It was a storybook game-winner in one of the most memorable end-of-game shots of the season.
Former Raptor Pascal Siakam got blocked by his good friend Jakob Poeltl as the latter came to help. Raps regained possession with the game tied at 95. As the clock ran out, Ingram went one-on-one against Spicy P.
The two have drawn many comps before. Both are mid-range assassins, and it was the present versus the past. Ingram took two dribbles on the same side of the court that his girlfriend Glorilla watched from, and scored over top of Siakam to put the Raps up 97-95. If life imitates art, BI’s end-of-game demeanour matched the bravado and swagger of her crunk-infused track, “Yeah Glo!”
The Scotiabank crowd erupted further as Bennedict Mathurin missed the 3-point heave on the other end.
Before the game winner, BI hit a step-back on Pascal, which was a replica of what the former did to Jarace Walker in the third quarter during the Raps’ 27-3 run. After scoring on Pascal, Ingram missed two more pull-up jumpers from the nail, so the game-winner was a vindication.
The Raps kept their momentum from the second quarter into the third – they finished the first half on a 12-0 run – but Ingram missing both free throws in the third embodied the fatigue that the rest of the team was playing under. His second miss led to an easy transition triple for Ben Sheppard to cap off a Pacers’ 8-0 run. IQ missing a shot at the rim also killed them in transition.
The Raps became fatigued from swinging hard in the second and third, and the Pacers, who recently gave the Best of the East a run for their money, reminded the Raps to be more Buster Douglas than Mike Tyson.
Mathurin, the ever so competitive Canadian, kept the Raps on their toes hitting three 3s in the final frame – one of them in Mamu’s face. Though the latter was mobile defensively, he also got cooked by T.J. McConnell too, “the stick that stirs the drink” according to Jack Armstrong.
Ingram, the star of the game, led all scorers with 26 points, but Ja’Kobe Walter – one of four Raptors to score in double digits along with Barnes (24) and IQ (15) – had a game that upped his confidence. He ripped the ball from the top of the arc and took it right at Siakam off the dribble. He made another pivotal play in the fourth as he drew a charge from Mathurin with the Raps down one point in clutch time.
If we disobey the respective teams’ records, this game had a feel of a high-stakes Eastern Conference game. They match-up again in the New Year (January 14th) with the balance of power in the East likely to change by then.
