September 1, 2023 • 27 mins
It iiiiiis Sportsfeld Storytime. This month, we are looking back to the Raptors' first trip to the Conference Finals. The 2015-16 Raptors won 56 games, hosted the NBA All-Star Game, then survived two Game 7's en route to facing one of the best teams of the modern era in the Eastern Conference Final. In episode 2, the guys go through what at the time was the deepest playoff run from the Raptors, including two thrilling Game 7 wins at home. They talk Bismack Biyombo taking over the Heat series, the inability to win a game 1, Kyle's miracle shot and a meeting with King James in the Conference Finals.
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Sick of hearing all the ads? Subscribe to Soda Premium on Apple Podcasts to get rid of them!
Follow @Sportsfeld on Twitter! While you're there say hello to @theZubes and @JGoldsbie or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@sportsfeld.ca
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Trigger managed Ellis catch and shoot.It's Georgy Rainbow three doesn't go beambo with
a board. It's over who tosurvive? Toron wins It's first playoff series
since two thousand and one. They'rechanting, we want Cleveland. There's no
(00:22):
terrifs Toronto today advancing to the franchise'sfirst ever Eastern Conference Final. It's official
is it's the greatest season in Raptorshistory. We expect you and Demark to
drive this team. But in theabsence of Yonnis valentunis, what effect does
this Matt beyambo have on your abilityto win? I mean business, but
(00:43):
he's been like that all season.You know DV went down earlier with a
broken hand, and Vis did unbelievewith job and even now he's saying ready
they committed to the process tonight didunbelieve with job in sixteen seventeen. I
don't know how many blocks, butas a team effort, you know,
one man go down is next manup. You're committed to an organization for
the long term and for the firsttime you go to a club from finals.
(01:03):
What went into getting you here?Hard work, godcasion, let,
sticking with the process and just havea plow with it. You know it's
not gonna last ever, So haveflow with this, smile, enjoy it,
and enjoy it. Banging again ofbasketball sports fell It is Sportsfeld story
(01:32):
time. We are looking back tothe twenty sixteen Toronto Raptors playoff from we
left off in episode one, gettingyou through the regular season. The Raptors
with a oh Man, a twelveman deep rotation all the way from Kyle
Lowry, Demaro Rosen, and DemariCarroll all the way down to twenty two
year old rookie Norm Powell. Avery deep team, a very big bench
(01:53):
story in the team a year beforebench Mob, but Lowry and bench becoming
a very important piece of the puzzleand the rat There's a fifty six win
team start things off against the numberseven seed Indiana Pacers. And this is
one where I look back at itnow. At the time, I was
very confident. We're talking about atwo seed, a fifty six win team
(02:14):
against the Pacers, who were,I mean not that good. They were
the seven seeds, so how goodcould they possibly be? And Yet when
I look at the roster of theIndiana Pacers, the forty five and thirty
seven Indiana Pacers. I go PaulGeorge, George Hill, Monte Ellis,
Miles Turner, Ion Mahemi, SolomonHill, Rodney Stucky, CJ. Miles,
(02:34):
ty Lawson. I'm not convinced that'snot a better team in the Raptors
head. This was sort of likea big test of Raptor fan fundamentalism.
For lack of a better term,We're like, we always had to be
like we don't have a superstar,but that's okay, Like we're we're so
deep and well put together, butthen, like you know, one game
in Paul George just comes and fuckingkicks our ass. It's like, oh,
(03:00):
maybe maybe it is a bad thing. This was I think the season
was sort of a coming out partyfor Paul George most definitely really taking off
as a as a guy who couldfeasibly be a number one. As you
said, he had thirty three pointsin Game one, four steals. And
when I look at the Raptors Pacersmatch up, something that's different in this
(03:25):
than is different against the Heat isin Paul George and in George Hill,
you have guys that you can putup against Lowry and Derosan to really,
really really slow them down, andthey were slowed down in this series.
Yeah, Lowry. In Game one, Lowry shot fourteen percent from three twenty
(03:47):
three percent from the field, wentthree of thirteen from the field for eleven
points. Damarrow went five of nineteenzero for three from three, fourteen points.
Jay views the only guy again,this exactly what we're talking about.
Jav played twenty one minutes, buthad but had twelve and eleven, twelve
(04:09):
and nineteen eleven, twelve nineteen Sorry, yes, twelve and nineteen and twenty
one minutes. Crazy And just likethis was a This was a as I
said in the first episode, thiswas such an emotionally draining playoff run because
it was just so frustrating. Yes, absolutely, And Kyle was so good
(04:30):
this year. And you know,we as Rectors fans, you you've had
to defend Kyle Lowry against people likeeven me back in the day. You've
had to defend Kyle about against peoplewho who don't see the offensive numbers or
who only see the offensive numbers.And and for him to be an All
Star this year and to have averagedmore than twenty points a game, and
then to have been so good,it was like finally he's gonna put this
(04:53):
behind him, and then he andthen they came out, and it just
could not have been a worse possiblestart. I know, like I know
the Raptors have the Game one curseand it's a thing that existed to the
point of the title run. Butlike I have a real I have a
memory of I guess it would havebeen the twenty oh two thousand and seven
(05:15):
playoffs. I guess I was ona train because I was checking out Concordia,
where I would end up going toschool, and it was Game one
against the Nets. I remember Iwas on the train and like you couldn't
like stream games really at that point, so I was sort of refreshing the
box score and just slowly watching thatscore get more and more out of hand
(05:36):
and the Raptors being further and furtheraway. That feeling of Game ones has
never gone away. And it's justlike, I don't know. This series
was so back and forth for thefirst for every game, like no game
was no game in this Pacer serieswas closer than Game seven was decided by
(05:59):
five points, and that was theclosest game in the series. Everything else
was nine plus. Yeah, andthey traded wins. There was never anybody
that was up by more than onegame. It was very back in Game
five, which I do want totalk about because it's arguably, until last
year, probably the craziest playoff gamein Raptors history. That was side by
(06:20):
three points as well. Yeah,we can, we can sort of speed
through the game. Game two,they sort of bounced back. JV again
twenty three and fifteen, a goodKyle game where he goes eighteen seven and
nine. Uh, still hasn't hithe still he can't hit a three.
