Doug Smith,
Longest-serving Raptor keys start, closes with big dunk
MILWAUKEE— His night complete, a night of attacking the rim and dunking the ball and acting in defiance of long and swarming defences finished and a near epic collapse avoided, DeMar DeRozan grabbed the basketball, tossed it high in the air as the buzzer sounded and exhaled.
It had been a long, at times brilliant and at times baffling night for the Toronto Raptors and you could almost feel the sigh of relief coming from the team’s longest-serving member.
DeRozan, who had lived the sad history of Game 6s past, was not about to spend another day listening to questions about his or his team’s mental toughness.
He set the tone early, finished with 32 points and was part of a group that somehow survived a near total collapse in a 92-89 series-clinching Game 6 win over the Milwaukee Bucks.
Up 25 points midway through the third quarter, the Raptors simply fell apart and barely hung on for the win, blowing that entire lead and trailing by two points with three minutes to go
Cory Joseph corner three-pointer with about 90 seconds left gave Toronto a three-point lead and the Raptors played a solid defensive possession.
DeRozan then escaped a defensive trap in the corner and drove for an emphatic dunk to put Toronto up five and give them some breathing room.
“We stayed calm,” DeRozan said. “They fought extremely hard. We knew they would make it hard and we just had to sustain. We didn’t expect to be down and fighting back in the last couple of minutes, but we stayed calm and executed. We got buckets when we needed to.”
Having won a series in fewer than the maximum required games for the first time in franchise history, the Raptors move on to a formidable challenge, opening the Eastern Conference semifinals against the defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers in Ohio on Monday night. Game 2 is in Cleveland on Wednesday, Game 3 in Toronto on Friday night and Game 4 at the Air Canada Centre on May 7.
The Raptors will have some muchneeded time to relax and regroup before Game 1 and they will need it simply to get over the emotional upheaval of Thursday night.
“We made it hard on ourselves down the stretch but I thought we showed a lot of resiliency down the stretch,” Casey said. “To close out on the road is one of the hardest things to do in the NBA, I don’t care who you are, what team you are, it’s very difficult to do.
“We lost our composure a bit but we found a way to scratch it through and that’s what good teams do.”
DeRozan was instrumental in the early blitz, with 16 of his points coming in the first half. Three times in the first six minutes he split doubleteams.and got the rim to finish layAups undeterred by the six-foot-11 Giannis Antetokounmpo or the seven-foot Thon Maker.
For the Bucks, the late-game rally will stand them in good stead as this young group continues its ascent. They did not give in to the moment when they were so far behind in the third quarter, giving coach Jason Kidd a chance to discover something about their resolve.
“You learn a lot about their character,” he said before the game, “who is going to fight, who is going to run, who is able to handle it when things are good.”
Antetokounmpo, brilliant throughout the series, carried Milwaukee on Thursday, scoring 34 points and playing like a 10-year veteran rather than a 22-year-old in just his second NBA playoff appearance.
“That young man is going to be something special, defensively and offensively,” Casey said. “Especially if he starts knocking down shots like he did in this series because he’s so long.”