This being Toronto, this being the playoffs, things were going crazy early, like before most decent thinking people had enjoyed their second coffee and caught up on their reading.
Such is life as the NBA’s only market outside the U.S. The tradition of the Toronto Raptors getting the 12:30 p.m. playoff curtain raiser will forever continue.
But before his general manager was whipping the crowd gathered outside Air Canada Centre in the mid-morning sunshine into a frenzy with another curse word, and before the crowd inside the building took over the Canadian anthem and before they launched into the first “Paul you suck” chant, Raptors head coach Dwane Casey contemplated a simple question in a moment of pre-game calm:
After a half-season seemingly spent waiting for this day, what did he think his team would do as they headed into their second playoff series as a group?
“I know everyone is excited talking about the playoffs, but now [they are] here,” Casey mused aloud. “What are you going to do? How are you going to perform? How are we going to react under pressure?”
The verdict? Not well. Not badly, but not well. The Raptors’ 93-86 overtime loss to the Washington Wizards wasn’t one of those games where a team turns inside itself and melts, but it adds to the weight of the Raptors bleak playoff history. The franchise is now 0-7 all time in the first game of their first-round series. Not coincidentally, they have only won a single first-round series.
But Saturday wasn’t a team playing scared, it looked like. Greivis Vasquez alone made sure of that. His game-tying triple and well-earned shimmy to halfcourt as he sent the game into overtime with 10 seconds left was proof that the Raptors weren’t going to go away that easily.
But they lost. They had one chance to put the weight of their home-court advantage on Washington’s chest and they didn’t. They had a chance to make Pierce, Wizards agitator-in-chief, eat his words and didn’t. They had to take a major step towards reversing the franchise’s years of playoff disappointment and took a step backwards instead.
Simply put, it is nearly impossible to win a playoff game against anyone when you shoot just 38 percent from the floor or 6-of-29 from beyond the arc and give up 19 offensive rebounds.
The Raptors are a jump-shooting offence and their three big shooters – Lou Williams, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan – shot 12-of-56. And Terrence Ross chipped in with 3-of-11 and 0-of-6 from three.
That’s what the Raptors did and it outweighed all kinds of good – in particular holding Washington to just 39.4 percent shooting – one of the Raptors’ best defensive performances of the season.
“They had 20 second-chance points,” said Casey afterwards. “That’s the game.”
They almost survived their own failings. Trailing 74-59 with 8:45 in the fourth the Raptors mounted a run that started with a jumper from DeRozan, got some life when Williams found Amir Johnson (a bright spot with 18 points off the bench) for a layup off a pick-and-roll and got legs with a Greivis Vasquez triple. Even then the Raptors were trailing by eight with just over six minutes left. But a pair of Williams threes cut the Wizards’ lead to two with 2:55 left.
But things seemed bleak when Kyle Lowry fouled out with 2:36 left and the Raptors trailing by four. “I’m very mad,” said Lowry, who shot 2-of-10 from the floor. “I’m very upset but I’ve got to deal with it.”
Enter Vasquez and his pure pleasure in living for the big shot. The Raptors almost got a most improbable win when Terrence Ross batted an inbounds pass at the basket with 0.4 seconds left that almost went in, even while seemingly being fouled by Otto Porter.
Overtime gave the Raptors hope, but instead was just more time for the Wizards to do what they’d been doing much of the game. The blur named John Wall ran the ball up the floor and found Pierce for an open jumper that he knocked down easily, in spite or maybe because of his black hat.
Then Nene got his seventh offensive rebound of the game and hit a free throw, and then a dunk as Wall penetrated too easily as the Raptors shot 2-of-9 in the extra period and gave up four offensive rebounds in the five minutes.
For the second year in a row the Raptors lost the first game of the playoffs at home, wasting their status as the higher seed. They get their chance to avoid falling into oblivion on Tuesday night in Game 2.
To their credit the Raptors came out like a team ready to throw some punches rather than bob-and-weave. They carried themselves like favourites, they just didn’t play like it. A year ago the Raptors were tentative in the opener and were handled fairly easily by Brooklyn, the main reason they lost the series in seven games.
Saturday afternoon they came out with hard eyes and were rewarded with a 23-19 first quarter lead which, if not a thing of beauty, was the product of a team that seemed determined to dictate the terms of engagement. Ross, who was almost non-existent a year ago, came out firing and hit his first shot, a few moments later he body-checked the Wizards’ Bradley Beal to the floor on fast-break, a show of aggressiveness almost unimaginable from Ross in the past, and a crude if effective way for the Raptors to limit the Wizards’ transitions points.
DeRozan bowled over the Wizards’ Marcin Gortat on a determined drive to the basket. Williams, who correctly predicted Washington would make every effort to force the ball out of his hands, turned facilitator – he ended the game with four assists — undoing a Wizards double-team by giving up the ball and watching it whip around the perimeter for an open Patrick Patterson triple.
But not everything unfolded according to plan.
Before the series Pierce juiced the plot by telling ESPN.com that he didn’t fear the Raptors because they didn’t have ‘It’. The Raptors predictably both downplayed his comments and bristled at them. It was Pierce’s comments that Ujiri was referring to when he told the crowd gathered at “Jurassic Park” that “he didn’t give a s— about ‘It’”.
The crowd loved it, and it set social media ablaze, but if the Raptors keep responding with Game 1 duds, Ujiri might as well save the money he’s giving the NBA in fines.
Pierce had the last laugh, in any case.
When he hit his first shot, a three, midway through the second quarter, the Raptors led 36-29. Midway through the third quarter Pierce hit another three to finish a personal 15-point spurt and the Wizards led 55-46.
It was like having your old high school flame show up at a reunion, richer, slimmer and better looking than you.
The Raptors didn’t sit still at the punch bowl, accepting their fate. They mounted that comeback. They played a brand of defence not on display at the ACC in quite sometime. They gave no signs of going away quietly.
But they still trail the series 1-0. They haven’t proved Pierce wrong. Not yet.