The Raptors’ thrilling overtime win against the defending champs goes a long way in validating their blockbuster offseason trade.
TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors had seen this movie before.
When Kevin Durant hit a completely absurd turnaround fall-away 3-pointer in the corner to tie the game at 119 in the final seconds of regulation, he completely wiped away what had been an 18-point Raptors lead. In the moment, it seemed like the cap on another night of succumbing to pressure for a franchise that has become synonymous with falling apart when the lights are brightest.
But these are not the same, old Raptors. That team would’ve folded when Durant forced overtime. But that team didn’t have Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green.
The Warriors’ Kevin Durant scored 51 points in Thursday’s loss against the Raptors. He is the second Warriors player in the past 50 seasons with three consecutive 40-point games. (Stephen Curry is the other, in February 2016.)
Leonard still isn’t the player he was when he last faced the Warriors in 2017, but executives around the league say he’s close, and Toronto is reaping the benefits.
So yes, this was only November, and yes, the Raptors should not have put themselves in the position they wound up in, the result — a 131-128 victory at Scotiabank Arena against a Golden State Warriors team that was admittedly without Stephen Curry and Draymond Green — was a step in the direction this team needs to take if it wants to face the Warriors again in June.
“I think that when a team gets kind of dragged into overtime like that… a lot of times, that team will feel sorry for themselves, and not come out and play,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said. “We didn’t [do that]. I was proud of them for that, to take the emotional punch there in the gut, and take a few deep breaths there at the end of the game and go back out there and play the overtime the way they did.”
The win pushed the Raptors to an NBA-best 19-4 this season and improved their current winning streak to a season-best seven games. But it also exposed all of the flaws that have so many questioning whether Toronto — despite its record — truly is the favorite to get out of the East.
Kyle Lowry, one of the main culprits in those collapses of the past, didn’t allow himself to shoot a wide-open 3-pointer with three minutes to go, and was a dismal 4-for-14 on the night. Toronto, in general, felt like a team that was struggling to breathe as it attempted to move to heights it hadn’t reached before.
But this time, the Raptors had a pair of players, in Leonard and Green, who have been in every possible situation on a basketball court before. They’ve played in the crucible that is the NBA Finals — and came out the other side with rings on their fingers.
In many ways, their former team, the San Antonio Spurs, is everything these Raptors haven’t been.
