TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors pride themselves on their ability to overcome adversity, to respond when pushed into a corner.
It’s their signature.
It makes for a great story: a group of flawed fighters who bond together to battle a common foe, like comic book superheroes or something.
The missing part is how often they seek out dark corners on their own, check to make sure they are scary enough, and then pull up a chair and wait for trouble to find them. Sometimes they light a cigarette and fiddle with the gasoline can.
Home-court advantage in the playoffs? Who needs it? It’s much more exciting to squander Game 1 and then see what danger feels like.
Historic shooting slumps by their best player? Hey, no problem. Give Kyle Lowry the ball with the game on the line and stand back; of course it’s going to work out.
Ignore Jonas Valanciunas for most of four quarters and then look to him to help win the game?
Yup.
Shoot just 14-of-26 from the free-throw line and win? Scare up 20 turnovers, including 15 steals, but allow Miami to shoot 51.4 per cent from the floor for four quarters?
Sounds like a plan.
Just don’t expect these guys to play a “normal” game. It’s not their thing. They’re the kind of team that likes heading into unfamiliar places in the dark without a wallet, cellphone or directions just to see if they can figure how to get back.
They pulled it off again Thursday night. If they ever do things the easy way, they’ll let you know.
“It’s been ugly, it’s been ugly,” said DeMar DeRozan of his club’s 5-4 run in the playoffs with perhaps one game that they might define as well-played. “I mean, when we do, I’m pretty sure you’ll know.”
“If we do,” said Lowry.
DeRozan: “It’s a grind, man, honestly. We know nothing was going to be pretty; nothing was going to come out pretty. As long as we can come out with a W, it really don’t matter how we play. It’s going to come.”
The Raptors have long been comfortable winning unconventionally, if not ugly, but they outdid themselves in Game 2, which was to basketball games what driving fast in an ice storm is to highway safety.
They had to go into overtime for the second straight game to earn their 96-92 win over the Miami Heat — this time it was a Goran Dragic three that saved the visitors, thanks to a bungled defensive coverage by the Raptors — but they will head to South Florida with the series tied 1-1.
It wasn’t ideal. Lowry and DeRozan, the guys who take most of the Raptors’ shots, most of the time, continue to miss them at alarming rate — they were 16-of-48 — continuing their epic run of high volume shots and misses. The game was all kinds of weird, but always played hard, and the Raptors stayed alive.
“We’ve got to take it,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “We can harp on the negatives and beat that drum, beat it to death but we’re finding ways to win and that’s very encouraging. [DeRozan and Lowry are] not going anywhere so we’ve got to continue to go with them, find ways to help them get easier shots that hopefully gets their rhythm.”
The Raptors can head south feeling a little bit better about Lowry (18 points on 22 shots), who shook off another rough shooting night to nail two jumpers down the stretch to help force overtime.
“I felt great,” said Lowry, who finished with 18 points, six assists and three steals after shooting just 3-of-13 in Game 1 and looking lost at times. “I got so many phone calls and texts from people that just care about me in general. Fellow NBA players and just friends of mine. Just supportive. And then knowing I have the support of my teammates, I just had to come out there and just have fun and be myself.”
They can head for the sun with the knowledge that Valanciunas is the best big man in the series, or at least playing the best basketball. He racked up 11 of his 15 points and seven of his 12 rebounds in the fourth quarter and overtime, including six points in the last four minutes when the Raptors were trailing by six as they mounted a desperate run that saved their season.
“I think he’s definitely the reason why we won this game tonight,” said DeRozan, who finished with 20 points on 9-of-24 shooting and, hampered by a bandaged thumb on his shooting hand, connected on just 2-of-8 free throws.
Of course, the Raptors being the Raptors, Valanciunas had only three shots (making two) through the first 39 minutes of the game.
“We’ve got to try to get him the ball more because every time he gets it, he’s scoring,” said DeMarre Carroll, who had 21 points and four steals. “So we’ve got to figure out ways we can get him the ball and ways we can move. But they’re zoning up so bad, they’re all sitting in the paint, they’re basically telling us we’ve got to hit threes. So you know, his time will come. He’s just got to keep doing it the way he’s doing it. He’s doing it on the offensive glass. If he can keep doing that, man, we just need him to keep playing big like he is right now.”
Early in the fourth quarter it was feeling pretty dangerous, at least if you’re of the mind it would be nice for the No. 2-seeded Raptors not to get swept by the Heat. Having already been put on notice by the Heat in the third quarter — Miami took the lead with a 13-2 run — the Raptors seemed rattled to start the final frame.
Lowry missed a pair of free throws. Then Valanciunas missed one. The crowd was restless. The Raptors, who had controlled the early portion of a game they need to win to avoid heading to Miami down 2-0, were suddenly trailing by six.
They pulled themselves off the mat one more time, mounting a 7-0 run, taking the lead with 8:43 to play.
But remember, this is a group that likes to flirt with disaster. As soon as they got the lead they surrendered a 7-0 run to Miami and were down 79-74 with 5:19 to play.
And the guys they would normally expect to bring them back? Don’t look to them. Lowry and DeRozan remained mired in shooting slumps that are now nine games long.
Who then? Well, Valanciunas scored two straight baskets. The nearly-forgotten Terrence Ross (10 points off the bench) hit a basket to tie things up and then after DeRozan (20 points, 2-of-8 from the line) missed a pair of free throws with 1:23 left, Valanciunas tipped in the DeRozan’s miss over the Heat’s resident giant, Hassan Whiteside, to give Toronto the lead.
He didn’t seem to mind his peripheral roll on offence.
“You have to just read the game,” Valanciunas said. “You can’t just be taking all the shots. One day you have three shots and then all of a sudden the ball just falls in your hands. You have to keep playing. We are playing a team sport, not an individual sport.”
With the Raptors it’s hard to tell sometimes. It feels like Lowry, DeRozan and a bunch of worker bees, which is not a problem if Lowry and DeRozan are productive, which has been a problem.
But there were signs. Naturally, Lowry, just 5-of-18 from the floor until the final minutes of the fourth quarter, pulled up to hit an elbow jumper to give the Raptors a four-point lead and finish a 10-0 run that no one saw coming.
And when Heat star Dwyane Wade hit a three to cut the lead to one, Lowry stepped up to knock in another jumper that might have iced it save for Dragic’s game-tying three.
This time it was the Raptors who came out swinging in the extra period and were rewarded.
It’s a tough way to live.
“For some reason we always like to put ourselves in a little predicament, we know how to respond when things get like this,” said DeRozan before the game. “We understand what we’ve got to do better and clean up on and what we need to do to win this game.”
Why though?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think we just like drama for some reason … for some reason, once we get in that predicament we always bounce back well.”
They did again. But they always do, in their own way. At least for now.