Second round is bonus time for Raptors

It’s time to look forward after Game 7 expunged so much bad history

Late Saturday night, Masai Ujiri got a call. Someone was shooting baskets in front of a sea of empty Tshirts at the Air Canada Centre. Who? Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, all alone. Ujiri drove down, snuck in, watched for a while. It was 11, maybe 11:30 at night. His guys were locked in for Game 7 Sunday, he thought. He hoped so.

24 hours later DeRozan was thinking about that moment as he stepped to the line to seal Toronto’s survival in the first round of the playoffs for the first time in 15 years. He would say, you just think about that moment where there’s nobody in the gym with no pressure. He had veered from great to overconfident to out of control in Game 7, but he never stopped playing, never stepped back. The free throws went down.

When it was over Ujiri hugged DeRozan as the shooting guard came up the tunnel, hugged him like he was family, and then he did the same with Lowry, as Drake stood by and clapped in his marked-up Canadian tuxedo-style denim jacket. You could see the tension burn off them like heat waves on a desert highway, shimmering into the air before becoming clear. It was a new day.

“You have no idea how much pressure there was, on every single person in this organization,” said Ujiri late Sunday night.

It was natural. As they piled up a franchise-record 56 wins the question was still, can the Raptors get past the first round of the playoffs? They never trailed in the series against Indiana after Game 1, and the question was still, can they get past the first round of the playoffs? They were up 16 with 7:31 to go in Game 7, and the question as the game boiled to its conclusion was . . . well, you know.

Now, though, all that is gone. The Raptors are in the second round. This is gravy, this is a bonus. The last time the Raptors were in the second round, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the whole other segment of the Internet’s timesucking brain-deadening apps had not been invented yet. This, for a generation of Raptors fans, is the land beyond the horizon.

“You see it,” DeMarre Carroll told reporters on Monday. “Everyone is jolly, everyone is encouraged, everyone is confident. That is what they brought me here for, to bring some more leadership. Once you get past one round you don’t want to just settle for that one. You got a chance now to make it to the Eastern Conference final or even the NBA Finals.

“These moments are not always here so we have to cherish the moment, but at the same time take care of business.”

Game 1 is Tuesday night, which means it’s time to get greedy. So, can they beat Miami? Can they contain the still-glowing embers of Dwyane Wade, plus the collection of talent around him: Goran Dragic, who strafed Charlotte in Game 7, the veteran work of Luol Deng, the bullying old-man size of Joe Johnson, the towering immaturity of Hassan Whiteside, and the talented rookies off the bench?

As he left the arena Sunday night, Lowry tapped Ujiri on the shoulder and said, “I’m back.”

He didn’t mean his shot-averse Game 7; he meant it was a new round now, and that he would be the Kyle Lowry who carried this team again.

No disrespect to Toronto’s marvellous bench, or to the tandem centre work of Jonas Valanciunas and Bismack Biyombo, or to Carroll or even DeMar DeRozan, who should have an easier time with Miami than Indiana.

But Lowry is Toronto’s best hope. Ujiri strongly believes Indiana had plenty to do with DeRozan and Lowry’s struggles, because players with the length, strength and smarts like Paul George and George Hill were two defenders who were basically built to defend Toronto’s two all-stars.

Maybe. Or maybe the right elbow really is enough of a mess that Lowry will not rediscover his regularseason dominance. The Raptors won a seven-game playoff series with their two best players shooting a near-identical .318 and .319 from the field, while taking two out of every five shots Toronto tried. The team shot .282 from three-point land, versus .370 in the regular season, fifth in the league.

Do that again, and it won’t likely go seven.

But this is the new day, and now the Raptors have a new test. Miami became an elite offensive team in the second half of the season — almost identical to Toronto, postall-star — and they will play smallball, which the Raptors should be comfortable with. They have more playoff experience in almost every area, and a star in Wade who can still be a force, if not likely a Paul George-level force anymore. It won’t be easy.

Maybe the Raptors will play better, free of the franchise’s weight of history. Maybe Toronto can dream bigger, in front of the biggest audiences — 1.53 million for Game 7, up from 912,000 for Game 7 against Brooklyn two years ago — the team has ever seen in this country.

There will still be pressure: this won’t be an empty gym. But now the Raptors get to see if they can be the Raptors they were, in this strange new land.