RESILIENT RAPS GRIND IT OUT IN DOUBLE OVERTIME
Canada’s dinosaurs are not extinct yet.
It took six quarters of tense, heart-stopping basketball, but Toronto forced a Game 7 of this thrilling series against the Boston Celtics 125-122 on Wednesday night in Orlando.
Franchise icon Kyle Lowry delivered many of the biggest plays of the game, including a turnaround jump shot over Kemba Walker with 11.2 seconds remaining and scored 33 points in all, helping make up for another tough offensive night by fellow all-star Pascal Siakam.
Norman Powell added 23 points off the bench, including a clutch three-pointer and a crucial layup with 38.8 seconds remaining in double overtime and Fred VanVleet had 21.
Powell had 10 points in the fifth quarter after missing a potential winner from threepoint range at the buzzer of the first overtime.
Jaylen Brown scored 31 points for Boston, Jayson Tatum had 29, Marcus Smart 23. The finale will go Friday night, with the winner advancing to face the Miami Heat in the conference final.
Siakam played a Raptors playoff franchise-high 54 minutes, Lowry 53. VanVleet and OG Anunoby also played at least 50 minutes.
Siakam went 4-for-18 before finally hitting a shot to tie the game in the second overtime and that seemed to spark his teammates, who followed with the consecutive three-pointers before Powell scored his layup while being fouled.
Much earlier, a game after starting a horrid 3-for-17 on three-point attempts, Toronto misfired on 11-of-13 from behind the arc before finally finding the range. Hitting five of the next nine three-point tries allowed Toronto to stay within range of Boston through two quarters.
The Raptors had lost the second quarter of every game in the series, but actually played the Celtics even in this one, meaning they went to the break still down by four points.
Once again the Raptors were at their best in the third quarter, with Marc Gasol at the forefront of the surge.
After missing his first 11 three-point tries of the series, getting roundly outplayed by Daniel Theis and starting this game poorly, Gasol was so angry after being removed from the game early that he walked to the back of the arena to regain his composure. Whatever Gasol did worked, as the big man blocked Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum on the first play of the second half and followed up with a three-pointer. Gasol added another jumper and then an additional three-pointer as Toronto took its first lead since the opening minute.
Earlier, backup centre Serge Ibaka had picked Gasol up bigtime with a number of blocked shots and, more crucially, three made three-pointers in a row at a time when all of his teammates appeared to be way off.
But five fouls on Gasol and perhaps Ibaka’s sore ankle convinced head coach Nick Nurse to go small for much of the final stages of this long game. That meant Siakam at centre. Toronto didn’t score for over three minutes toward the end of the fourth quarter, but after a Siakam missed a layup, Kemba Walker, one of the great closers in the sport dating back to his time in the NCAA, drove for an attempted winner but was deterred by the Raptors. Toronto tried to call a timeout, and after a review, was given 2.2 seconds to set up a potential series-extending shot.
The play was to get Anunoby a shot at the rim and Tatum was called for a foul while trying to defend Anunoby. But Boston had a foul to give, so Toronto had 0.9 seconds to try again and Siakam’s desperation attempt hit glass, but didn’t fall.
The first overtime was a backand-forth, high-pressure five minutes that saw Toronto come away with a chance to try to win. The Raptors let Powell create a shot to close the quarter, but his three-pointer wasn’t close and the game went to a second overtime.
After a wretched performance in Boston’s Game 4 loss, Brown responded with 27 points as the best player on the floor.
Brown netted 21 points (on 18 shots) in the first half alone on Wednesday. Boston fell to 15-1 this season when Brown scores at least 25 points.
Toronto had lost two of its previous three games when facing elimination, both during sweeps at the hands of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The win was courtesy of Kawhi Leonard’s shot last year against the Philadelphia 76ers.
It was another puzzlingly off-kilter offensive night at the office for Siakam, even though he tied his playoff high with six assists. His layup miss in overtime epitomized the night. The shots weren’t terrible, for the most part, there was just too little finish.
Siakam has struggled for much of Toronto’s stay in Florida. Near the start of it he had talked about understanding there would be some struggles and how he would deal with it.
“Stay even-keeled. It doesn’t matter what happens,” Siakam had said.
“Have the same intensity. Just continue to play and we know there is probably going to be ups and downs, and you just understand that that’s the nature of the game and the nature of the playoffs. That’s something that I learned last year ... you have to play your game.”
And credit to Siakam for staying with it and hitting his important baseline jumper to help set up the finish.
Toronto has played in seven previous Game 7s, winning three of them, including against Philadelphia last season and the two previous tries before it.