MILWAUKEE – Falling on your face to realize you have no choice but to pick yourself up again isn’t ideal, but it’s a lesson the Toronto Raptors have learned over and over again.
But you either adapt or die in the NBA – metaphorically, even though it doesn’t always seem that way. And in the 40 or so hours between their embarrassing Game 3 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks and the suddenly-pivotal Game 4 Saturday afternoon, the Raptors players and their coaching staff set about putting their humiliation behind them and learning from their collective pratfall.
The question was how to make sure it wouldn’t happen again, even in a less dramatic form? Falling behind 3-1 to the surging Bucks didn’t seem like an option for a team that had any ambition of playing into May, let alone June.
These are the moments where coaches and players earn their money. Make the wrong call, the wrong choice and seasons are lost. Jobs maybe too. In those 40 hours Raptors head coach Dwane Casey and their two all-stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan made the right calls, responded the right way. They crawled over a bed of nails they had a big part in laying down themselves but made it to the other side, pulling out an 87-76 win in a game where the pressure was as subtle as a car backing over your chest.
They go home tied 2-2, their home-court advantage restored. Monday night at the Air Canada Centre is Game 5 and it begins again.
On Friday morning Norman Powell was told he’d be starting the most important game of the Raptors’ season, this only a couple of days after the second-year guard didn’t see the floor at all in Game 2, a Raptors win, and just six minutes in Game 1, a victim of Casey’s tightening rotation.
But now Casey wanted another ball-handler, someone who would attack the rim from the weak side of the floor when DeRozan or Lowry were being doubled, and a more muscular brand of defence too.
It meant that Jonas Valanciunas would come off the bench for the first time (when healthy) in 27 post-season games and just the sixth time in his career.
How would they respond? What would be the blowback if the moves didn’t work?
Powell understood the moment and he delivered – 12 points on seven shots, tied for a game-high plus-15 in his 34 minutes. That was step one.
“No one really needed to tell me what I needed to do,” Powell said. “Just do what I usually do, go in there and provide defence, energy, aggressive to the rim. [Assistant coach Jama Mahlalela] came and talked to me before the game about what we were going to do with [Bucks forward] Khris Middleton and that was my match up and it was what I normally do, be aggressive, be physical and make it difficult for him on the defensive end.”
He tested Casey’s faith early as he picked up two quick fouls, but Casey left him in, Powell hit a nerve-settling three, the game began to unfold, and then he helped hold Middleton to 4-of-13 shooting.
Later on Friday, after a long film session and longer-than-usual practice, Lowry and DeRozan were hanging out in the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, watching playoff games, heavy with the knowledge that, fair or not, however the Raptors responded to their Game 3 beat down would hang on them.
As is often the case in those moments, it was DeRozan, who prides himself on keeping an even keel lending some counsel to Lowry who admittedly can let things wear on him.
“My guy is always going to keep me calm,” Lowry said of DeRozan. “He [has been] an unbelievable friend since we have been together. I always think about what should have happened or what could have happened [in a game].
“Sometimes it gets to me. He is always the guy who says everything happens for a reason. We have understood that and been through some bad games and he is always that guy who stays on that same level and you appreciate that.”
And Lowry appreciated also that DeRozan had taken his 0-for-8 shooting performance in Game 3 personally, and that it wasn’t going to be replicated.
“We sat and had dinner,” Lowry said. “Watched the games, and he said he was going to play better. That’s all that matters. He said, ‘All right, it’s over, I played bad. It’s going to be a different game.’ That’s basically what he said.
“[And] I ride with my guy.”
It was a wise choice as DeRozan erupted for a game-high 33 points, every one crucial.
It was a game without breathing room, and for a while the Raptors seemed like they may have been slowly smothered under an avalanche of their own missed shots. It was tied 19-19 after the first quarter and 41-41 at the half, the Raptors surviving 10 turnovers for 14 points because they were able to harass the Bucks into making 13 of their own.
But someone needed to score and after a tentative start DeRozan caught fire. By halftime he had eight of the Raptors’ 15 field goals and 21 of their 41 points. He was called upon and he answered.
“I thought he really bounced back,” said Casey. They [the media, the public] were killing him, [but] you just don’t forget how to be a scorer like he is. This is the NBA, I’m telling you, those guys get paid on the first and 15th, too.”
After looking like the Bucks had the NBA’s fifth-leading regular season scorer solved in Game 3, DeRozan solved them right back.
“Just going quick, just being aggressive, not waiting on the doubles, understanding when I get the ball get in my sweet spot or make a quick move, make a quick play, whatever it may be,” said DeRozan. “If it’s shooting, looking for my teammates, being aggressive, whatever it may be, just being quicker on my moves.”
But all of DeRozan’s work was just helping the Raptors stay level.
Time and time again Lowry would penetrate the Bucks defence and send the ball out to open shooters only to see the ball land short, long, left or right. Through the first 30 minutes of the game the Raptors had hit a single three – Powell’s way back in the early first quarter. Serge Ibaka, a vital outlet at the three-point line, finished 4-of-16 from the floor and 0-of-5 from deep.
Finally, Lowry took matters into his own hands, pulling up for a long jumper. A moment later he drove to the rim and scored while DeRozan rose for a dunk a possession later before finding Powell for his second triple. Another three by Lowry and the Raptors found themselves up nine, their 12-3 spurt the game’s first crack of daylight.
And then Casey made the kind of call that can implode on a coach. He subbed out Lowry, just as he was beginning to roll,
“He couldn’t run that many minutes,” Casey said later by text of Lowry, who ended up playing 42. “I wanted to keep in him in but he needed a blow.”
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For three minutes the game and, arguably, the season teetered in the balance, but the Raptors’ bench held the fort and took a six-point lead into the fourth quarter.
And who arrived to help then? How about Valanciunas, who looked shaky in making four turnovers in his first 13 minutes off the bench. “It’s nothing personal, it’s part of the game,” Valanciunas said of his role change. “It’s for the team … as long as we win, it’s fine.”
But the big Lithuanian suddenly came alive, scoring six points on three shots as the Raptors guards found him rolling through the paint. Another big triple from Powell and the Raptors were up 10. They hung on.
It wasn’t a pretty game. Toronto shot 41.3 per cent from the floor, but managed to hold the Bucks to 37 per cent. There were 34 total turnovers. Other than Powell, who was perfect on three attempts, the rest of the roster went 2-of-19 from deep. It helped that the Bucks were 5-of-21.
But defensively they brought snarl and extra bodies. Giannis Antetokounmpo looked mortal for the first time, needing 19 shots to score 14 points, though he still managed countless GIF-worthy plays, including a chase-down block of Lowry that was a goal-tend but in which he covered 40 feet faster than anyone not named Usain Bolt.
But pretty or not, the Raptors managed to pull themselves off the mat as they have so many times.
“We have got a lot better over the years at understanding how to, you know, collect our thoughts,” said DeRozan of how he and his teammates managed to rebound. “The time will come when we will get back out on there on the court but in the meantime try not to go crazy in two days of waiting … it’s still a challenge but we figure it out.
Experience being the best teacher.
