TORONTO — It was worth the wait.
Tie game, season on the line, crowd on its feet, chanting, sharing each other’s voices, passion and energy.
It was like old times.
Or more accurately, like olden times, back when a young Toronto Raptors team didn’t get the breaks, and didn’t get the bounces and didn’t get the win.
Returning to that glory will be a process, and it will necessarily involve some heartbreak.
Case in point: the fadeaway three with less than a second left on the clock by The Process himself, Sixers star Joel Embiid, that snatched a win and no shortage of souls as the decisive blow in a grimy, gritty, and hard-fought 104-101 win that needed an overtime period to be decided.
The dagger gave the Sixers a 3-0 lead in their first-round series with the Toronto Raptors.
The two teams meet again on Saturday afternoon, but the Raptors will be trying to make history in coming back from down three in a best-of-seven series.
Had things gone just a little bit differently in Game 3 you might have liked their chances to come back from down 0-2 as Toronto rode the home crowd to their best performance of the series, pushing the Sixers all the way to the limit and beyond.
The Raptors got some gutsy performances. OG Anunoby continued his fine playoff form with 26 points to lead Toronto while Gary Trent Jr. — badly ill during the first two games — shook that off to deliver a brilliant two-way performance with 24 points and multiple big defensive plays. Fred VanVleet struggled shooting (3-of-13) but had nine assists and three steals, while Precious Achiuwa came off the bench for 20 points and one big defensive stand after another, including impeccable defence on Embiid’s first attempt to decide the game at the end of overtime.
But the Sixers had Embiid. After the Raptors had forced Embiid to halfcourt by deflecting the ball from his hands, it appeared that he had heaved a desperation shot, but somehow the Sixers were granted a timeout with 2.6 seconds left. They ran Embiid around the three-point line, hit the seven-foot, 300-pounder with a pass on the move and he nailed the turnaround with 0.8 seconds to play.
Anunoby missed a desperation attempt at the buzzer.
Embiid scored 28 of his game-high 33 points in the second half and overtime.
The Raptors season may be teetering, but at the very least the game was recognizable as a Raptors game. They left their imprint on it as they forced the Sixers into 22 turnovers, six by Embiid. There were steals and multiple efforts and opponents annoyed to the max. Bodies were on the floor. The Raptors controlled the game’s tempo and maybe more importantly its feel. But midway through the fourth quarter the scoreboard told no story, the game was tied.
It stayed that way with 3:06 to play after Trent Jr. — revitalized after a week in sickbay — traded threes with former Raptor Danny Green. A triple by Anunoby and then a put back by Achiuwa after a steal by Siakam finally gave Toronto some daylight — a five-point edge with two minutes to play.
But the Sixers scored the two next baskets, including a controversial goaltending call on Anunoby on a James Harden lay-up that required a review with 1:15 to play and cut Toronto’s lead to one. Harden — who sat most of the fourth quarter with five fouls – tied the score with 49 seconds left after going 1-of-2 from the line. Harden then fouled out with 27 seconds left — he picked up four fouls in six minutes of action in the fourth quarter — but Achiuwa, a 59.5 per cent free-throw shooter on the season, missed both of his shots. Embiid missed a triple just before the buzzer, Tobias Harris couldn’t convert on the offensive rebound at the buzzer and the two teams headed to overtime.
The stakes were high. No team in NBA history has ever come back from being down 3-0 and even if this edition of the Raptors — an incomplete puzzle with youthful corners pieces — isn’t a championship team, the experience they could gain from a competitive post-season would be a just reward for a surprisingly good regular season and more data to draw on for the future when ambitions are that much higher.
The excitement and energy that came with playing their first playoff game at Scotiabank Arena in 1,045 days was very much part of the Raptors’ game plan as they plotted how to get back into the series and — just as vital — avoid falling behind 3-0. The Raptors needed help anywhere they could find it.
“Yeah it helps, it definitely helps, and we’ll take all the help we can get right now,” said Raptors guard Fred VanVleet. “We are looking forward to bringing playoff basketball back to the city. It’s been what, two years now or three years? So yeah, I’m excited about it and I think the fans deserve it and we look forward to going out there and playing as hard as we can for them.
