For once, it’s not good night for Toronto at the end of the first round.
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“Got the monkey off our back, more than anything, with these past couple of years”. Toronto will be playing in the second round of the NBA Playoffs for the first time since 2001.
Can Kyle Lowry find his lost shooting touch? After averaging 34.8 minutes a year during the regular season, and close to 40 a game in the playoffs, George acknowledged that his body didn’t have much energy left.
The Toronto Raptors won game 7 against the Indiana Pacers, 89-84, to advance past the first round of the playoffs for the first time in the DeRozan-Lowry era. “I thought our guys used that as motivation, used it as a fuel to fight, to scrap”.
The pressure the team faced to deliver this victory had mounted significantly. Turner had struggled mightily down the stretch and the team came to life with Lavoy Allen at power forward but the coach read the situation perfectly. I’m not trying to bombard you with hot takes about how the Raptors will hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy in June, but I like their chances of getting there a lot more now than I did entering the Indy series. “We have a different mindset”.
Toronto’s frontcourt played an important role in the series victory, but Jonas Valanciunas, Bismack Biyombo, and company face a much bigger challenge against the Miami Heat. Demar DeRozan – the once-second banana shooting guard who before this year was known mostly for his dunk-contest athletics – hit two subsequent free throws, his 29th and 30th points, and you could feel the Air Canada Centre collectively exhale.
DeRozan said: “We were just going to leave it all out there”.
Lowry got the edge back to five points with two minutes left on a driving layup.
“I’m not a prophet or anything”, Wade said, “but I knew we were winning this game”.
“I’ve guarded both of them”, Carroll said of his familiarity with Johnson and Wade. The Raptors won 112-104. “That’s what he did tonight, and that’s what his goal was”. “We have faith in him”. However, the Pacers pulled of a 15-2 run that cut the lead down to 3.
Asked what was going through his mind at the time, Lowry said, “Every four-letter word that is not allowed to be written”. “That kept us going”.
It was a team effort. George responded with a 3-pointer for the Pacers. Four-year man Cory Joseph added 8 points on fifty percent shooting coming off the bench. Patrick Patterson had 11 points. George Hill added 19 and Monta Ellis 15.
The Raptors had just nine turnovers and outrebounded the Pacers 49-38. The futures of Casey (team option) and DeRozan (unrestricted free agent) might have depended on it. None of that matters now. The team celebrated on the court with owner Larry Tanenbaum.
“The demand for tickets to be a part of franchise history continues to increase”, said head of StubHub Canada Jeff Poirier. George guided the Pacers with 12 first-quarter points but also picked up two personal fouls. And that’s not discredit to Indy at all.
Backed by a raucous home crowd, the Raptors led nearly the entire game, and took a 78-64 advantage into the fourth quarter.
Despite the significance of the win, this celebration figures to be a short one.
Ehsan Kassim (@Ehsan_Kassim): Yes and no. The Miami Heat showed their weaknesses during the series, but also showed off their strengths.
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Miami’s backcourt duo, Dwyane Wade and Goran Dragic have been insanely more efficient on their drives than their Round 2 foes. We went toe-to-toe in that one. “That’s how all the guys played tonight”.
