TORONTO – There’s little doubt that Toronto Raptors fans are willing to suffer for their passion. It’s beyond question. Twenty-one years in and they’re here in bigger numbers, prouder and louder than ever.
But you have to wonder sometimes where the threshold might be. If losing seven straight playoff games wasn’t it, would dropping eight straight push everyone over the edge? At what point might ‘We The North’ become ‘We Can’t Take it Anymore?’ and as everyone collectively taps out in an act of self-preservation?
Fortunately things didn’t quite get to that stage at the Air Canada Centre Monday night. There were some shaky moments for sure. Some anxious murmurings among the faithful as the Indiana Pacers refused to go away quietly. But for now, for another few days at least, all is calm. Everyone can take a breath.
The Raptors pushed back the Pacers 98-87 to even their first-round series at 1-1 with Game 3 slated for Indianapolis on Thursday night. They now have a one-game playoff winning streak. Savour it.
How they handle the road will go a long way towards determining if the Raptors are a No. 2 seed with some actual teeth or sheep in contender’s clothing. At the very least, the Raptors earned themselves a third home playoff game, something they didn’t reward their faithful with a year ago.
The crowd did their part. The Raptors led 74-66 after three quarters, but it seemed closer. It was easy to imagine the Pacers taking the Raptors to the wire and something weird happening.
But Toronto stiffened and the crowd was part of it. At one point when hometown boy Cory Joseph made a steal early in the fourth quarter they stood up en masse and roared, trying to will another score to push the Raptors lead to safer ground.
Joseph has been a revelation; Pickering’s finest. He knows more than anyone the weight of the franchise’s past, although he tries not to wear it.
“I know there’s tension [among fans],” said Joseph after the game. “Because of the fact that the organization hasn’t done well in the playoffs for a while. But they need to understand that this is a totally different year, totally different everything. Every year you go to the playoffs is a totally different thing so you really have to separate the past from the future. Just look into the future and keep playing.”
He’s the only Raptor with a championship ring, although he’ll acknowledge he spent most of those long playoff runs with the San Antonio Spurs watching from the bench. He learned something. He scored six of his 16 quick points at the end of the third quarter and during the first half of the fourth. He made a steal and when he found Bismack Biyombo underneath for a dunk to start a three-point play that put the Raptors up 89-73.
Joseph and the second unit was perhaps the key factor in the game transitioning from nail-biter to one fans could enjoy in relative comfort and he is now 11-of-14 for 34 points as the first Canadian to appear in the post-season for the Raptors.
But the game didn’t feel comfortable for most of the night and it’s hard to imagine the Raptors are out of the woods, not with all-stars DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry combining to shoot 9-of-31 after shooting 8-of-32 in Game 1.
And while Lowry contributed with his playmaking, DeRozan has turned in two poor performances in a row, shooting a dismal 10-of-37 for the series, continuing a downward trend in his playoff career numbers.
He didn’t play at all in the fourth quarter as Raptors head coach Dwane Casey chose to stick with a makeshift line-up featuring Patrick Patterson (14 points on six shots), Joseph, Norman Powell, a combination of big men Jonas Valanciunas and Biyombo and Lowry down the stretch.
DeRozan didn’t mind, he’s lived through enough playoff disappointment to appreciate someone coming through and lightening his load.
“It’s funny that people think I feel a certain way that I didn’t go back in the fourth,” said DeRozan. “A lot of time I tell the coaches to keep going with the group of guys that are in there.”
They blew the game open, but until that point, there was plenty to feel panicky about and no shortage of justification.
The Raptors’ entire playoff history played out in the first two quarters – the agony, ecstasy, the tendency of DeRozan to struggle to score and yet never pause in that struggle if only to wonder: “If all these Pacers are collapsing on me, maybe someone is open?”
These are tender, difficult times for the team and for fans in the city. The core of the team has lost seven straight playoff games and has gotten sick enough of hearing about it that Lowry and DeRozan have stepped away from social media.
“You can’t hide from it,” Lowry was saying the other day, with regard to the Raptors’ recent playoff history. “You can’t hide from it. I definitely didn’t go on social media because I know they were probably talking a lot of trash. But that’s life, man.”
That’s life in Toronto, anyway. One game didn’t change anything, but it’s a start.
“I think we proved over the course of 82 games that we can play with some good teams; we’ve just got to go out and play,” said Casey. “Not read the seven-game stuff, but play basketball.”
It’s not that the fan base isn’t dedicated and loyal. More that their loyalty and dedication has so often left them broken-hearted that they can’t be blamed for approaching a full-blown crisis of faith.
Everyone knows it. The Raptors were the only home team to lose their opener in the NBA playoffs. The Raptors have won the opening game of a playoff series once in their history. It’s tough to correlate for a franchise that has among the most respected fan bases in the NBA, that sell out their building and overflow to the sidewalk outside and travel to opposing arenas in large and vocal numbers.
Can a team be loved too much? The Pacers seemed aware that there was something fragile in front of them, something they could break.
“Home court can fall and collapse on the home team,” said the Pacers’ Paul George, who answered the bell again against a range of Raptors defensive approaches, finishing with 28 points on 15 shots. “It definitely can play a part in the playoffs.”
For the first part of the first half the Raptors seemed determined to make all those worries go away and Valanciunas seemed determined to touch up any of the crumbly parts of the Raptors’ foundation all by himself, down on the blocks with a hard hat on.
After terrorizing the Pacers in between foul trouble on Saturday he picked up where he left off on Monday and had himself a game in the first eight minutes, with 13 points and six rebounds on his way to 19 and 10 in the first half and 23 and 15 for the night.
“I’m just doing my stuff,” said Valanciunas. “I’m going out there and battling, and nobody is going to take that away from me. I’m going to go out and put my heat out and battle for every single ball, every possession.”
The Raptors started DeMarre Carroll for the first time since Jan. 3 with an eye towards slowing down George, a heavy task for someone playing in just their fifth game since returning from knee surgery. He picked up two quick fouls and in came the popular and effective rookie Powell, at which point the Raptors’ game seemed to take flight.
They led 21-7 with just over 8 minutes gone and 40-22 midway through the second quarter after Terrence Ross – who ended up leaving the game with concussion-like symptoms following a collision with DeRozan – hit a pair of triples around a Pacers timeout.
By then you could feel the collective weight coming off the shoulders of the 20,000 fans at the ACC, the building buzzing happily between roars. The anxiousness of the past couple of days, which has roots going back decades, momentarily distanced.
It was a nice thing to see and be in the middle of. You can only hope it lasts.