He goes over five from three,he goes four or thirteen from the field.
(06:41):
Damar even worse, five of eighteentwenty seven percent from the field only
ten points. So through two games, Raptors are one and one, and
DeRozan has been god awful and Lowryhas been pretty bad. Yeah, and
that was kind of this whole playoffs. Yeah, Larry would have. Larry
had his moments de Rose and Ifeel I had one or two moments.
(07:03):
But even up until the Cavs series, like when we get to the games,
like we're talking Kyle, we're nottalking tomorrow. Yeah, and and
and we're talking valanciunis this is thisis like, yeah, you were talking
about the birth of JV hive.You can you can go back and look
at this and even say, ifhe doesn't get hurt in this playoff run,
who knows what happens for sure?Yeah, Game three a little better
(07:27):
for everybody. Kyle twenty one,Damar twenty one tomorrow, Carol seventeen,
JV another ten fourteen rebounds. Whatis like, what is going on that
they can't stop Jonas Valentinis Like noneof these because the Pacers have nobody Yeah,
Eon Mehemi and then like it wasHassan Whiteside with the heat, like
they didn't have these teams didn't haveguys that could match his size. Yes,
(07:53):
and and they weren't playing Miles Turner. No. Uh, it's funny
that the Pacers they where he playedthirty one game. It's in this game,
but the Pacers almost seem ahead oftheir time a little bit with with
sort of this this lineup that youthink would probably be a little bit better
than it ends up being. Yeah, I think so. And also like
having a again in twenty sixteen,having a guy like Paul George is worth
(08:15):
its weight in goal. Yes,absolutely, after take Game three, one
eighty five. Things slawling along arepretty smoothly until Game four. The Pacers
take this one by seventeen. Asyou said, just blowouts, back to
back to back to back to back. Kyle and Damar again shooting low.
Kyle four of twelve, DeMar fourof fifteen, eight points for Damar only
(08:37):
twelve for Kyle. JV again sixof seven, also only twenty seven minutes.
But yeah, this get I knowthis series is Until game five,
this series was just like who wantsit? Who would like to win this
series? No kidding? And thenfive, as you mentioned, Game five
(09:01):
one of one of the early craziergames in Raptors in Raptors playoff history,
and this this was you know,Kyle and Damar had had really stomped out,
not stamped out with some host,but had made people a little sad
with the with the lack of production. And then in this game it looks
(09:22):
like it's all pretty much over theRaps. They go down fairly sizeable.
They enter the third down quite abit, and yeah they're going into the
fourth quarter. They were down fourteenI think, crazy, and then a
twenty five to nine fourth quarter ofthe Raptors defense turns it up. This
(09:46):
is the one that gets punctuated bythe by the Norm Powell dunk. The
dunk work. He should have usedtwo hands, and I'm still mad about
to this day that if you remembercorrectly, to tie the game, he's
running down the court and there's noone around him, and he dunks with
one hand. He has like asuper man dunk, and you can see
the ball is like slipping out ofhis hand, but he kept enough control
of it to dunk with one hand. Norman, they're looking with this score,
(10:22):
and then the ending of this gamewas I believe it was Solomon Hill
hits the three at the buzzer totie the game, but didn't get it
off in time, and so theywould review it and it would turn out
that it was no good. Thiswas also kind of the Norm Powell coming
out game. Yes, he playedtwenty eight minutes in this game, which
(10:45):
Twain Casey not won't do, butnot not really a guy that he was.
He was a big veterans guy.I mean you saw how much he
would play Luis Skula until the playoffs. The schooler does not play a much
of these playoff games, which iswhich is sort of wild. You mentioned
in the first epist how how quicklyhe tended to not fall off the map,
but how quickly the shine came offand he went from every game starter
(11:07):
to a guy who doesn't even playin the playoff run. Yeah. I
think his legs just caught up tohim. Yeah, but but yeah,
this was like, this was whenI was like, oh, Blake was
right, norm Powell might be good, and early Blake was right game and
not the last that would become thatwould become to define an era with the
Blake is right as a as away of life. And then you know,
(11:31):
it cannot be said enough times ifyou were a Ractors fan in this
era, that the worst thing youcould do is let any sort of confidence
carry over. I do remember inthat game, we were still in rehearsals
for Bad Jews for this and itwas a it was a Sunday afternoon game,
I think, or a Sunday eveninggame, and we were I remember
(11:54):
checking my phone about to go backinto the theater to rehearse and see that
they were down like whatever fourteen orsomething, to be like, well that's
over, and then on my nextbreak checking again, and they were winning
just being like, what what happened? And then you know, as you
(12:16):
said, any sort of any atthis in this era, any sort of
positivity immediately right back to the problems. Damar has eight points in the next
game, Kyle only has ten.I like, I am so happy that
this team sorts it out, becausethey they were in danger of never shaking
off this playoff run from their reputations. They really felt cursed. Yeah,
(12:39):
it truly felt like there was somethinghappening preventing the Raptors from winning. And
it might have been they'd never goodenough team Game seven Raptors at home.
