Raptors had shot, but time wasn’t on their side
They were so close. The Golden State Warriors’ dynasty was a moment away from being extinguished. Toronto’s Kyle Lowry even said after the game that the ball “felt great out of my hand.” But as the ball began its arc — and those standing inside Scotiabank Arena trained their eyes on the round object headed for the rim wondering if the NBA was about to be changed for good — the launch looked a bit off.
Draymond Green got a fingertip — just one, mind you — on Lowry’s left baseline jumper at the last second Monday night, altering the shot just enough to deny the Toronto Raptors their first NBA championship, at least for now.
But it’s never really just one play, as Raptors guard Danny Green said in the locker room after the game: “It shouldn’t come down to the last clip. Obviously, disappointing.”
With five minutes left in the game, the Raptors had the Warriors on the ropes, thanks once again to Kawhi Leonard, who had struggled most of the night. He pulled up for a 3 to give the Raptors the lead, 96-95. Stephen Curry tried to answer with his own step-back 3 on the other end. He missed. Leonard, smelling blood, scored again, this time near the rim. One 3-pointer and another pullup midrange shot later by Leonard, and Toronto was up 103-97 with 3 minutes, 28 seconds left. (Lowry had a productive game, despite the missed jumper. He scored 18 points on 8-for-16 shooting with six assists.)
Some critics would point to Raptors coach Nick Nurse’s calling two timeouts 23 seconds later. The Raptors had the ball coming off a Warriors miss, a screaming crowd behind them and a championship within their grasp. Nurse said that he used the timeouts because he was going to lose them anyway and that he felt his players could use the extra minutes of rest. (In recent years, the league has moved to limit the number of timeouts coaches can use at the end of basketball games.) Leonard missed a shot — and the Warriors mounted a furious comeback, potentially helped by the extended break.
Asked about the timeouts, Leonard said, “If we would have won the game, we wouldn’t be talking about it.”
The Warriors looked gassed after an emotional contest in which Kevin Durant left the game in the first half because of an Achilles injury. (Multiple Warriors players criticized the fans inside the arena for appearing to cheer Durant’s injury in the moments after it occurred. DeMarcus Cousins called them “trash.” Curry said he was “very confused” by the reaction.)
Golden State lost Kevon Looney too, after he aggravated an injury that had initially looked like it would rule him out for the series. The Warriors looked like a team with nothing left. Instead, they played like a team with nothing to lose, riding three 3-pointers from the Splash Brothers (Curry and Klay Thompson) in the final minutes to eke out an improbable 106-105 win and send the series back to Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif.
Nurse said it took “a lot of balls bouncing the wrong way in the last couple minutes for us to come out on the wrong side of it tonight.”
Toronto is relatively healthy, while Golden State must rely on less-talented players to make up for the holes left by the absence of Durant and potentially Looney again. Leonard had a poor shooting performance in Game 5: 9 for 24 from the field, while the Raptors shot only 25 percent on 3-pointers as a team. Those statistics are likely to revert to the mean in the next game.
But this creates a special kind of pressure on the Raptors. Golden State is not the kind of team the Raptors want to leave the door open for, which is what Toronto did in Game 5. The Warriors, after all, came back from a 3-1 deficit against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2016 Western Conference final. Even with the loss of Durant and Looney, they have two of the better shooters in league history, in addition to another bona fide All-Star in Draymond Green.
Toronto has two more chances. If, for some reason, the Raptors end up losing this series, that Lowry jumper may be replayed on loop. After all, they were right there.