Raptors push Heat to the brink
DeRozan scores 34 points, Lowry 25 as Raptors put Heat on the brink
We no longer have to imagine what it would be like if Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan both had good playoff games at the same time.
After 11 games in which the idea of Toronto’s two all-stars playing simultaneously well was starting to take on unicorn-levels of likelihood, the pair finally acted like their regular-season selves on Wednesday night, and the result was a 99-91 win in Game 5.
The easy-then-anxious win felt like a cooling summer breeze amid the hot, steamy slog of the Raptors’ post-season effort thus far. Toronto scored the game’s first nine points, was up 10 after the first quarter, and stretched the lead to 20 midway through the second.
Despite second-half injuries to DeMarre Carroll and DeRozan, the Raptors held off a late Miami charge. With the lead down to three and under a minute left, Lowry stepped back and buried a three-pointer. He had 25 on the night, DeRozan had 34. Next stop, Biscayne Bay, with a chance to clinch.
It was a big win, sure, but more significant for Toronto was the way it happened. Lowry’s great disappearing shooting touch, which briefly reappeared in Game 3 before vanishing in a poof in Game 4, was back right off the start of Game 5.
He hit his first three-point attempt, then his second, after missing all three of his long-distance attempts on Monday night in Miami. By the end of the half, Lowry had 16 points — more than he had scored in seven of the 11 previous playoff games. He also had six rebounds and four assists in the half, and his impact on the game could not be overstated.
The Raptors outscored the Heat by 24 with Lowry on the floor in the opening 24 minutes, and were outscored by 14 with him on the bench.
DeRozan’s start wasn’t quite as impressive, but he did manage 10 points in the first quarter after just nine in all of Game 4.
All post-season, coach Dwane Casey has been forced to search for offence as his two best players misfired for all but the briefest stretches. He had been resolute that the shots would start falling eventually, but the words were starting to sound weary and the smile was getting that much tighter.
It was genuine in Game 5. If Casey was going to “ride or die” with his all-stars, a phrase he has had on a repeating loop for about a month, on this night DeRozan, and especially Lowry, kept him from the coffin.
Miami trimmed the Toronto lead to six early in the second half, before DeRozan went five-for-six in the third quarter to help push the margin back up to 13.
Dwyane Wade almost did his win-it-by-himself thing, again, with 20 points of his own, but Lowry matched him down the stretch.
Toronto will play at the American Airlines Arena on Friday night with a chance to make their first Eastern Conference final, where the Cleveland Cavaliers, 8-0 in the playoffs, sit waiting. That the Raptors have this opportunity at all is at least a little surprising. The playoffs, 12 games in, have reaffirmed some key truths about the team, a team that is quite good at times but no one’s ideal of a perfectly-constructed team.
Lowry is undersized. Toronto’s best player was so good this season that it was easy to overlook the fact that he is just six feet tall, but as he has struggled to perform like his regular self, it looks more and more like the degree of difficulty presented by his height is lot to overcome in the post-season. He has to work harder to find open shots against good defensive teams, and his teammates have to work harder to get him open. Plus, he simply gets beat up a lot.
DeRozan is one-dimensional. Toronto’s shooting guard has largely been a missing guard in the playoffs, and his effect on the game when he is unable to score, either from the field or the free-throw line, had turned into a tremendous negative. Among players who have played regularly in the post-season for Toronto, DeRozan carried the worst player-efficiency rating (9.1) and offensive rating (85) on the team coming into Game 5. Those numbers were 21.5 and 113 in the regular season, but he was at his ball-stopping worst before Wednesday.
See the previous two points. Indiana’s Paul George was by far the best player in Toronto’s firstround series, and Wade had dramatically outplayed the Raptors’ all-stars over the course of this series. You need true superstars to win in the NBA playoffs, and Toronto’s hadn’t proven themselves on that level, yet.
But Game 5 was a chance to brush all of that aside. Lowry had his most well-rounded game yet, and DeRozan, despite foul trouble, scored when it was needed early, and again when collars were getting tight in the second half.
Casey had joked on Tuesday that after the Raptors blew a fourth-quarter lead in Game 4, he had slept like a baby: waking up all night and crying.
His best players were, finally, his best players in Game 5. He might sleep like a baby, but the good way, this time.