The enthusiast was Barack Obama, a notoriously quick-triggered shooting guard otherwise known as the most powerful human being on the planet.
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The Raptors led by six in the final three and a half minutes, but in fought back and had a chance to tie the game with just 2.7 seconds remaining. IN head coach Frank Vogel elected to rest George at the start of the final period to give his best player a little bit of a breather.
With the win, the Raptors take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.
The series shifts to IN on Friday, where the Raptors have a chance to close out the series. If they cross that unsullied threshold, Casey will be fondly remembered for some clear-headed strategic decisions on Tuesday that helped deliver a swing victory. So George might be best off letting that one go. After a missed 3 by Ellis, Cory Joseph hit another 3 for Toronto, putting the Raptors up 98-92 with 3:26 left. After shooting 1-for-3 in an opening frame in which George played the duration, DeRozan went 4-for-5 from the field and racked up 10 points in the 3:31 in which George Saturday.
DeRozan gave the Raptors their first lead of the game, draining a 3-pointer with 4:15 remaining and the Raptors never relented. “I just feel like my normal self”, DeRozan said. If the jargon got a little technical, let’s just say the adjustments to the scheme coincided with the first time in the series DeRozan looked truly risky.
Casey’s pride talking about DeRozan matched his exasperation talking about the game’s final possession.
It’s not necessarily that George was the only Pacer that was producing during game five on Tuesday, but more so that other key players such as Stuckey failed to get much going for themselves.
DeMar DeRozan bounces back with 34 points in a Game 5 victory. He credited the group that was out there in the fourth quarter, a mixture of starters and reserves without a traditional forward.
DeMar DeRozan, his teammates and his coaches have all said the same thing during these playoffs: Despite the All-Star swingman’s early struggles, he was eventually going to return to being his dominant self. He’s averaged 28.8 points per game for the Pacers and arguably made the right basketball move in passing to Hill rather than taking the shot while double-teamed. “We played well. We just fell short”.
On if he considered not going back to his bench at the beginning of the fourth quarter… “Norm did a good job, but it wasn’t a one-man show”.
But if you are at all familiar with this team, you know that rarely do they do things the easy way.
Biyombo said: “We stuck together, we played defence like a team, and I am glad we got the win”. Up by four, 100-96, with 20 seconds left, Indiana’s Solomon Hill connected on a left corner three to pull the Pacers within one. Two clutch free throws from DeRozan with 13 seconds left put the Raptors ahead by three. As it was, the coach could chalk it up to a teaching moment.
DeRozan took the high road, refusing to fire back at his critics. “You get your butt kicked in the first game three years in a row, you want to come out with a sense of urgency, that sense of desperation; we can’t come out cool”.The Pacers got the road win they needed in their first-round series of the 2016 NBA Playoffs.
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“You have to, because it can always change quickly and anything can happen, so you have to stay humble, stay mellow and understand you have another opportunity to do more than you did before”.