I was pretty sure they were gonnawas this game May first, sixteen,
(13:01):
Yeah, no reason to believe theywould win. But they get DeMar takes
thirty two shots to score thirty points. Listen, whatever it takes, and
like they scraped by on this one. Another ten and fifteen from Jonas,
eleven and nine from Kyle, whoshort thirty five percent eighty nine eighty five.
(13:22):
The Raptors get a fucking break andwin a playoff series. This felt
like they had gotten away with asteal, and then I thought they were
going to lose pretty bad to theHeat. After this, this It was
so weird because it felt like theygot away with a steal, but also
felt like they were supposed to winbecause they were the two seed, and
it was like frustrating that they werestruggling so much, but like you're right,
(13:43):
in retrospect, it does kind offeel like they got away with one.
Your series stats Kyle fourteen points agame on thirty one percent shooting sixteen
percent from three, really ugly.DeMar just under eighteen points, propped up
by the couple thirty points games,but he was also in single they did
as much as he was in thethirties. Also thirty two percent shooting and
(14:05):
sixteen percent from three. JV averagethirteen and a half and twelve Corey Joseph
average ten and a half. Andthen Norm Powell, as you said,
a breakout series. He played eighteenminutes a game and was like the best
offensive wing, shooting just about fortythree and a half percent. He also
started Game one, So interesting wrinklesthere in Norm over the course of the
(14:26):
year, really earning trust to thepoint that he you could say, helped
wing the series. Yeah, Imean, I don't think that's a stretch.
His energy and he was the kindof like he was that sort of
cutting to the lane wing that theyRaptors so sorely needed push forward. Round
two was against the three seeded Heat. Their lineup was as follows. They
(14:48):
had Dwayne Wade Gore and Dragons,Joe Johnson, lu All Dang, Josh
Richardson and Justice Winslow, Josh McRoberts, Hassan Whiteside, you don't as Haslam
of course, Jerald Green and justa pinch of late career Amar Stodomyer in
there. Oh yeah, I forgotAmaro, Oh yeah. And Amari was
like unplayable. He was he barelyhit. He was so bad. He
(15:11):
is Billy on the floor in thisin this rotation. But of course the
Raptors lose Game one, no questions. But Game one was punctuated by the
Kyle Lowry half court buzzer beater tosend it to overtime, to three point
game Raptors need a three here totie it and send it into overtime.
Do they give the foul? Iwould Lowry scoops it up? Lowry let
(15:37):
it fly, Kyle, Kyle Lowry. He makes Kyle Lowry struggling for the
(16:00):
last thirty days with his shot,he lets it fly. That three is
good. I remember I was sayinglast week how I watched a lot of
these games, catching the end ofthem in a bar by myself in Montreal
and just sitting there assuming the gamewas over. They lost another game one,
they're gonna lose. The heat peoplehad filed out of them, had
(16:23):
left the bar already, and thenLowry puts up this half court heave that
goes in and it almost felt likeit didn't happen, and like, I'm
pretty sure if you look at thefilm of the shot, they're like the
crowd has left the acc and theneveryone's like, oh shit, we have
overtime. Now that three he's onlythree point make of the game, he
(16:45):
had seven points. Another huge JVgame. He goes twenty four and fourteen
in this one, which is whichis crazy. Yeah, Whiteside just could
not handle him and played forty oneminutes, which is very unlike JV as
well, that's what white Side.It's a bum. Yes, agreed.
Uh. Norm Powell starts this gameas well and only gets two points in
twenty one minutes. He was hewas really like he's still has a reputation
(17:08):
as a streaky guy, but hewas really really hot and cold as a
rookie. As a rookie, hereally was. You also get nineteen from
Terrence Ross, who really is quietlya really important part of that bench we
talked about. He really shows upin a lot of these games. Well,
I mean, he was the onlyguy really who, like other than
(17:30):
occasionally Patrick Patterson, he's the onlyguy who consistently gave you, like consistent
three points shooting are Gonaby on thisentire roster going back, I really can't
believe how good JV is throughout itsslay off run until he gets hurt.
It's pretty insane after their Game twoKings. They get crushed in game one,
(17:51):
but they always come back another overtimegame. I'd forgotten this so much
overtime. This was a great series. This is honestly until they uh take
there the next steps. I remembercoming out of this being like that was
the best Raptor series I've never seen. Starting to come around a little bit
for Kyle seven of twenty two eighteenpoints, DeMar nine of twenty four for
(18:15):
twenty points. Damar Carroll leads allscorers and the Raptors with twenty one.
This was a big. Everybody neededto chip in again normally two, but
another overtime game. Crazy they thinkin twenty twenty they played an overtime,
but neither team broke one hundred pointstruly, and like it's kind of you
know, we keep saying like,oh, it's coming around for Kyle,
(18:36):
it's coming around for DeMar. That'sprobably why we never won, like us
just having to say, oh,it's coming around, it's coming around,
rather than like you watch a teamthat wins a title and it's like,
oh, kaw I just kicked everyone'sass. Yes, uh, the Raptors
do put they put together back toback wins because Kyle Lowry has thirty three
(18:59):
points in Game three, Look atthat, good Kyle. You know,
I think I was guilty of thisas well, But you know, the
impressions made in this playoff run reallystuck, and not just this one,
but the one before and the onesup come after, really do stick with
(19:21):
him. As his reputation to somepeople to this day, Yeah for sure.
