Ross rewards Casey’s patience with impressive effort in finale
Young Raptor makes defensive play of day as playoff learning experience ends on high note
Terrence Ross had been mocked for most of his NBA playoff debut because he looked skittish and couldn’t make a shot or a big play to save his soul.
There were calls for him to be taken out of the starting lineup or benched altogether but Raptors coach Dwane Casey stood by him.
Ross, Casey figured, is a key component of the team’s future and he needs all the experience — good or bad — he can get. Casey told reporters before Game 4 of Toronto’s series against the Brooklyn Nets that he needed to ride Ross and Jonas Valanciunas as much as he could, willing to put up with loads of mistakes to better serve the franchise’s future.
Ross may have repaid him just a little bit with a performance in Sunday’s 104-103 loss in Game 7 that should at least send him off into the summer feeling a wee bit better about himself.
Ross made the best defensive play of the game, and perhaps of his career, with less than eight seconds to go to give Toronto one last shot to steal a win and added 11 points in his most confident game of the series. The steal he made of an inbounds pass with eight seconds left was astonishing. He leapt high over 6-foot-9 Shaun Livingston to deflect a pass and had the presence of mind to grab the ball before it went out of bounds and bounced off Livingston.
It was one of those “this kid’s got promise” moments that Ross is capable of but which were missing for the first six games.
“T’s only going to get better from this experience . . . he’s only going to grow and the last three games, he’s gotten a lot better,” said Kyle Lowry. “He’s a second year, he’s still 23 or whatever he is, he’s only going to get better. For him to finish the game, finish the series the way he did on an upbeat note, his confidence is going to keep rising.”
At no point in the series did Ross’s confidence seem to wane. Every time he was asked about his less-than-impressive play, he chalked it up to tough shooting luck and the run of play; he did not get down on himself.
“It’s going to be tough for a while but we did come a long way and I think we surpassed everybody’s expectations,” Ross said. “It’s been a great year; it’s a tough loss. We were so close but it’s something we can learn from.”
While Ross was having his best game, his fellow Raptors sophomore, Valanciunas, was having his worst. The 7foot-1 centre was a non-factor, with just three points and five rebounds in 28 minutes of the biggest game of his career.
“This was my first year in the playoffs so I learned a lot,” Valanciunas said. “The best thing I learned was how to control my head before really important games. I have to do a better job of controlling my head, that is the next step for next year.”
That’s exactly what teams are going to get with kids in the first go-round. Some good, some bad.
“Terrence Ross, I thought, grew through the playoff series,” said Casey. “I thought J.V. grew but he today, for whatever reason, just couldn’t get it going
“But each game, a young player grew and learned something and today Terrence came through.”