Unfinished business
Raptors playoff history dotted with silly endings
The second Toronto Raptors game I ever covered was in Auburn Hills in 2002, back when that big, old building between a swamp and some highways used to fill to the brim, and that was the game where Chris Childs forgot the score. Raptors playoff games are like this. The most memorable ones can be summed up in a few depressing words.
Back then, Jerry Stackhouse had just made a free throw to make it a threepoint game and the Raptors had talked about it on the bench — if he misses one, if he misses two. But Childs raced downcourt and tried to jump into one of the Pistons and shot a three-pointer, because he thought they were down four and needed a three plus the foul. It mostly looked like he’d never played before. Afterwards, Raptors forward Keon Clark was smoking cigarettes in the shower and he strode through the locker room and barked out to nobody in particular: “Here’s the quote of the night: We f-----lost!”
Twenty years in, and the Raptors and the playoffs still haven’t mixed. As Toronto prepares to play the Washington Wizards in the first round of the playoffs, it would be easy to default toward worry, to dread. The Raptors have never won a best-of-seven playoff series. The losses have been strange, weird, sometimes humiliations. Often, the franchise has changed as a result. This town hasn’t seen much, but it’s seen some things.
They got swept by the Knicks in a bestof-five in 2000, before Tracy McGrady left. They beat a sad Knicks team in a best-of-five in 2001, the year Patrick Ewing got traded and Jeff Van Gundy got fired, then Vince Carter missed the shot against Philadelphia in Game 7 — the Vince Carter Graduation Game, of course.
That’s the sainted game, the great and one of two great single what-ifs. It’s on YouTube, even though YouTube hadn’t been invented yet.
And the year after that, Chris Childs forgot the score.
There was 2007 against the New Jersey Nets, where the Raptors handed out red T-shirts and the Nets wore their third jerseys, which were red, and they lost to Vince Carter. The Nets were some franchise stranded in a lonely old building on the edge of New Jersey and in the middle of nowhere, and the arena was full of movie characters out of a gritty Law and Order. And they still beat the Raptors.
The next year, they barely showed up against the Orlando Magic. But at least Hedo Turkoglu impressed Bryan Colangelo, who was a fan.
Then came the departure of Bosh to go win titles somewhere else, and another valley, and then last season, the other what-if. The Raptors dragged themselves to the very end of Game 7 against an old, wise, hideously expensive Brooklyn Nets team that played in a real-estate scam whose atmosphere could charitably be described as tepid.
Brooklyn was mercenary NBA, new money, nothing organic. The fans of Toronto finally seized their moment to be a force. They deserved better. They usually do.
Then the Raptors ran the wrong play at the end of Game 7, and Kevin Garnett poked the ball away from Kyle Lowry, and when Lowry recovered it and rose to the basket to win a best-of-seven for the first time in Raptors history, he couldn’t quite clear the long, long arms of Paul Pierce, who was waiting for him. DeMar DeRozan wrapped up Lowry on the floor right after the miss, as the Toronto crowd recovered from the shock and began to cheer in appreciation, and he shouted in his friend’s ear, if anyone’s going to take that shot for us, I’m living and dying with you taking that shot.
And now, Washington. The Wizards are a mirror image for Toronto’s rise to the upper-middle class — a team with some pieces and some problems. Washington coach Randy Wittman’s offence has resulted in mid-range jump shots and sets that go stale, and the Wizards have the league’s 25th-best offence since the all-star break, but the seventh-best defence.
The Raptors, meanwhile, have the seventh-best offence, and the 24th-best defence. Washington won a playoff series against a crippled Bulls team last season, but they aren’t much.
Toronto isn’t either, or hasn’t been for months.
So, bring it on. So far the talk has all been about Pierce, the old man now with the Wizards. Last year, after Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri opened the series by saying, “F--- Brooklyn,” Pierce said, “Really? I’m shocked that Bryan Colangelo would say that.” This year he has said the Raptors don’t have “it.” Hey, prove him wrong.
Also, more of this, please. Trash talk with Hall of Famers is welcome, because it makes the Raptors seem like they’re worth talking to. Ujiri alluded to it again Thursday. He also said, “We’re not underdogs anymore.”
And Ujiri is right, at least in this series. Maybe the Raptors defence can make even the Wizards look good. Maybe Dwane Casey will adjust his stubborn, championship-winning scheme to back off shooters for a change and the Raptors will advance.
And sure, maybe it will result in another silly ending, another humiliation, and maybe that will change the course of the franchise, again.
Only one way to find out.