I mean even I feel like he'sstarting to get out of it.
But even last year at the titlerun, it was like kN Kauhai win
a title with Kyle Lowry as hispoint guard, which is so stupid.
Clearly, yes, but yeah,but like yeah, of course it stuck
with them. This game also notablefor when JV got hurt, Yes,
(19:44):
midway through the game, when hegot hurt. In twenty two minutes,
he had sixteen and twelve, AndI remember this was like a very typical
Raptors feeling of like they won Gamethree, but without JV, they're fucked.
Yes, but that's probably it is. Probably the is sort of how
it would feel because you weren't allowedto have good things if you were a
Raptors fan. But what we didn'tknow at the time was Jav's injury would
(20:11):
spawn maybe the greatest two week runin Raptors history. Yes, of bizmac
Biombo. He moved into the startinglineup and immediately puts up thirteen and thirteen
in a loss. In Game four, We go up, we go back
down. Kyle and DeMar combine fornineteen points on six of twenty eight shooting.
It was so hard to watch Kyleand Demarrow struggle like this, It
(20:36):
really was, And it was almostit was clockwork too. Yes, you
knew what was going to happen.Every time they went up, they would
come back down, but they didbounce back. They do bounce back because
they do game five. Tomorrogos forthirty four, Kyle goes for twenty five.
Biz Mac puts up ten is therehas there ever been a Toronto athlete
(20:57):
who is still so be loved bydoing by being good for like six days
he showed up for the playoff rontlast year and that's what I made and
he and like, good for him. He parlayed this into like a seventy
million dollar contract, so I'm gladwe didn't give it to him, but
like good, good for Bizz,But like it's still wilds me that he
(21:18):
is so popular in Toronto and literallywas good for I'm like ten games,
uh, low key part of thisrun. And I think this is something
that people who have always been proKyle will point out, like always racking
up rebounds and steals and stuff aswell. In this game ten rebounds,
(21:41):
six assists. That's like he's apoint guard playing against Goran Dragons and Dwayne
Waite. That is not easy todo. I feel like Toronto Raptor fans
and like I know for me,certainly, I think as the team has
gotten better over the last four years, the fans have also gotten smarter about
that kind of stuff, whereas,like I do think back then it was
very much like look at the scoresand like, look how many points they
(22:02):
scored. But now I think alot of Raptors fans and I think we've
had to because we spend all ourtime defending Kyle Lowry. But like now
we're always like, look at hisassistant rebound totals, and this is this
next two games. Game six,in game seven is when I had hoped
that the Kyle Lowry talk would stop. He puts up. He puts up
thirty six in Game six in aloss, which is so it goes damorrow
(22:26):
at twenty three and nobody else evengets double figures because they got, they
get. They lose by twelve.But Game seven until last year, until
Kauai I and and basically until Kyle'sGame six against the Warriors, even this
(22:47):
was my favorite Raptors performance is KyleLowry in Game seven against the Heat.
I remember watch I believe this wasa Sunday afternoon game, so I'm pretty
sure I watched it between shows.It's like we had a Matt name,
we had a night show, andit just happened to work out that,
like I was able to fit thegame in between of the timing, and
(23:07):
I remember being so nervous sitting inthe dressing room watching this game with my
computer, and just like it withinlike by by halftime, you're like,
okay, this is done. Likethey weren't up by that much and it
was still tight. But I never, for all of the doubt that Raptors
fans have ingrained in their souls,I never thought they were losing this one.
(23:32):
This is this is Kyle Lowry's crowningperformance, thirty five nine assists,
seven boards and four steals. Andnot just that Bismac beyond by the way
seventeen and sixteen, of course,was this the Was this the game where
Bismack has the He has the blockon the one end and he chases it
down and dunks on the other end. Everyone went nuts, bisness fucking Babo.
(23:55):
I can't believe it, but likepeople went nuts. Are yeah,
no its game five was the onewhere he blocks weight on one end,
then runs the floor and dunks onthe other end, and the a sec
just exploded. Joseph picked up hisfirst foul de rosen with Lowry Biss Patterson
(24:18):
and Carol DeMar why it open,Look doesn't put the thunderous slam big business
eight points four rebounds way to theraft denied in the finger wag the other
(24:40):
way to bis. Yes, youjust saw that. Get it done at
bull Fence. The big the bigpart of it here. And and to
your point of the Raptors really holdingthis off is they go into the half
(25:00):
up six, they go into thefourth up four, and they pull off
a thirty to eleven fourth quarter toclose this out. It was so uncharacteristic
as to the reputation they had earnedto that point that they had now gone
through two game sevens, they hadoutlasted two teams that they gave too many
(25:22):
opportunities to and they had finally gottenthemselves a conference finals matchup. Yeah.
And it was also it very muchfelt like it was very much happy to
be there conference finals too, yes, which which I mean as a positive.
