Instead of moving on to a series against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, the final horn has sounded on a season that saw the Heat overcome the midseason loss of Chris Bosh and almost overcome the post-season loss of Hassan Whiteside. The biggest takeaway from Toronto’s dominant Game 7 win is the return to form for their All-Star back court duo of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan.
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The Raptors led at the end of the first quarter, 25-24.
And then an entire month of playoff frustration was wiped away in 12 minutes.
Even better: For once, they made it easy on themselves, outscoring the Heat 30-11 in the fourth quarter and leading by as many as 28.
The Raptors poured on the points in a 12-2 burst, stretching their lead to 75-58. He was shooting worse than 40% in the series headed into Game 7.
A few minutes later, Lowry let out a fist pump as he walked to the bench for the final time in the series. No, thanks. We’d rather just shove our backs up against the wall here. We didn’t win 56 games for no reason. Being eliminated with a blowout in Game 7 can certainly be gut wrenching but the Heat should have no regrets.
By that point the Heat were on pins and needles with fouls, with Josh Richardson with five at the end of the third period and Goran Dragic with four.
Head to head, the Raptors are 7-3 ATS in the last 10 meetings in Cleveland and the road team is 14-6 ATS in the last 20 meetings overall. The Heat were depleted in this series.
How could that possibly be with Hassan Whiteside sidelined by a knee injury earlier in the same game?
“We tip our hats to the Toronto organisation”, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
“The hard work pays off”, Lowry said as he left Air Canada Centre. “All you want is a chance”. “I’ve been in this thing a long, long time, and I’ve never seen scorers forget”. All we can say is good luck to him, and of course good luck to the first Canadian team ever to reach the conference finals, eh? How far we’ve come.
“I’ve always said anytime you get an opportunity to get some rest throughout the course of our season, it’s always beneficial for anybody”, he said. In the postseason, DeRozan is averaging 19.4 points, Lowry 17.4 points. The evidence has been mounting throughout the playoffs that Toronto doesn’t have the backcourt to win when it matters.
While Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan poured in the points, it was the Raptors’ big men that gave the team the advantage.
Despite balanced scoring with six players in double figures, it was far from enough.
“That’s just what he does”, DeRozan said of Lowry. “This organization deserves it”. ‘This organisation deserves it, this country deserves it, to see them get to the next step, somewhere they haven’t been.
There was, in fact, a Toronto star attending his graduation in North Carolina, but Marcus Stroman plays for the Blue Jays and walked on stage at Duke.
He couldn’t find it for a fourth time in Game 7.
“We’re just trying to sharpen our knives and get ready for whoever we have to play and be locked in”.
The Raptors sure weren’t going to do this easily, not that anyone really expected anything else. He scored 96 points over the final three games against Miami, including runs in Games 5 and 7 where he single-handedly willed his team to victory.
Something that certainly is in favor of Cleveland over Toronto is their past series’ lengths.
The Raptors, in short, are the team of new Toronto, immigrant Toronto, emerging Toronto.
After the win on Sunday, scouting reports on the Cavs were delivered to the locker room stalls of every Raptors player. “But I think this group is hungry and never say never”. “We’re not done yet”.
The ultimate goal is an National Basketball Association championship. The Raptors coach paused, before adding, “not that we’re there yet”.
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Carroll said while DeRozan and Lowry kept the scoreboard ticking, there were other big contributions. “That’s just our mentality”.
