TORONTO — Before the madness, before the mayhem, before Drake showed up, DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry sought out some peace and quiet. The teammates who came to Toronto as virtual strangers and are now best friends, raising kids side-by-side, made a late-night visit to the Air Canada Centre on Saturday, where the T-shirts were already laid out just so.
DeRozan, in particular, wanted to remember that when you take away the people and the lights and the cameras and the hype and the Indiana Pacers, it’s just him and a ball, like it’s always been.
That’s what was running through his mind when he stepped up to the line with 6.5 seconds left and a simple task at hand: Knock down two free throws and the game was over. Simple as that.
It wasn’t: Knock down two free throws and you can erase three years of first-round playoff disappointment.
It wasn’t: Knock down two free throws and you can write a new chapter in Raptors playoff history.
And it wasn’t: Knock down two free throws and you can keep this core together; can secure a maximum contract; can keep walking the road to being a Raptor for life.
It was step to the line and make two shots.
"It just felt normal," said DeRozan. "Me and Kyle was here in the gym last night about 10-11 o’clock, when nobody was in here just the T-shirts laid out on the chairs … you just think about that moment when there’s nobody in the gym with you, with no pressure. I just wanted to knock that down for my team and go from there."
Yeah, just like that. Two shots and a furious Pacers fourth-quarter comeback — fuelled in no small part by some tired, nervous play by the Raptors — was blunted. Just like that the 20,000 fans at the ACC could breathe, could go crazy, could celebrate.
Just like that the Raptors won a Game 7 for the first time in franchise history, won a seven-game playoff series for the first time in franchise history and secured a spot in the second round for just the second time and the first since Vince Carter was a recent college graduate.
Go from there? The Raptors are going to the second round. On Tuesday night, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat are coming to the ACC and the No. 2 seed Raptors will have a chance to play themselves into the Eastern Conference Finals.
Just make two shots. Put this baby to rest.
Now, DeRozan is an excellent free throw shooter — a career-best 85 per cent this season — but he was finishing a wild game, so anything was possible. He missed all kinds of shots on Sunday night, though no free throws. He missed every other kind.
History will show that DeRozan scored 30 points in Game 7 and helped the Raptors shed the playoff piano they’ve been staggering under for a couple of years at least.
But it wasn’t your standard 30-point game where a guy gets hot and the numbers add up. The man missed 22 shots, which is hard to do. It’s also hard to put up 32 shots in a must-win game while being covered by Paul George, one of the best defenders in the game.
It’s hard not lose your nerve or your sense of purpose. But very quietly DeRozan’s will is a formidable force. He doesn’t make a big deal of it, but he’s going to do things his way. It’s helped turn him into a late-blooming two-time all-star and the winningest Raptor ever, a fixture across most of the team’s all-time scoring categories.
You can quibble with the forced shots and volume of them, but you have to respect a guy who is willing keep putting himself out there after coming into a Game 7 having shot just 32 per cent, hearing about it after every game and practice.
“He was going to empty the clip, that’s what he did tonight and that’s what his goal was," said Lowry, his running mate, who is also struggling to score (11 points) but added 10 assists. "We are going to ride with him emptying that clip … I don’t care if he shot 40 times. He emptied the clip and we won so that is all that matters.
“We know at the end of the day we are going to get whatever it is (gestures at DeMar), the good, the bad," said Lowry. "We are going to take that upon ourselves. At the end of the day he can live with losing that game if he shot 32 times. We don’t care. He can live with that and I can live with that too. At the end of the day, my man emptied that clip and he’s got a brand new one."
That’s what you get when you take that piano on your back, shrug and send it crashing to floor. The last time the Raptors made it to the second round was in 2001; babies born in 2001 are finishing their first year of high school next month. The Raptors have cycled through Lenny Wilkens, Kevin O’Neill, Sam Mitchell, Jay Triano and Dwane Casey just finished his fifth season.
Time flies.
And perhaps just as important, DeRozan and Lowry will get another chance to prove they can play like all-stars in the post-season too. They’ll need to play better than they did against Indiana — it’s hard to imagine the Raptors advancing past Miami with DeRozan and Lowry each shooting 31 per cent from the floor.
But Raptors fans can take solace in once thing: they won’t play scared. The Raptors will not look across at the Heat, their names, and their pedigree and think they don’t belong. They aren’t frightened.
They might play scary, but we’re used to that. Take Sunday night for example.
With 7:31 to play the Raptors were up by 16 points. The ACC crowd was on the verge of enjoying themselves, of treating themselves to an extended celebration 15 years in the making. But then came a few sloppy (nervous?) turnovers — four in four minutes. Then the lid went on the basket. Bodies were on the floor chasing balls that kept denting the rims.
At one point, DeRozan got his pocket picked at mid-court by George and somehow made it back to draw the charge and get the ball back. A lot of wild stuff was going on. The Pacers were on a 17-4 run when DeRozan stepped to the line.
"We stunk it up in the fourth quarter," said Casey. "They were so jacked up, they wanted it so bad, I thought they were exhausted, emotionally, physically and it wasn’t pretty. "
The Raptors could withstand the Pacers run because for the first three quarters and a bit they looked like the hungrier team, and DeRozan was a big reason why. The Raptors led 50-44 at the half and 78-64 after three quarters. DeRozan got them rolling with 13 points in the first period as Toronto jumped out to a 28-23 lead.
It was in the third quarter that DeRozan scored 13 more of his game-high 30 points. Nearly every shot he took was contested. You don’t draw it up this way. But sometimes brute force is the way to go. It was DeRozan’s Kobe moment and the kid who grew up in Los Angeles watching Bryant play without a conscience in big moments, did just that.
But it was his teammates who facilitated. Bismack Biyombo was knocking Pacers silly with screen after screen. Pat Patterson stepped up and hit three desperately needed triples. Meanwhile, rookie Norm Powell (13 points on 5-of-6 shooting) and Toronto’s own Cory Joseph (eight points and four assists) came off the bench to give the Raptors some much-needed punch.
The Raptors won a must-win game while shooting 38.2 per cent from the floor, something made possible when you out-rebound the opposition 49-38 and grab 18 offensive boards to the Pacers’ five.
"I felt like this series showed that everyone in this locker room was depended on and that’s what we had to do," said DeMarre Carroll, who guarded George down the stretch. "We had to come out as a team. DeMar DeRozan wasn’t going to beat this team alone. Kyle Lowry wasn’t going to beat this team on his own. It had to be a group effort."
Together they slayed the dragon, stared down the ghost or got rid of the monkey on their backs.
"I hear so many people talking about the Toronto curse and all this but, man, if you play basketball and you play at a high level, I told plenty of fans, I told plenty of media that this is a different team," said Carroll. "We have a different mindset. This is a team that’s going to go out and leave it on the court and that’s what we did tonight."
DeRozan did. The Raptors followed his lead. Bring on Miami; bring on the second round.
It’s about time.