The Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors resume their 2019 NBA Finals series tonight in Toronto and, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but with a 3-1 lead, the Raptors have a shot to win their very first championship.
No big deal.
*attempts to contextualize all of this*
sdkhsdgkjdafskhekgvlkhkbhegkhagkhergkjheraerjheakvjhekjhiufhwKGJNerherGHKFBJNADFBK
*fails*
Ok, so the Raptors have a chance to make history, and an entire nation of sports fans are waiting anxiously to celebrate like they haven’t in decades. But before that, there’s a basketball game to be played against a proven opponent who, despite having their backs against the wall, own a pretty decent resumé.
As you can imagine, the bulk of the focus outside of Canada is on Kevin Durant, the Warriors and the several factors leading to their potential demise (even though the biggest is that the Raptors are simply a better team and problematic matchup for the two-time defending champs). But it’s impossible to ignore what the Raptors are accomplishing and what is at stake heading into tonight’s game.
Here’s a look at what the out-of-market media are saying about the Raptors ahead of Monday’s must-see contest:
Jalen Rose (live from…Union station?) says even if Kevin Durant returns for Game 5, the Raptors have already taken care of business in this series and predicts there will be parties on the streets across Canada tonight:
ESPN — What Kawhi and the Raptors have done to the Warriors
Zach Lowe breaks down the brilliance of Kawhi Leonard and how it’s left the Warriors dynasty on life support:
The Raptors are here for lots of reasons, but mostly because of Kawhi Leonard, who has asserted his claim as the world’s best player over the past month. Leonard did something that only LeBron James had approximated before him, and LeBron had help from another all-world scorer in Kyrie Irving, who poured in 90 combined points over the last three games of the 2016 Finals — when the Cleveland Cavaliers completed the unprecedented comeback Golden State will attempt now.
Leonard broke the Warriors.
…Leonard has a unique combination of footwork and strength. Defenders bounce off him, he hits the brakes, and what looked half a second ago like a difficult shot becomes a 50/50 proposition. That is the ultimate playoff weapon. When there are only four and then two teams alive, you don’t get to pick the shots you want. You take the shot you get, or the shots you are given, and make the best out of them. Those shots allow Toronto to control the tempo of the series.
On his podcast, Bill Simmons tries to digest what Kawhi has been accomplishing this post-season, and attempts to find his place among the greatest forwards and playoff performers in NBA history:
The Ringer — The Raptors Were Trying to Tell Us They Were Great, We Just Weren’t Listening
The Ringer’s John Gonzalez looks at the significant evidence to suggest that the Raptors have been an elite team all season, except the American hoops audiences simply weren’t ready to buy it.
What a wild scene. A lot of Warriors fans—A. Lot. Of. Warriors. Fans—left Game 4 early. It was a total Toronto takeover from the crowd to the court. But while Raptors fans that made the trip to Oakland sang and celebrated, the actual Raptors hardly showed any emotion at all.
That is the kind of reaction you’d expect after winning regular season game 47 in Orlando, not Game 4 of the NBA Finals in Oakland. The Raptors are terrifying. If the Warriors weren’t scared of them before, they should be well and fully frightened now.
Not many people outside Canada probably thought this was possible—and maybe not that many people in Canada, either. The Raptors are the 35th team in NBA history to take a 3-1 lead in the Finals. Only one team has been in that position and lost: the 2016 Warriors. The odds are very much in Toronto’s favor now and very much not in Golden State’s.
…There have been so many impressive, feel-good moments for the Raptors this postseason—including and especially that first-ever NBA Finals game in Canada, which I watched with a few hundred new friends who are probably still partying. This run seems even more unbelievable when you consider that Toronto’s main group hadn’t played much together. Entering the playoffs, the starting lineup of Lowry, Siakam, Leonard, Gasol and Green logged just 161 regular-season minutes in 14 games, according to NBA.com. That is not a lot to go on. The Raptors have solved the postseason puzzle on the fly.
USA Today — Masterful moves of coach Nick Nurse have Raptors on brink of first NBA title
Dan Wolken of USA Today takes a look at the performance of rookie head coach Nick Nurse, who has been a chess master throughout the Finals and is coaching like a seasoned vet:
For all the numbers and analytics that drive so many decisions in the NBA, there is no real data set that can quantify the impact of a head coach. Differentiating a great one from a good one from one who is utterly replaceable remains a parlor game for our eyes, often dependent on factors completely outside their control.
But when you watch these NBA Finals, which the Toronto Raptors now lead 3-1 with a possible championship clincher at home on Monday (9 p.m. ET, ABC), it’s impossible to avoid the feeling that first-year head coach Nick Nurse is conducting a master class in game-to-game adjustments, lineup management, composure and trust.
…Sure, it’s fair to suggest the series ultimately boils down right now to the fact that Toronto made 17 threes in Game 3 against a depleted Warriors lineup and that Kawhi Leonard went scorched earth in Game 4.
Each of those big things, however, is set up by dozens of small things that are engineered both by execution and game plan.
Example: In both games in Oakland, Nurse began the third quarter by taking Danny Green out of the starting lineup and starting Fred VanVleet to give the Raptors a pair of point guards in the backcourt. It’s not that Lowry and VanVleet haven’t played together before; in fact, they did it quite a bit. But it did break a pattern, and a particularly important one since the third quarter has long been the Warriors’ domain and won them Game 2 with an 18-0 run out of the gate.
In Game 3, the Raptors won those crucial minutes 18-17. In Game 4, the tally was 18-15.
… “It’s a tricky thing I think in the playoffs,” Nurse said. “You have to make adjustments even when you’re winning. You have to fix things and change things and change matchups and rotations and all those things because, I don’t know, I just feel that you have to. If you don’t, then you’re going to be making them after a loss.”
Which means more adjustments are undoubtedly coming before Game 5. The Warriors are down to their last shot to get back in this series, there’s at least a possibility Kevin Durant will give it a go on his injured calf and their only real hope in a series where little they’ve done has worked is to come up with something new.
You can probably count on Nurse to be ready.
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