Yeah, like the beating getting throughthe first two rounds the comference finals
(25:45):
to play Lebron and the Calves kindof like you know what, what it
was exactly what we talked about lastyear before the finals until the finals start,
was like, oh, we're actuallygonna win the finals. Yes,
yes, absolutely so. The Ractorshave vanquished the seven seed Pacers and the
three seed heed. It took fourteengames, but they did it. The
(26:07):
only problem is waiting for them.On the other side is the eight and
oh number one seed Lebron James andthe Cleveland Cavaliers. There is reason for
hope and it wasn't all bad.We will get into that in the next
episode. Let's Ports Falls story TimeSports the
Trigger managed Ellis catch and shoot.It's Georgy Rainbow three doesn't go beambo with
a board. It's over who tosurvive? Toron wins It's first playoff series
since two thousand and one. They'rechanting, we want Cleveland. There's no
(00:22):
terrifs Toronto today advancing to the franchise'sfirst ever Eastern Conference Final. It's official
is it's the greatest season in Raptorshistory. We expect you and Demark to
drive this team. But in theabsence of Yonnis valentunis, what effect does
this Matt beyambo have on your abilityto win? I mean business, but
(00:43):
he's been like that all season.You know DV went down earlier with a
broken hand, and Vis did unbelievewith job and even now he's saying ready
they committed to the process tonight didunbelieve with job in sixteen seventeen. I
don't know how many blocks, butas a team effort, you know,
one man go down is next manup. You're committed to an organization for
the long term and for the firsttime you go to a club from finals.
(01:03):
What went into getting you here?Hard work, godcasion, let,
sticking with the process and just havea plow with it. You know it's
not gonna last ever, So haveflow with this, smile, enjoy it,
and enjoy it. Banging again ofbasketball sports fell It is Sportsfeld story
(01:32):
time. We are looking back tothe twenty sixteen Toronto Raptors playoff from we
left off in episode one, gettingyou through the regular season. The Raptors
with a oh Man, a twelveman deep rotation all the way from Kyle
Lowry, Demaro Rosen, and DemariCarroll all the way down to twenty two
year old rookie Norm Powell. Avery deep team, a very big bench
(01:53):
story in the team a year beforebench Mob, but Lowry and bench becoming
a very important piece of the puzzleand the rat There's a fifty six win
team start things off against the numberseven seed Indiana Pacers. And this is
one where I look back at itnow. At the time, I was
very confident. We're talking about atwo seed, a fifty six win team
(02:14):
against the Pacers, who were,I mean not that good. They were
the seven seeds, so how goodcould they possibly be? And Yet when
I look at the roster of theIndiana Pacers, the forty five and thirty
seven Indiana Pacers. I go PaulGeorge, George Hill, Monte Ellis,
Miles Turner, Ion Mahemi, SolomonHill, Rodney Stucky, CJ. Miles,
(02:34):
ty Lawson. I'm not convinced that'snot a better team in the Raptors
head. This was sort of likea big test of Raptor fan fundamentalism.
For lack of a better term,We're like, we always had to be
like we don't have a superstar,but that's okay, Like we're we're so
deep and well put together, butthen, like you know, one game
in Paul George just comes and fuckingkicks our ass. It's like, oh,
(03:00):
maybe maybe it is a bad thing. This was I think the season
was sort of a coming out partyfor Paul George most definitely really taking off
as a as a guy who couldfeasibly be a number one. As you
said, he had thirty three pointsin Game one, four steals. And
when I look at the Raptors Pacersmatch up, something that's different in this
(03:25):
than is different against the Heat isin Paul George and in George Hill,
you have guys that you can putup against Lowry and Derosan to really,
really really slow them down, andthey were slowed down in this series.
Yeah, Lowry. In Game one, Lowry shot fourteen percent from three twenty
(03:47):
three percent from the field, wentthree of thirteen from the field for eleven
points. Damarrow went five of nineteenzero for three from three, fourteen points.
Jay views the only guy again,this exactly what we're talking about.
Jav played twenty one minutes, buthad but had twelve and eleven, twelve
(04:09):
and nineteen eleven, twelve nineteen Sorry, yes, twelve and nineteen and twenty
one minutes. Crazy And just likethis was a This was a as I
said in the first episode, thiswas such an emotionally draining playoff run because
it was just so frustrating. Yes, absolutely, And Kyle was so good
(04:30):
this year. And you know,we as Rectors fans, you you've had
to defend Kyle Lowry against people likeeven me back in the day. You've
had to defend Kyle about against peoplewho who don't see the offensive numbers or
who only see the offensive numbers.And and for him to be an All
Star this year and to have averagedmore than twenty points a game, and
then to have been so good,it was like finally he's gonna put this
(04:53):
behind him, and then he andthen they came out, and it just
could not have been a worse possiblestart. I know, like I know
the Raptors have the Game one curseand it's a thing that existed to the
point of the title run. Butlike I have a real I have a
memory of I guess it would havebeen the twenty oh two thousand and seven
(05:15):
playoffs. I guess I was ona train because I was checking out Concordia,
where I would end up going toschool, and it was Game one
against the Nets. I remember Iwas on the train and like you couldn't
like stream games really at that point, so I was sort of refreshing the
box score and just slowly watching thatscore get more and more out of hand
(05:36):
and the Raptors being further and furtheraway. That feeling of Game ones has
never gone away. And it's justlike, I don't know. This series
was so back and forth for thefirst for every game, like no game
was no game in this Pacer serieswas closer than Game seven was decided by
(05:59):
five points, and that was theclosest game in the series. Everything else
was nine plus. Yeah, andthey traded wins. There was never anybody
that was up by more than onegame. It was very back in Game
five, which I do want totalk about because it's arguably, until last
year, probably the craziest playoff gamein Raptors history. That was side by
(06:20):
three points as well. Yeah,we can, we can sort of speed
through the game. Game two,they sort of bounced back. JV again
twenty three and fifteen, a goodKyle game where he goes eighteen seven and
nine. Uh, still hasn't hithe still he can't hit a three.
