Making a 12-point comeback in half a quarter would be difficult without finishing, and despite taking shots at the rim and from beyond the arc at almost the same frequency as the Warriors, the Raptors clearly couldn’t rely on those to drop with much certainty. Quinn Cook hitting three 3s doesn’t need to be sustainable, it just needs to happen long enough to win one game, and the Raptors went unspeakably cold in response, going nearly seven minutes without scoring themselves. That was absent in the third quarter and the first half of the fourth, with the Warriors poking holes in every possible lane and taking advantage of the Raptors loading up on Steph Curry and Klay Thompson any time Toronto’s weak-side help was a split-second late.
The Raptors have become renowned for their half-court defence, the part of their game that helped swing the Eastern Conference finals and was a major factor in taking Game 1 from the Warriors. To that point, the Warriors had totalled 33 assists on 37 field goals, tied for the second-most by any team in an NBA Finals game since 1992. With 5:39 left in the fourth, Andrew Bogut completed his end of a tip-lob from Draymond Green to put the Warriors up 12 and Nick Nurse had seen enough. It definitely made things interesting, though, and it turned a game that was starting to look like a frustrating runaway into something to build on from here. It didn’t exactly work out in Game 2, which the Raptors lost 109-104 to tie the NBA Finals at 1-1 as it heads to Oakland. The takeaway, as always: Embrace what makes you unique.įor the Raptors, that’s their defensive versatility and willingness to be unconventional on that end. The response was to get a little weird, and it very nearly helped them take Game 2 against the Warriors. What got the Raptors to this point wasn’t working.
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