One of the most famous quotes in Toronto Raptors history had do with fighting for playoff wins on the road.
“F*** that, let’s go get ‘em both,” was Kawhi Leonard’s reply when Nick Nurse – after the Raptors lost Game 2 of the NBA Finals at home to the Golden State Warriors – suggested that all the Raptors needed to do to regain home-court advantage was to go to Oracle Arena and split Games 3 and 4 last June.
The Raptors followed Leonard’s lead and an NBA title was the result, helped by Toronto going 7-4 on the road in the post-season, 3-0 away from home in the Finals.
The road is a nearly mythical place in sports, where teams come together as one in the face of enemy hordes or where they splinter under pressure and come home with their collective tails between their legs, seeking comfort.
At the Walt Disney World Resort there are no home games and no road games – even though the Brooklyn Nets were the home team for Game 3 of their first-round best-of-seven series against the theoretically visiting Raptors.
At the Walt Disney World Resort, every day is Wednesday.
“It feels the same as Game 1 and 2, exactly,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse before the game Friday. “… I don’t want to totally discount their home-game setup and their crowd and their fans, etc., on the virtual [screens], I think it’s been nice for us, so I don’t want to totally discount that yet until we get a little more used to it, but I think it feels really similar to just going in and playing like the last two games were for us right now.”
For the record, the Raptors are now 1-0 on the “road” without ever having to change hotels after their 117-92 win over the Nets that also gave them a seemingly insurmountable 3-0 lead in the first-round series.
The Nets were without Joe Harris, the team’s sharpshooter who had to leave the bubble to attend to a personal matter. Harris joined a long list of Nets talent who aren’t with the team due to injury or illness or other circumstances.
If they were longshots as an undermanned seven seed before the series started, their odds took another hit.
Interim Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn tried to put a positive spin on it before the game, but wasn’t all that convincing.
“We don’t have the luxury to have unlimited amount of players on the side,” said Vaughn as he explained why he was starting Tyler Johnson, his best bench player. “[Johnson will] start today but there’ll be an infusion of different lineups out there just because of sheer have-to.”
There were some differences in the environment between Games 1 and 2 and Game 3. Instead of Raptors red, The Field House was decked in the simple black theatre-style lighting with the subway-theme graphics meant to invoke an afternoon at Barclays Center at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.
And on the floor too.
In the category of welcome sights had to be the performance of Pascal Siakam, who has been struggling to score with his usual efficiency since the Raptors set up shop in Florida.
Nurse has defended Siakam, who came into the game shooting just 37.5 per cent against Brooklyn on the heels of 39 per cent shooting in seven seeding games to end the regular season. He’s cited Siakam’s commitment on the defensive end and emphasized that playoffs are a season unto themselves and come with their own ups and downs.
“I think that the one thing that again, you have to accept, through this whole playoff thing or that we learned about ourselves is that some nights there’s one guy or two guys or a group of guys that have it going and the ball finds them and the other guys are totally out of the game for whatever reason,” said Nurse. “And then the next night it changes and then the next night it changes again. … when it’s not your night, kind of forget about it and hope that the next night that the ball finds you and your shot goes in a little bit, but try to keep the confidence of playing hard and keep the defence there and let the offence unfold how it unfolds.”
The Raptors offence was unfolding smoothly as they got out to quick first-quarter lead and, despite some minor dead spots, led 57-42 at half thanks to 10-of-21 three-point shooting from deep.
Siakam asserted himself in the third quarter, mixing his evolving face-up game with some transition scoring and a lot of activity in the paint – his traditional stronghold.
Siakam scored 14 of his game-high and team-high 26 points in the third as Toronto kept the Nets at arm’s reach, leading 84-68 heading into the fourth where the Raptors ran away with it.
The Raptors can take some confidence that their game travelled well. They set a franchise-playoffs record with 35 assists. In addition to Siakam, Serge Ibaka dominated off the bench with 20 points and 13 rebounds in 23 minutes, while Norm Powell joined Ibaka in providing some bench punch with 12. Meanwhile, Fred VanVleet kept his red-hot shooting going as he had 22 points while shooting 6-of-10 from deep. The Raptors guard is now 17-of-31 from deep in the series.
That’s called taking care of business. At the road, home or anywhere, it’s an approach the Raptors pride themselves on. As a result, they will get a chance to “win both” on the road trip that isn’t when they can complete their first sweep in franchise history with a win Sunday evening.
