TORONTO – Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan promised they had one of these games in them – that for one night in May the Air Canada Centre would feel like a weeknight in February, back in the days when they could make an NBA game bend to their will.
It was a long time coming, but they delivered on their promise Wednesday night.
The Raptors’ second-round series against the Miami Heat has been full of twists and turns – both in terms of body parts and drama – but Toronto’s best players have been understudies, failing to shine with the spotlight on high. They said their time would come, though; they said, essentially, that everyone should just chill.
“This playoff neither one of us have shot the ball well but we’re in Game 5 in the second round, home court advantage. We’re still playing so that’s the positive,” Lowry said before the ball went up. “It’s crazy to say we haven’t played our basketball, not one time in the playoffs this year yet we’re 2-2 against the Heat, Game 5, May 11 and we’re still playing.”
And if the Raptors stars can put it together?
“Oh man, I think it’d be really great and I think we’d have the opportunity to do something special,” said Lowry. “Even right now, we’re not playing well and I still think we have the opportunity to do something special and that’s the scary thing.”
Well, if “special” is heading to Miami on Friday with a chance to close out the Heat in Game 6 and advance to the Eastern Conference final for the first time in franchise history – mission accomplished.
The Raptors won Game 5 99-91 thanks almost entirely to their all-star backcourt. The pair combined to score the Raptors’ last 13 points as Toronto held off the Heat in the final four minutes of another tense game in what has been a tense, physical series, if lacking a little in aesthetics.
They made it sound like any questions about their suitability for the job of deciding post-season games were misplaced. They made it sound like the trials of late April and early May were temporary.
The Raptors led by as much as 20 in the first half – 13 at the start of the fourth quarter and seven with four minutes left – but had their lead cut to one with 1:54 remaining, an ominous sign in a series where no lead has been safe and three of the first four games went to overtime.
Never worry. Lowry stepped up with a big three with 53 seconds to play after forcing a Goran Dragic turnover to put Toronto up by six, and then another jumper with 23 seconds left to seal it.
“Knowing the situation at hand, me and DeMar are our closers and we’ve been our closers all year,” said Lowry, who finished with 25 points, 10 rebounds, six assists and three steals. “So if he had the opportunity to get the shot I’m sure he would have tried to make it and he would have taken it with confidence and we would have confidence in him, and it’s vice versa for me.”
DeRozan did his part, too. He picked up his fifth foul and jammed his already tender right thumb on the same play with 8:19 left in the fourth and the Raptors up by 12.
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He’d just completed his most satisfying stretch of the post-season, arguably, or at least one on par with his 12-point surge in the third quarter of Game 7 against the Indiana Pacers.
On Wednesday night DeRozan stopped a 13-0 run by the Heat with a floater and then a corner three. Over 12 minutes in the third and fourth quarter DeRozan scored 16 of his 24 second-half points, helping hold the surging Heat at bay.
Just as important, after leaving the game and heading up the tunnel after re-aggravating the thumb he injured at the end of Game 1 – “It felt like a blow torch on my hand,” said DeRozan – he came back and knocked down eight straight free throws in the final 3:17 to finish with 34, tying his post-season career high.
“I asked him was he ready and he said he was,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey, who for the first time in the post-season could rely on the the all-stars who got him there. “[Raptors director of sport science] Alex McKechnie was doing some kind of magic with him on the sideline with some kind of special tape, doing massage and everything and I guess it worked because he was 11-for-11 from the free-throw line.
“That’s a tough thing, anyone who’s ever played basketball has had a jammed finger, a jammed thumb and it’s annoying more than anything else,” said Casey. “You can’t hurt it any further, just the annoyance of having that thing tight.”
DeRozan put up 34 points on the night as he and Lowry combined for 59 just one game after they managed just 19 combined with all parties – coach and players alike – beginning to feel the heat.
“They’re our guys,” said Casey. “We can disparage them all we want to and talk about how bad their shooting is, you don’t forget how to score the basketball. It’s going to come back. When? You hope it’s within this series but it’s going to come back. We have faith in those guys, they carried us the entire season and not one time did we doubt their ability to score the basketball … and now they have to ramp it up again for the next game.”
For one night at least, the ongoing story about the Raptors’ missing all-stars can be put to rest.
The game wasn’t without its challenges. In addition to DeRozan’s thumb, DeMarre Carroll, just rounding into form after missing all but 23 regular season games with injuries, left the court in the third quarter after falling hard on a fast-break layup, cradling his left wrist in ominous fashion. His X-rays were negative but there was more testing done in the wee hours of the morning.
The stakes were high: the team wining Game 5 in a seven-game series tied 2-2 goes on to win the series 81.4 per cent of the time, and now the Raptors have a chance to go where no Raptors team has gone before if they can close Miami out. If Lowry and DeRozan are finally hitting stride, you have to like the Raptors’ chances of making it to their first ever Eastern Conference final.
The duo didn’t merely arrive for the stretch run. At every point of the game it seemed DeRozan or Lowry put their imprint on it, or the Raptors suffered in their absence.
The Raptors led 75-62 to start the fourth quarter but only because DeRozan’s reappearance couldn’t have been better timed. Between the end of the second quarter and the start of the third the Heat were on a 13-0 run and what seemed like a potential laugher was looking distressingly like an opportunity squandered.
But DeRozan hit a runner to stop the run and then a quick three to take the pressure off. It was the start of an 11-point splurge that helped keep the game in the Raptors’ control just as it seemed to be getting away from them. Coupled with an outstanding first half by Lowry and it seemed that for one game at least the Raptors were whole again.
It was an opportunity for the kind of “I told you so” that any athlete craves. It may be too early for that – one good game doesn’t make up for the duo’s record offensive woes. But it was at least a good advertisement for sticking with it.
“You have to credit them,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, whose team was held to 40.3 per cent shooting for the game. “Look, they’re all-stars. You have to embrace and take the challenge on good players in this league in the playoffs and they’re a very good team … I think, early on, some of the lack of discipline in terms of allowing them to get some rhythm shots, rhythm free throws early on in that first quarter, that’s a dangerous thing with all-stars. They see the ball going through that net from the free-throw stripe, now they get a little more confident in other areas.”
The Raptors can now head to Miami believing they can make some history, believing that the guys who got them this far might be able to get them over the hump.
In might be May but for one night at least the Raptors and their all-stars looked like it was midweek game in January, February or March.
More of that and the Raptors could at least dream about playing in June.