A year later. . .
Kawhi’s famous basket may have looked lucky, but was residue of design
May 12, 2019 – The Shot. In the midst of the pandemic, it seems like ages ago … Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. We look back at the moment Raptors fans will savour forever.
We rightfully marvel at the components that go into the highest level of playoff basketball.
We love the intensity, we are amazed at the athletic skills, we revel in the way men push themselves to the limits in pursuit of victory.
And when it all comes down to it — when you get right to the essence of winning versus losing, of exhilaration versus dejection, of going on or going home — there is often one ultimate decider. Luck. That fact cannot be lost on Raptors fans today of all days as they relish the one-year anniversary of The Four Bouncer, the Kawhi Leonard shot that so dramatically ended the seventh and deciding game of their NBA Eastern Conference semifinal with the Philadelphia 76ers on that Sunday night.
It was a moment that will live forever in the minds of many fans.
It is unquestionably a moment that changed the trajectory of the franchise, perhaps even the sport in our country, because, if he misses and the Raptors eventually lose, the narrative around that team, the game, the franchise is forever altered.
It was a moment of great fortune. An undeniably fortuitous break. Good luck. Bounce on the rim. Bounce on the rim. Bounce on the rim. Bounce on the rim. Fall through the net. Euphoria. Relief. Luck. But, you know, luck is such an integral part of sports, that’s OK. It’s part and parcel of why we are so enthralled by the games and the moments, why we watch: The great unknown is often left to the fates and the breaks, and it may toy with our emotions, but being a fan is an emotional existence.
“It was cool — all the fans, the team, everybody around, it was crazy. It was a good emotional moment for everybody to be there, and just kind of a sigh of relief and enjoyment — like a ‘phew!’ ” was how Raptors point guard Kyle Lowry put it in the immediate aftermath. “It was great.”
Luck, as legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey once mentioned, is the residue of design, and there certainly was an element of design to what transpired.
The winning play was simply called “four,” and had been used countless times over the season. Inbound the ball to Leonard on the left side of the court, set a couple of screens if need be as he goes right and let him work his magic.
Maybe it’d be a 15-foot shot from the side, maybe a 23footer from behind the threepoint line. He would take what he got and live with the results.
Those results were more memorable than any before, and likely to come.
He was pushed a bit further than he might have wanted to go, each dribble eating valuable tenths of a second. He got deep in the corner, the imposing presence of the seven-footer Joel Embiid chasing him.
The shot goes up. Time basically stand still. There’s almost a deafening silence in Scotiabank Arena as the ball bounces, bounces, bounces, bounces and finally goes in.
And all those past failures and heartbreaks — the Vince Carter miss 18 years earlier under eerily similar circumstances against the same Sixers franchise, the Kyle Lowry shot that was partially blocked at the end of Game 7 against Brooklyn in 2014, the drafting of Rafael Araujo, the hiring of coach Kevin O’Neill — are somehow forgotten. It was a vindicating shot, a freeing shot, a shot that wiped away so much bad.
What the shot did, in many respects, was validate the extreme gambles that team president Masai Ujiri had taken with the season: firing Dwane Casey, only the NBA’s coach of the year; trading DeMar DeRozan, only the player beloved by the fans more than any before or since; agreeing to the historic “load management” of Leonard that had never before been seen in the NBA. All gambles that paid off when he hit that shot and won that series.
It exorcised long-standing demons, for sure. It got rid of some newer ones, too.
It’s funny what people remember of it.
I recall the anticipation, immediately thinking he was going to miss only to be transfixed on each subsequent bounce. You remember the horn starting while the ball was bouncing, and ending before the ball went in.
I remember the rush of adrenalin that shot through the building, the incredible emotion of an incredible moment. Unusual, too, which was a huge part of it.
All season long, we were caught up with the flatness of Leonard’s shot. It never seemed to get more than 11 feet off the ground. It looked like a line drive instead of a looping single, if you’ll pardon the mixed sports metaphor.
This one? This one touched the heavens.
Head coach Nick Nurse, who finally sat down to watch the entirety of Game 7 after the NBA season went on COVID-19 hiatus, saw it, too.
“Obviously you see it all the time on highlights … but that was the first time I’d ever seen it (all),” Nurse said. “I guess I didn’t really realize that Kawhi put so much arc on that shot. That was my first takeaway.”
Leonard’s shot was certainly the most dramatic moment in Toronto’s 10-week, 24-game run to the NBA championship and will be the play remembered the longest by the most.
But was it the most important? Maybe not. Game 4 of that same Sixers series — with the Raptors down 2-1, playing in a crazily hostile environment with Pascal Siakam hurt and Philadelphia’s size giving them fits — had to be just as important to the ultimate result. The same with Game 3 in the conference final against Milwaukee, when it took two heart-stopping overtime periods — which Lowry watched from the bench after fouling out in the fourth quarter — for the Raptors to win that game and, for all intents and purposes, salvage the series and the season. None of them had the drama of Leonard’s shot. Nor the lasting impact. Nor the sense of the moment we recall so vividly today. And a break.
“I think he missed a couple of those along the way this season,” Nurse said that night, a year ago Tuesday. “That exact same play, similar shot. So, it’s good the balancing scales were there tonight.”