SIXTH SENSE
Knocking off Antetokounmpo’s Bucks in Game 6 is well within reach for Valanciunas and the Raptors — especially if they play like it’s Game 7.
It is a road well travelled by the Toronto Raptors — a long pockmarked journey through Indianapolis and Miami that started years and years ago in Brooklyn — and if they are not aware of the speed traps and potholes and dangerous twists and turns, well, shame on them.
Each time they have failed to negotiate the trip without metal-bending and glass-shattering accidents, and given another opportunity in another city and another year, they vow to be more aware. To use an old DeMar DeRozan metaphor, they figure they can travel in the comfort of a 2016 Lexus because they know what it’s like to start up an old, beaten-up Buick Regal.
“If we don’t understand it now, we’re never going to understand it,” was how DeMarre Carroll so correctly put it Tuesday afternoon.
Three times this group of Raptors has been presented with the opportunity to close out an NBA playoff series in six games with a road win. Three times they have failed.
Maybe you can understand them being a bunch of kids losing to a Brooklyn Nets team dotted with hall of famers in 2014, but the spit-up jobs they pulled in both Indiana and Miami last spring were shocking examples of not seizing the moment. Not only did they lose to create the pressure of a Game 7, but both times they were blown out, barely competitive in games that would have made things far easier for them in the long run.
So it’s all well and good that they talk about Game 6 in Milwaukee on Thursday night as the time they finally make a stand and take care of business, but hearing the chatter and feeling dubious about it is only human nature. It’s almost at the point where the players are as tired of say- ing it as people are weary of hearing it.
“It’s something that is in our minds — going on the road and understanding how they may feel, and we’ve got to go out there and really treat it like a Game 7,” DeRozan said. “I hate to keep saying that over and over again, but that is the only way we can treat it because that is how they are going to treat it.”
It is in some way understandable that a team that’s been so mercurial as this one, a team that plays its best when its collective backs are against the wall, should ease off a bit when it appears most comfortable.
That’s a hard habit to break for this collective.
“It’s human nature … our M.O. has been to relax,” coach Dwane Casey said. “We have great fans, we get all excited after a win in the playoffs and we let our guards down after.
“Our job as a coaching staff, and the leaders of the team’s job, is to not allow ourself or human nature to take effect, to understand we have to play with a chip on our shoulder.”
And know this: They do not want to face a group of young, talented kids playing a Game 7 with house money when the pressure will be on the Raptors like seldom before.
“I feel like last year it was all new to us,” Carroll said of the Game 7s with the Pacers and Heat brought on by Game 6 failures.
“This year we know, and we’ve got a lot of guys who are back and who understand that we don’t want to go to Game 7. We don’t want that pressure. Especially with this Milwaukee team, who knows how they come out and play, so we’ve got to take care of them when we go to Milwaukee.”