Raptors end curse by beating Wizards in Game 1
TORONTO — This isn’t the Toronto Raptors team that hadn’t won an NBA playoff opener in 17 years. Nor even the team that lost last season’s first game of the post season.
The Raptors proved that Saturday night when they opened the post-season with a solid 114-106 win over the Washington Wizards, ending a woeful Game 1 losing streak that had stretched back to 2001 — and one the team grew weary of hearing about.
“We got Game 1, as we should,” DeMar DeRozan said. “We’ve been great at home all year, and that’s something we’ve worked for and gained that reputation from the beginning of the season, how we ended up playing at the end of the season, so we already had that in our minds. On home court, we’re supposed to win. That’s our mindset.”
DeRozan, playing as much facilitator as scorer, had 17 points and six assists, while Delon Wright had 18 points, and rookie OG Anunoby and C.J. Miles scored 12 apiece. Kyle Lowry, who was battling a virus and coughed throughout the postgame news conference, finished with 11 points and nine assists for the Raptors.
John Wall had 21 points and 15 assists to lead Washington, while Markieff Morris added 22 points and 11 rebounds, and Bradley Beal finished with 19.
The Raptors had held the unfortunate league record for consecutive Game 1 losses — 10 — and had dropped all but one of the 13 previous playoff openers, beating Philadelphia in the second round in 2001.
Intent on ending the streak, Lowry had said the team’s approach was: “Our Game 1 is our Game 7.”
But there was no sigh of relief after the win, said coach Dwane Casey. The Raptors, who earned the No. 1 seed after a historic 59-win season, have always had bigger goals in mind than this one game.
“It’s not a sigh. It’s a journey, it’s a marathon,” Casey said. “Whatever it was that that first game was about, hopefully we got it off our back. But we’re not satisfied. We’re in this for the long run. We’re in a tough series against a very athletic, fast team, so we can’t, there’s not a sigh of relief.”
The Raptors held an early 10-point lead against their eighth-seeded opponents, but the rest of the night was a scrappy back-and-forth affair. And when Toronto went into the fourth quarter with an 86-85 lead, it set up a thrilling final 12 minutes in front of a capacity Air Canada Centre crowd that included Drake, sitting courtside in a Humboldt Broncos jersey.
“Playoff games are tough,” Casey said. “A lot of times we find a way to win ugly. We’ve done it all year, it’s nothing new. Those guys always try to find a way to win.
“That goes to Kyle, he could have a terrible night, but he’ll just make a winning play. When it got chippy there for a little bit, I liked it. I thought it was good. That’s the way playoff basketball is.”
The teams battled virtually basket for basket before Miles drilled a three — to an ear-splitting roar from the crowd — with 6:28 to play that put Toronto up by five points. A referees’ review then disallowed an earlier Mike Scott basket (released after the shot clock), and then Lowry scored, and suddenly it was a nine-point Raptors lead with just over five minutes left.
A beautiful series of passing led to a three-pointer by Wright with 3:31 to play, and gave the Raptors a 12-point lead. Then, with the white-clad crowd on its feet, Lowry found Serge Ibaka for a dunk with 1:42 to play, all but sealing the victory for Toronto.
Game 2 is Tuesday in Toronto, then the series heads to Washington for Game 3 on Friday and Game 4 on Sunday.