It’s not that the Raptors were down 2-0, it’s that a team that had been high on the scrappiness factor all season seemed a little short of that in Philadelphia, though injuries, illness and circumstance certainly played a role. The Raptors allowing the Sixers to score at will was never part of any plan.
The hope was that by facing some season-in-their-hands adversity, the group’s nature would show itself again.
“This team has responded really well to a number of things in the adversity column throughout the year. They always seem to find a way to respond,” head coach Nick Nurse said. “I think we’re gonna see it, facing some adversity with guys missing and some guys not 100 per cent and down two games in a series. It won’t surprise me if we respond tonight.”
Nurse responded in his own right. He didn’t dive deep into his back of tricks and revamp his team’s game plan from scratch, but he did make some tweaks.
After using considerable resources in the first two games to send additional defenders towards Embiid and Harden, Nurse was more willing to allow the two Sixers stars to play against single coverage if it meant turning the water off on the likes of Tyrese Maxey and Harris, the Sixers’ third and fourth starters who had combined for 107 points on 57 shots in the first two games.
With Trent Jr. back in the lineup and clearly healthier, the Raptors were more willing to let him take on Harden alone and with less help, and wait to see whether the three-time NBA scoring champ would or could take the game on his back.
Similarly with Embiid, the Raptors opted to play him straight up and invite him to play on the perimeter. The only time they brought an extra defender was when Embiid ventured into the post or turned his back to the basket. At that point the Raptors would pounce.
Both adjustments paid off brilliantly. Early in the first quarter VanVleet goaded Maxey into a turnover that turned into a Siakam layup to give Toronto a quick 6-0 lead and make sure the crowd was into it from the jump. Later in the quarter a pair of steals by VanVleet — on Maxey and another on Embiid — resulted in a triple from Trent Jr. and a fastbreak layup by Anunoby and the Raptors were up eight. A block on Harden by Anunoby resulted in another triple, this time by Chris Boucher.
The pre-game recipe couldn’t have been working any better: The crowd was into it, the Raptors scored 12 points on nine Sixers turnovers, Maxey was shut out, Embiid had four turnovers, Harden had a single field goal, and the Raptors were able to take a 29-19 lead into the second quarter.
The next test came at the start of the second when Embiid sits for rest. The moments when Embiid doesn’t play have always been the Sixers’ Achilles heel, but thanks to Maxey’s play and Harden’s playmaking, Philadelphia had extended their leads with Embiid sitting in Games 1 and 2.
In this case the Raptors did extend their advantage ever-so-slightly. The Raptors won the first half non-Embiid moments 14-12 — they probably need to better than that if the series is going to have real life — but it was a start.
The Raptors led by as many as 15 in the second quarter, but the Sixers trimmed that to six after Harden connected with Embiid on an alley-oop with 2:51 left in the half. But the Raptors refused to give up their hard-won momentum. A pair of triples by Trent Jr. and Anunoby and a buzzer-beating jumper in the lane by Siakam gave Toronto a 56-46 lead going into the half that checked almost every box for how they believed they needed to play to get back into the series — keeping Embiid and Harden under control; limiting chances for their supporting players and otherwise using their defence to generate some offence — and the home crowd approved, with good reason.
But the Raptors were almost certainly going to get tested, and it came in the third quarter when the Sixers made a point of getting Embiid the ball in dangerous places, deep in the paint. There was a ferocious dunk over Siakam and then another play to get Embiid the ball on the move, going to the rim, and Embiid was feeling it enough to step out and hit a three also. His 12-point burst to start the half pulled Sixers to within one with five minutes left in the period.
The Raptors were playing nearly exclusively zone at that point. Embiid kept finding his way to the rim and the foul line, regardless of what the Raptors were doing. The Sixers big man ended up with 18 points and seven trips to the free-throw line in the quarter as Toronto headed into the fourth trying to protect a one-point lead, 75-74.
They couldn’t do it, but not for lack of effort. It was a game to remember, if maybe not for all the feels.
