WASHINGTON – The sights and sounds of a season on the brink were everywhere in the Toronto Raptors locker room. Kyle Lowry was sitting hunched over, knees wrapped in ice, his ankles in a tub of it.
Lying on top of the cubes was a stat sheet that told much of the story. There was the score: Washington 106-99. There was his own contribution: 15 points on a miserable 5-of-22 shooting night. There was Paul Pierce rising up yet again, for 18 points — so many of them so critical.
Lowry could only cover his face in frustration and disgust as the melting ice soaked up the paper. In the showers you could hear his teammates dropping random F-bombs as the water failed to wash away a series worth of sins.
Lowry and the Raptors were playing for tomorrow, for the chance to wake up Saturday morning with something to play for, so Sunday’s Game 4 would mean something more than one shot at delaying the inevitable.
They took it all the way to the end. They did what they had failed to do in the previous two games. They weathered the storm. They took punches and punched back.
But then Paul Pierce reminded them what winning looks like. Eleven of his 18 points came in the fourth quarter, three of them on three-pointers that plunged the knife in ever deeper, the last with the Wizards up by just three with 17 seconds left, finishing the job.
“I love playoff basketball,” he said. “I love everything about it. I love the crowds at home, on the road. I can’t tell you one thing I said tonight. I’m just living in the moment.”
It was a riveting game, with the Raptors storming out early thanks to DeMar DeRozan’s record-setting 20-point first quarter, a tightly contested middle and a furious end.
“From the start of the game to the end of the game, I thought our guys competed,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “I thought they made some [great] plays down the stretch … but as far as our compete level, I thought it was big time.”
The Raptors led 85-84 on a fast break dunk by Amir Johnson with six minutes to play. Four minutes later a Pierce triple put the Wizards up by eight only for a wild runner and a long three by Lowry to cut the lead to three with 40 seconds left, setting the stage for Pierce’s final blow.
“That’s why I’m here,” he roared to the crowd, echoing the quote he uttered as he dashed the Raptors hopes last season as a member of the Brooklyn Nets.
New team, same Pierce, same Raptors result.
The 18-year veteran was playing like a man truly determined to avoid putting himself through the hardship of Canadian customs one more time – his stated goal when he left Toronto Tuesday, hoping for a sweep.
Will Pierce get his wish? The Wizards will have to put their foot down on the Raptors chest for good in Game 4 on Sunday. But it’s hard from here to imagine that won’t happen. There is no precedent for a team down 0-3 coming back.
“Records are made to be broken,” said DeRozan of the challenge of being the first NBA team to come back from that hole.
But in the final accounting the Wizards executed better in the key moments. Where the Raptors ended up in one-on-one contests, forcing shots over defenders, Wizards über guard John Wall slithered his way for a lay-up on one possession and on the next found Otto Porter for an open three after forcing defenders to scramble to him.
The Raptors saw DeRozan and Lowry combine to take 51 shots while the Wizards had spread 58 shots among their five starters and had six players with at least 11 points with Wall again playing maestro with 15 assists.
Early on it was almost as if with the pressure of expectation removed – when you’re down 0-2, optimism leaks quickly – the Raptors could be their true selves again, that swaggering band of long-range bombing, isolation scorers.
What was all the fuss about? Why were all these people citing every doomsday statistic possible, like the one about only three of the 29 teams in NBA history to fall behind 0-2 at home coming back to win the series? Or that all 110 teams that have gone up 3-0 in a seven-game series have gone on to win 100 percent of the time?
It’s not like Raptors head coach Dwane Casey was relishing being down 0-2 on the road, but you could tell part of him was appreciating the lab experiment side of it. Regardless of the outcome we were going to learn something about his team and those on it.
Pressure both creates character and reveals flaws.
“You find out a lot of things under pressure, under adversity,” he said before the game. “You find out who’s going to fight, who’s going to come out swinging. You find out who’s going to take shortcuts, the easy way out under pressure. It’s easy to do it [in the regular season] with no pressure, but playoff basketball is adversity. There’s pressure. They know what we’re going to do, we know what they’re going to do. It’s execution, all those things. You’ve got to be able to think and execute and do it with purpose.”
The Raptors season may not end up with the scripted ending many were hoping for or could reasonably expect based on how the season started, but DeRozan’s first quarter may go down as one last high-water mark.
“He’s a special talent, he’s an all-star for a reason,” said Pierce, who has followed his fellow Los Angeles native since high school. “He’s capable of doing that. We focused on locking all the other guys down and if you look up after the first quarter, we’re only down by two.
DeRozan left a message on the whiteboard in the visitors’ locker room that was succinct, to the point and unprintable. “[Screw] it, Let’s Get it,” he scrawled.
And then he went out and set a franchise record for scoring in any single quarter of any playoff game with 20 points in the first, breaking a record held by Vince Carter.
The only problem was as the baskets piled up, a track meet broke out and the Wizards were almost as eager participants. The Raptors led after one quarter, but they led by 35-33. They allowed Washington to shoot 58.3 percent from the floor.
DeRozan lifted his team, but he couldn’t carry them. He needed some help, but Lowry wasn’t able to provide it. He wouldn’t offer excuses though it’s clear he’s battling a cold and perhaps a wonky back. Regardless, his shot is crooked — he’s shooting just 10-of-42 for the series.
“At the end of the day I just have to go out there and play, it’s why we get paid to play,” said Lowry.
Predictably, the Wizards weren’t content to let DeRozan or the Raptors come into their building and let them get away with a win. Not easily. Not on the strength of a single good quarter.
“The mindset was protect my court,” said Pierce. “We have to establish something here, it’s some that I said from day one when I got here in December … we didn’t even think about being up 2-0, we were like, hey, we have to treat this like a Game 7.”
They came equipped with their own folk hero of the moment, veteran Drew Gooden who knocked down three triples on four tries in the first half. More importantly, either Washington’s stingy defence returned or maybe it was the Raptors scattergun offence. Most likely a combination of both but the result was a mirror image of the previous quarter. Toronto shot just 25 percent. Lowry missed all four of his attempts in the period. DeRozan did too. The Wizards took a 54-48 lead into the half.
The Raptors rallied after that. They can always cling to that. But they fell short. Pierce made sure of it.
The Raptors season is over, we just don’t know when.