He goes over five from three,he goes four or thirteen from the field.
(06:41):
Damar even worse, five of eighteentwenty seven percent from the field only
ten points. So through two games, Raptors are one and one, and
DeRozan has been god awful and Lowryhas been pretty bad. Yeah, and
that was kind of this whole playoffs. Yeah, Larry would have. Larry
had his moments de Rose and Ifeel I had one or two moments.
(07:03):
But even up until the Cavs series, like when we get to the games,
like we're talking Kyle, we're nottalking tomorrow. Yeah, and and
and we're talking valanciunis this is thisis like, yeah, you were talking
about the birth of JV hive.You can you can go back and look
at this and even say, ifhe doesn't get hurt in this playoff run,
who knows what happens for sure?Yeah, Game three a little better
(07:27):
for everybody. Kyle twenty one,Damar twenty one tomorrow, Carol seventeen,
JV another ten fourteen rebounds. Whatis like, what is going on that
they can't stop Jonas Valentinis Like noneof these because the Pacers have nobody Yeah,
Eon Mehemi and then like it wasHassan Whiteside with the heat, like
they didn't have these teams didn't haveguys that could match his size. Yes,
(07:53):
and and they weren't playing Miles Turner. No. Uh, it's funny
that the Pacers they where he playedthirty one game. It's in this game,
but the Pacers almost seem ahead oftheir time a little bit with with
sort of this this lineup that youthink would probably be a little bit better
than it ends up being. Yeah, I think so. And also like
having a again in twenty sixteen,having a guy like Paul George is worth
(08:15):
its weight in goal. Yes,absolutely, after take Game three, one
eighty five. Things slawling along arepretty smoothly until Game four. The Pacers
take this one by seventeen. Asyou said, just blowouts, back to
back to back to back to back. Kyle and Damar again shooting low.
Kyle four of twelve, DeMar fourof fifteen, eight points for Damar only
(08:37):
twelve for Kyle. JV again sixof seven, also only twenty seven minutes.
But yeah, this get I knowthis series is Until game five,
this series was just like who wantsit? Who would like to win this
series? No kidding? And thenfive, as you mentioned, Game five
(09:01):
one of one of the early craziergames in Raptors in Raptors playoff history,
and this this was you know,Kyle and Damar had had really stomped out,
not stamped out with some host,but had made people a little sad
with the with the lack of production. And then in this game it looks
(09:22):
like it's all pretty much over theRaps. They go down fairly sizeable.
They enter the third down quite abit, and yeah they're going into the
fourth quarter. They were down fourteenI think, crazy, and then a
twenty five to nine fourth quarter ofthe Raptors defense turns it up. This
(09:46):
is the one that gets punctuated bythe by the Norm Powell dunk. The
dunk work. He should have usedtwo hands, and I'm still mad about
to this day that if you remembercorrectly, to tie the game, he's
running down the court and there's noone around him, and he dunks with
one hand. He has like asuper man dunk, and you can see
the ball is like slipping out ofhis hand, but he kept enough control
of it to dunk with one hand. Norman, they're looking with this score,
(10:22):
and then the ending of this gamewas I believe it was Solomon Hill
hits the three at the buzzer totie the game, but didn't get it
off in time, and so theywould review it and it would turn out
that it was no good. Thiswas also kind of the Norm Powell coming
out game. Yes, he playedtwenty eight minutes in this game, which
(10:45):
Twain Casey not won't do, butnot not really a guy that he was.
He was a big veterans guy.I mean you saw how much he
would play Luis Skula until the playoffs. The schooler does not play a much
of these playoff games, which iswhich is sort of wild. You mentioned
in the first epist how how quicklyhe tended to not fall off the map,
but how quickly the shine came offand he went from every game starter
(11:07):
to a guy who doesn't even playin the playoff run. Yeah. I
think his legs just caught up tohim. Yeah, but but yeah,
this was like, this was whenI was like, oh, Blake was
right, norm Powell might be good, and early Blake was right game and
not the last that would become thatwould become to define an era with the
Blake is right as a as away of life. And then you know,
(11:31):
it cannot be said enough times ifyou were a Ractors fan in this
era, that the worst thing youcould do is let any sort of confidence
carry over. I do remember inthat game, we were still in rehearsals
for Bad Jews for this and itwas a it was a Sunday afternoon game,
I think, or a Sunday eveninggame, and we were I remember
(11:54):
checking my phone about to go backinto the theater to rehearse and see that
they were down like whatever fourteen orsomething, to be like, well that's
over, and then on my nextbreak checking again, and they were winning
just being like, what what happened? And then you know, as you
(12:16):
said, any sort of any atthis in this era, any sort of
positivity immediately right back to the problems. Damar has eight points in the next
game, Kyle only has ten.I like, I am so happy that
this team sorts it out, becausethey they were in danger of never shaking
off this playoff run from their reputations. They really felt cursed. Yeah,
(12:39):
it truly felt like there was somethinghappening preventing the Raptors from winning. And
it might have been they'd never goodenough team Game seven Raptors at home.
