The city of Toronto is psychologically accustomed to losing in the playoffs.
The hockey mecca doesn’t have any Canadian team to root for in the quest for the Stanley Cup, so the Raptors are the only show in town as the North American spring unfolds.
Sunday night in the Air Canada Centre, as one predictably awful possession after another crowded the fourth-quarter performance of a team which scored just 11 points in the final 12 minutes, Torontonians braced for the worst.
They were used to it. They’re always used to it.
In Game 5 — which turned out to be the most important moment of this series — the Raptors entered the fourth quarter trailing by 13 and pulled off a remarkable comeback because the Indiana Pacers scored only nine points in that final stanza. Sunday, in Game 7, Toronto’s meager 11-point output enabled the Pacers — trailing 78-64 at the start of the quarter — to pull within three points.
In that fourth quarter, Toronto basically tried to take a knee well before the game was over. Using up 24 seconds of the shot clock became more important than scoring. Long jumpers with the shot clock running down became standard operating procedure for a team which played not to lose, instead of stepping on the throat of a No. 7 seed.
It almost caught up with the Raptors, much as Indiana almost caught up with Toronto…
… but not quite.
The Raptors were inhibited throughout this series with very few exceptions. They were inhibited partly by Paul George’s defense and all-around excellence, but they were mostly held back by the very oppressive weight of pressure.
The Raptors entered this series having won only one playoff series in their entire existence. The previous two seasons, featuring first-round exits despite owning home-court advantage, represented a heavy burden for this team to carry. Had the Raptors not pushed through their anxiety to produce that desperate scramble of a comeback late in Game 5, they might not have gained the opportunity to win this series at home in Game 7. For most of the night, and certainly at the end, they struggled more than they soared:
That was a great first quarter, followed by a total and complete mess.
— (((Eric Koreen))) (@ekoreen) May 2, 2016
However — and this is important — they soared just enough to get the job done.
*
Some competitions are lost more than they’re won. Such a statement can feel like a criticism, even an indictment of the principals involved, but that’s more an observation of what happened than anything else.
It’s not that complicated: Sometimes, games and series are decided by Team B’s mistakes more than Team A’s feats. This doesn’t mean Team A’s feats were irrelevant to the proceedings, only that Team B’s mistakes carried more centrality and primacy. Such was the case in this series, due to Indiana’s fourth-quarter meltdown in Game 5, and a Game 7 in which DeMar DeRozan had Toronto sports fans reaching for the alcohol for most of the final three quarters.
DeRozan — perhaps preparing for a career as the spiritual successor to Kobe Bryant, but without the championship pedigree — scored 30 points on 10-of-32 shooting. Teammate Kyle Lowry finished 5-of-14 from the field, his jump shot plainly deficient since his elbow injury. The knowledge of that elbow injury likely played a role in convincing DeRozan that he had to take more shots. Toronto finished 38 percent from the field in this game, a shooting number which — if accompanied by only 13 free-throw makes and an 89-point output — can’t inspire much confidence in a Game 7 or any game, for that matter.
Indiana couldn’t take advantage.
Outside of Paul George (26), George Hill (19), and Monta Ellis (15), the rest of the Pacers — six players sharing 117 minutes — managed just 24 points. You could say that Toronto’s bench was better, and that statement is genuinely true when considering what Norman Powell and Cory Joseph brought to this series. However, it would be just as fair to claim that instead of celebrating Toronto’s bench, one could emphasize the point that Indiana’s bench was worse. When Indiana starter Myles Turner became a pumpkin in Game 7 (2 of 11, 4 points, 29 minutes), the Pacers’ margin for error became extremely slim, because this team didn’t have compelling options when Frank Vogel tried to find offense or rebounding in this series.
Toronto very nearly found a way to lose in spite of the Pacers’ many flaws and deficits. Yet, if “almost doesn’t count” applies to teams which fall just short of victory, the statement just as clearly applies to teams which don’t quite lose.
“Avoiding a loss” might not feel as empowering as “winning” does, but it ultimately represents the same thing. Toronto might have wobbled and wavered before the finish line on Sunday, but it got there. It got there because — for all the bad jump shots and all the shaky possessions down the stretch — its star guards found moments of clarity in which they ditched the jumper and got to the rim:
DeMar DeRozan leaves Monta Ellis in the dust with nasty spin move pic.twitter.com/XG1tkFT4K8
— Gifdsports (@gifdsports) May 2, 2016
Tough. https://t.co/3E2VUvVZV1
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 2, 2016
Very little about this series — whose two closest games were the products of paralyzed fourth quarters by the teams in the lead (Indiana’s 9 in Game 5, Toronto’s 11 in Game 7) — was magnificent or mesmerizing or marvelous. That’s just the way it is.
However, the challenge of each playoff series is not to rewrite the way basketball should be played. The test of a best-of-seven slugfest is not to reach a given aesthetic standard. It is merely to win four games, by hook or crook.
The Toronto Raptors’ only previous series win — in 2001 — came when the first round was a best-of-five affair. Therefore, this is the Raptors’ first-ever best-of-seven series win. In a narrow context, it’s an unprecedented achievement for the franchise.
Ugly, uneven, unnecessarily tense — this survival act against Indiana was all those things and more. Yet, when a team forges an unprecedented achievement, who the hell cares?
The Raptors did just enough of what they needed to do to win four games in a playoff series. Those who pay money to attend games, and those who get paid to write about them, will overlook flaws if ultimate objectives are met. The Toronto Raptors — saddled with a level of pressure you or I or anyone else would have felt if placed in their position over the past fortnight — have lived to play another playoff series.
It’s not the kind of happy resolution Toronto sports fans are used to.
Now that the pressure of escaping the first round is gone, the Raptors have a chance to be their truest, best, most liberated selves in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Miami Heat.
If the Raptors throw away the chains of internalized fear over the next two weeks, this torture chamber of a series against Indiana won’t be remembered for its flaws; it will be seen as the gateway to the most successful season in a basketball franchise’s history.
The Toronto Raptors did not lose to the Indiana Pacers. Now, they can go about the business of flying freely, and genuinely defeating the Miami Heat.
