BACK IN THE GAME
Revitalized DeRozan helps Raptors clinch 102-99 nail-biter with Pacers to put them one victory away from advancing.
With another gut-wrenching loss looming large, club snatches Game 5 win from jaws of defeat
For so long you sat there and thought, how many times can the Raptors come up small in a big moment? How many times can they find ways to fail? How many times can the hardcore fans of this team drive to Indianapolis, or congregate in the late-spring cold outside the Air Canada Centre, or just watch this team on a damned television, and have their hearts broken?
And then at the end everyone was on their feet and the Raptors went running up the tunnel hooting and hollering and they led this first-round series with the Indiana Pacers 3-2, somehow. It was like a bank heist, in front of nearly 20,000 people.
“We’ve got to put this away,” said Indiana’s Paul George after a 102-99 loss, disconsolate and slumped forward. “It’s a new game, a new day. It’s awful to have a chance to win, on the road, go up 3-2, come back home. But once again, we failed to live up to that moment.”
The Raptors, these Raptors, did not. For three quarters they fit together like two puzzles mixed together, and their best player had a lump the size of half a golf ball on his troubled shooting elbow.
Their defence allowed Indiana’s stone-and-iron offence to run up 61 points in the first half, and 90 points through three quarters, and George plus their three-point shooting was tearing the Raptors apart. DeMar DeRozan, finally himself, was helping to keep them in it. But with 49 seconds left in the third Toronto was down 15, and had not held a lead since Game 3. You could see an elimination game forming on the horizon.
“I swear to you, I sat on the bench and I said to myself from the beginning of the game, I don’t know how, I know we’re going to come up with this win. I don’t know how, but I know somehow we’re going to get back into this game,” said Toronto’s Bismack Biyombo, who had 10 points and 16 rebounds in 24 minutes, and who played the entire fourth quarter. “It was just a little gap where we were looking to find the energy, how can you push the other players to be on the same page as you? It was a dunk we were looking for, or three points, or one stop, and obviously we got all those things at the beginning of the fourth quarter. And that set the tone for the rest.”
As Biyombo sat there, talking with Cory Joseph about how Toronto needed energy, the big questions were coalescing. This is the biggest week in franchise history since May of 2001, which ended with Vince Carter’s graduation. The idea of this group, from coaches to players, was on the line.
Fifty-six wins won’t do much good if you honk it in the playoffs, over and over. Eventually, people need a reason to believe.
But Pacers coach Frank Vogel, again — again! — left his bench out
“I don’t know how, but I know somehow we’re going to get back into this game.” RAPTORS’ BISMACK BIYOMBO
there to start the fourth, even though that bench has been a weakness all season and all series, and George had been incandescent. When George and George Hill finally came back, Kyle Lowry and his swollen elbow had made a handful of plays, and the 13-point lead had been cut nearly in half.
On using his bench, Vogel said, “I chose to trust those guys. Those guys have been good to us. They had a tough stretch there.” On sitting Paul George, he said, “He looked pretty gassed at the end of the third.” George, for his part, said he was tired, but not so tired he couldn’t play.
Vogel opened a door, and Casey found a combination, and the Raptors crashed their way through. The run was 23-2 over 101⁄ minutes
2 with the smallest lineups they could manage: Joseph, Lowry, Norm Powell, Terrence Ross or DeRozan, and Biyombo. Amazing.
“I thought we were going to go down with the guys who were swinging,” said Raptors coach Dwane Casey.
They tied the game on Powell stealing a pass in cold blood and nearly missing the dunk at the other end. DeRozan and Joseph grabbed back the lead. By the time Indiana’s Solomon Hill released a threepointer a fraction of a second after the buzzer sounded — Raptor rookie Powell was supposed to foul Paul George but didn’t — Toronto had played the last 12:49 on a mindblowing 27-9 run. Asked what he was thinking as Hill let the ball go a few fractions of a second too late, DeMarre Carroll said, “Paul Pierce’s shot from (Game 6 between Atlanta and Washington) last year when we watched it. He shot it so slow, it was one of those things, that’s why we have replay. Thank God we have replay.”
It always comes back to Paul Pierce, somehow. You want It? The Raptors found It. What the hell, how the hell. The Raptors have had to play so badly to lose to the Pacers in this series, but in this game they grabbed the damned thing back. Afterwards general manager Masai Ujiri was leaning against a wall, and Pacers general manager Kevin Pritchard walked by, pulling a suitcase. They shook hands. “Masai, hell of a game.” “Hell of a game,” Ujiri replied.
Everywhere people shook their heads, wondering what had happened. The Raptors were dying. The Raptors lived.