I was pretty sure they were gonnawas this game May first, sixteen,
(13:01):
Yeah, no reason to believe theywould win. But they get DeMar takes
thirty two shots to score thirty points. Listen, whatever it takes, and
like they scraped by on this one. Another ten and fifteen from Jonas,
eleven and nine from Kyle, whoshort thirty five percent eighty nine eighty five.
(13:22):
The Raptors get a fucking break andwin a playoff series. This felt
like they had gotten away with asteal, and then I thought they were
going to lose pretty bad to theHeat. After this, this It was
so weird because it felt like theygot away with a steal, but also
felt like they were supposed to winbecause they were the two seed, and
it was like frustrating that they werestruggling so much, but like you're right,
(13:43):
in retrospect, it does kind offeel like they got away with one.
Your series stats Kyle fourteen points agame on thirty one percent shooting sixteen
percent from three, really ugly.DeMar just under eighteen points, propped up
by the couple thirty points games,but he was also in single they did
as much as he was in thethirties. Also thirty two percent shooting and
(14:05):
sixteen percent from three. JV averagethirteen and a half and twelve Corey Joseph
average ten and a half. Andthen Norm Powell, as you said,
a breakout series. He played eighteenminutes a game and was like the best
offensive wing, shooting just about fortythree and a half percent. He also
started Game one, So interesting wrinklesthere in Norm over the course of the
(14:26):
year, really earning trust to thepoint that he you could say, helped
wing the series. Yeah, Imean, I don't think that's a stretch.
His energy and he was the kindof like he was that sort of
cutting to the lane wing that theyRaptors so sorely needed push forward. Round
two was against the three seeded Heat. Their lineup was as follows. They
(14:48):
had Dwayne Wade Gore and Dragons,Joe Johnson, lu All Dang, Josh
Richardson and Justice Winslow, Josh McRoberts, Hassan Whiteside, you don't as Haslam
of course, Jerald Green and justa pinch of late career Amar Stodomyer in
there. Oh yeah, I forgotAmaro, Oh yeah. And Amari was
like unplayable. He was he barelyhit. He was so bad. He
(15:11):
is Billy on the floor in thisin this rotation. But of course the
Raptors lose Game one, no questions. But Game one was punctuated by the
Kyle Lowry half court buzzer beater tosend it to overtime, to three point
game Raptors need a three here totie it and send it into overtime.
Do they give the foul? Iwould Lowry scoops it up? Lowry let
(15:37):
it fly, Kyle, Kyle Lowry. He makes Kyle Lowry struggling for the
(16:00):
last thirty days with his shot,he lets it fly. That three is
good. I remember I was sayinglast week how I watched a lot of
these games, catching the end ofthem in a bar by myself in Montreal
and just sitting there assuming the gamewas over. They lost another game one,
they're gonna lose. The heat peoplehad filed out of them, had
(16:23):
left the bar already, and thenLowry puts up this half court heave that
goes in and it almost felt likeit didn't happen, and like, I'm
pretty sure if you look at thefilm of the shot, they're like the
crowd has left the acc and theneveryone's like, oh shit, we have
overtime. Now that three he's onlythree point make of the game, he
(16:45):
had seven points. Another huge JVgame. He goes twenty four and fourteen
in this one, which is whichis crazy. Yeah, Whiteside just could
not handle him and played forty oneminutes, which is very unlike JV as
well, that's what white Side.It's a bum. Yes, agreed.
Uh. Norm Powell starts this gameas well and only gets two points in
twenty one minutes. He was hewas really like he's still has a reputation
(17:08):
as a streaky guy, but hewas really really hot and cold as a
rookie. As a rookie, hereally was. You also get nineteen from
Terrence Ross, who really is quietlya really important part of that bench we
talked about. He really shows upin a lot of these games. Well,
I mean, he was the onlyguy really who, like other than
(17:30):
occasionally Patrick Patterson, he's the onlyguy who consistently gave you, like consistent
three points shooting are Gonaby on thisentire roster going back, I really can't
believe how good JV is throughout itsslay off run until he gets hurt.
It's pretty insane after their Game twoKings. They get crushed in game one,
(17:51):
but they always come back another overtimegame. I'd forgotten this so much
overtime. This was a great series. This is honestly until they uh take
there the next steps. I remembercoming out of this being like that was
the best Raptor series I've never seen. Starting to come around a little bit
for Kyle seven of twenty two eighteenpoints, DeMar nine of twenty four for
(18:15):
twenty points. Damar Carroll leads allscorers and the Raptors with twenty one.
This was a big. Everybody neededto chip in again normally two, but
another overtime game. Crazy they thinkin twenty twenty they played an overtime,
but neither team broke one hundred pointstruly, and like it's kind of you
know, we keep saying like,oh, it's coming around for Kyle,
(18:36):
it's coming around for DeMar. That'sprobably why we never won, like us
just having to say, oh,it's coming around, it's coming around,
rather than like you watch a teamthat wins a title and it's like,
oh, kaw I just kicked everyone'sass. Yes, uh, the Raptors
do put they put together back toback wins because Kyle Lowry has thirty three
(18:59):
points in Game three, Look atthat, good Kyle. You know,
I think I was guilty of thisas well, But you know, the
impressions made in this playoff run reallystuck, and not just this one,
but the one before and the onesup come after, really do stick with
(19:21):
him. As his reputation to somepeople to this day, Yeah for sure.
I mean even I feel like he'sstarting to get out of it.
