wGekOY8N8
— NBA TV (@NBATV) June 14, 2019
Curry: “He’s a gamer. He hit some big shots. Not just in the face of pressure, he hit a lot of daggers that never seemed to panic when the ball was in his hands. And even tonight he hit like three of them that kept the momentum on their side. So obviously saw a lot of bodies on defense, but he was one that took the challenge.”
VanVleet: “I tried to live up to it. It’s a big task, it’s a big assignment, and I know what it meant to our team. So I did pretty well throughout the series. He got loose, it felt like he scored a thousand points on me. As a defender, you never like getting scored on, so that was tough. And it’s the toughest guy I had to guard for that long every game, all game, a million screens, it’s hard to push and grab, he’s so good at drawing fouls. So I just tried to live up to the challenge and accept the challenge and hopefully, I gained some respect there and just tried to help my team get wins.”
***
With 28 seconds left, Siakam makes a two-point floater in the paint to put the Raptors up three. Curry gets fouled and converts both of his free throws. After a Raptors timeout, Danny Green turns the ball over on the inbounds pass. Eight seconds remaining, Curry shoots a three-pointer which misses.
Leonard: “With the shot with Steph, it didn’t look like it was a good shot. I mean he hits those shots, but I wasn’t too worried about it at that moment. Obviously, he can make that. He made it millions of times, but I just was focused on the rebound. I’ve been in situations like that in a Finals that I lost by two or three points, and we lost that game because of rebounds.”
Kerr: “I just thought it was in. I always think every shot Steph takes is going in. But they don’t all go in. But what a warrior, no punch intended. Steph was getting hounded this entire series. Toronto did a great job on him sending two, three people at him, hounding him and harassing him. And especially without Klay to rely on in that fourth quarter, I thought he got a little worn down.”
Curry: “The shot was one I take 10 out of 10 times. And we ran a play that was kind of, we got a decent look off of kind of a bobbled catch, and I could see the rim, so I shot it. I’ll live with that. We always talk about that, myself and Klay, in terms of shots that we take, you live with it. I would shoot that shot every day of the week.”
***
The Warriors receive a technical foul for calling a timeout they don’t have. Leonard makes the technical foul free-throw before the Raptors have an inbound pass. The Warriors could not steal it, meaning Igoudala had to foul Kawhi. The Raptors superstar made both free throws, sealing the game.
Canadian fans from coast-to-coast celebrate as the @Raptors WIN the 2019 NBA Finals! 🇨🇦
🎥 via CBC#RapsRewind pic.twitter.com/pNC7aA6U8B
— NBA Canada (@NBACanada) April 13, 2020
Redelmeier: The moment Kawhi made it 114-110 the place exploded because we knew we had it. It was just something so special to be a part of. I remember people were trying to climb over the French to get in and join the party in the main pen, but the Police and security handled that well. Everyone wanted Drake to start singing on stage, and a great rendition of Oh Canada broke out before everyone went off to join the raucous street party that was taking place all over Toronto.
***
In the words of Raptors play-by-play broadcaster Matt Devlin, “Canada, the NBA title is yours!”
https://twitter.com/NBACanada/status/1249522658905112576
Adam Silver (NBA Commissioner): “Basketball has come full circle in Canada, invented by a Canadian, the first NBA game was in Toronto and now an NBA championship.”
Nurse: “It was a great group, though. They played together. I thought they fought hard, they were tough-minded. They didn’t seem like this was wearing on them at all. Two months of playoff basketball, they never seemed tired to me. Mentally they kept wanting film sessions, they kept wanting to walk through things, they kept wanting to keep learning and improving. And I think that was a big key because we had to do that in the playoff run. After all, we really hadn’t had all that much time together.”
Siakam: “I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m here and I have this flag representing Cameroon and Africa. I think for me as a kid I didn’t have the opportunity to dream about this moment. I didn’t think I could make it. I didn’t think this was possible as a kid. And I think a lot of kids don’t think that it’s possible. But here I’m at as a champion. And I just want to tell them that it’s possible and that if you believe in something, go out there and work hard for it. It might sound cliché, but it’s the truth. I’m the proof.”
Leonard: “We all know where my destinations were. But obviously like I said when I was there on my opening day meeting that I was focused on the now, and I wanted to make history here and that’s all did I. I just, I’m still playing basketball no matter what jersey I have on. And the guys here have been making runs in the playoffs before I came, so I know they were a talented team. And I just came in with the right mindset, let’s go out and win ball games. I texted Kyle probably a day later — or the day that I got traded and told him I said let’s go out and do something special. I know your best friend left, I know you’re mad, but let’s make this thing work out. And we are here today.”
Lowry: “The city of Toronto, the country of Canada, we did it, we brought it home.”
**Author’s Note: Thank you to the Raptors Republic readers for joining me on my 24-part series, looking back at the 2019 Toronto Raptors Championship run. Stay safe and looking forward to Raptors basketball returning soon.**