But even last year at the titlerun, it was like kN Kauhai win
a title with Kyle Lowry as hispoint guard, which is so stupid.
Clearly, yes, but yeah,but like yeah, of course it stuck
with them. This game also notablefor when JV got hurt, Yes,
(19:44):
midway through the game, when hegot hurt. In twenty two minutes,
he had sixteen and twelve, AndI remember this was like a very typical
Raptors feeling of like they won Gamethree, but without JV, they're fucked.
Yes, but that's probably it is. Probably the is sort of how
it would feel because you weren't allowedto have good things if you were a
Raptors fan. But what we didn'tknow at the time was Jav's injury would
(20:11):
spawn maybe the greatest two week runin Raptors history. Yes, of bizmac
Biombo. He moved into the startinglineup and immediately puts up thirteen and thirteen
in a loss. In Game four, We go up, we go back
down. Kyle and DeMar combine fornineteen points on six of twenty eight shooting.
It was so hard to watch Kyleand Demarrow struggle like this, It
(20:36):
really was, And it was almostit was clockwork too. Yes, you
knew what was going to happen.Every time they went up, they would
come back down, but they didbounce back. They do bounce back because
they do game five. Tomorrogos forthirty four, Kyle goes for twenty five.
Biz Mac puts up ten is therehas there ever been a Toronto athlete
(20:57):
who is still so be loved bydoing by being good for like six days
he showed up for the playoff rontlast year and that's what I made and
he and like, good for him. He parlayed this into like a seventy
million dollar contract, so I'm gladwe didn't give it to him, but
like good, good for Bizz,But like it's still wilds me that he
(21:18):
is so popular in Toronto and literallywas good for I'm like ten games,
uh, low key part of thisrun. And I think this is something
that people who have always been proKyle will point out, like always racking
up rebounds and steals and stuff aswell. In this game ten rebounds,
(21:41):
six assists. That's like he's apoint guard playing against Goran Dragons and Dwayne
Waite. That is not easy todo. I feel like Toronto Raptor fans
and like I know for me,certainly, I think as the team has
gotten better over the last four years, the fans have also gotten smarter about
that kind of stuff, whereas,like I do think back then it was
very much like look at the scoresand like, look how many points they
(22:02):
scored. But now I think alot of Raptors fans and I think we've
had to because we spend all ourtime defending Kyle Lowry. But like now
we're always like, look at hisassistant rebound totals, and this is this
next two games. Game six,in game seven is when I had hoped
that the Kyle Lowry talk would stop. He puts up. He puts up
thirty six in Game six in aloss, which is so it goes damorrow
(22:26):
at twenty three and nobody else evengets double figures because they got, they
get. They lose by twelve.But Game seven until last year, until
Kauai I and and basically until Kyle'sGame six against the Warriors, even this
(22:47):
was my favorite Raptors performance is KyleLowry in Game seven against the Heat.
I remember watch I believe this wasa Sunday afternoon game, so I'm pretty
sure I watched it between shows.It's like we had a Matt name,
we had a night show, andit just happened to work out that,
like I was able to fit thegame in between of the timing, and
(23:07):
I remember being so nervous sitting inthe dressing room watching this game with my
computer, and just like it withinlike by by halftime, you're like,
okay, this is done. Likethey weren't up by that much and it
was still tight. But I never, for all of the doubt that Raptors
fans have ingrained in their souls,I never thought they were losing this one.
(23:32):
This is this is Kyle Lowry's crowningperformance, thirty five nine assists,
seven boards and four steals. Andnot just that Bismac beyond by the way
seventeen and sixteen, of course,was this the Was this the game where
Bismack has the He has the blockon the one end and he chases it
down and dunks on the other end. Everyone went nuts, bisness fucking Babo.
(23:55):
I can't believe it, but likepeople went nuts. Are yeah,
no its game five was the onewhere he blocks weight on one end,
then runs the floor and dunks onthe other end, and the a sec
just exploded. Joseph picked up hisfirst foul de rosen with Lowry Biss Patterson
(24:18):
and Carol DeMar why it open,Look doesn't put the thunderous slam big business
eight points four rebounds way to theraft denied in the finger wag the other
(24:40):
way to bis. Yes, youjust saw that. Get it done at
bull Fence. The big the bigpart of it here. And and to
your point of the Raptors really holdingthis off is they go into the half
(25:00):
up six, they go into thefourth up four, and they pull off
a thirty to eleven fourth quarter toclose this out. It was so uncharacteristic
as to the reputation they had earnedto that point that they had now gone
through two game sevens, they hadoutlasted two teams that they gave too many
(25:22):
opportunities to and they had finally gottenthemselves a conference finals matchup. Yeah.
And it was also it very muchfelt like it was very much happy to
be there conference finals too, yes, which which I mean as a positive.
Yeah, like the beating getting throughthe first two rounds the comference finals
(25:45):
to play Lebron and the Calves kindof like you know what, what it
was exactly what we talked about lastyear before the finals until the finals start,
was like, oh, we're actuallygonna win the finals. Yes,
yes, absolutely so. The Ractorshave vanquished the seven seed Pacers and the
three seed heed. It took fourteengames, but they did it. The
(26:07):
only problem is waiting for them.On the other side is the eight and
oh number one seed Lebron James andthe Cleveland Cavaliers. There is reason for
hope and it wasn't all bad.We will get into that in the next
episode. Let's Ports Falls story TimeSports the
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