Everything Round 2: Raps vs Sixers

[KeonClark]

lol judging by my facebook news feed, everyone became a raptor fan at around 9:30 pm eastern last night

[planetmars]

I love the internet

[DanH]

Hallelujah. All praise Kawhi.

Kawhi is indescribably good, even aside from the shot. And the shot was a miracle.

Lowry was awesome in this one, even with a quiet night on the box score.

Every played pretty well, I thought. Siakam was good in spurts when they needed his scoring but overall had a quiet night. Serge was the standout performance beyond the two stars. What a game from him. Ballsy call by Nurse playing him so much late (personally I'd have yanked him for Green but they held on, can't complain), good call to get him involved in the primary action more after they started cheating off him, and generally very solid rotations with a nice shortened rotation, the right players (mostly) initiating the action, and a good defensive strategy on Embiid.

[G__Deane]

What a shot! The greatest moment in Raptor history, Sunday May 12, 2019. Kawhi Leonard has forever cemented his status as Playoff Kawhi. I purposely avoided reading and commenting on RR during the game or even last night as the anxiety level was thru the roof....The first 47:59:56 of the game was some of the ugliest basketball seen so far this playoff run. But man, those last 4 seconds and in particular when the ball bounced up and around the rim before dropping thru were absolutely magical.

Not much time to celebrate as the Bucks have been waiting for our series to finish. We will need to play solid at both ends of the court as I don't think 92 points will be enough to win any games.

Agreed but important to note that in all 8 Raptor victories so far, they have held the opposition to under 100 points.

[Jclaw]

Called it?

Must be interesting to be in sports management. Something as simple as a half rotation of spin on the ball may lead to a miss that decides the end of the game for either team. Does that make you choose between stay the course vs blow it up? You might think the same could have been said for last year when several tip ins failed and we lost game one to Cleveland by inches. But then we proceeded to lose the next 3 fairly convincingly. Will be interesting to see what happens to both team either way. Too much time before game 7...mind is wandering.

[Zak24gege]

This game will be a nail biter IMO. We have two teams facing elimination, one and done NCAA tournament style. The biggest factors to watch are rebounding and quality of shots.

Thursday the Raptors were out-rebounded 52 - 34. Gasol had 2 defensive rebounds and Ibaka had only 3. Kawhi on the other hand had 11. The Sixers had 16 offensive boards. This is where Simmons feasted over our smaller guards. A good e xample showed Siakam failing to box out Butler on a 3 point (rebound, shot plus foul) put back preferring to leak out for a potential run-out. If the team collectively does not take responsibility and make an effort to keep the Sixers off the boards, we could expect similar result.

On offence, we are best when forcing turnovers and pushing the pace. When that's not the case, our half court offence relies heavily on iso, however if that didn't work, the ball would be passed out late in the shot clock and we are then forced to take rushed 3P'ers. I have nightmares of Ibaka taking 3's or Kyle bombing away from 35' +. The first half 3/17 from 3 was a combination of just missing good shots but also a number of poor shots resulting from a stagnant half court offence.

It confounds me how a very experienced, veteran team like the Raptors could look so disorganized and unprepared on both sides of the ball in game 6. Whatever the problem was, it needs to be eliminated in time for Game 7. We have shown in Games 1 and 5 that this is a very good team. We also have had a solid win with clutch shooting to win a close game 4. I would like to think that our experience and veteran leadership is going to prevail. This game will define this team and for the older players be a statement on their legacy. Rebounding and shot quality. Go Raptors Go!

A nail biter I think adequately describes the game last night. Also I was proud of the way the team went after offensive rebounds and for the most part limited the Sixers to one shot. For the first time in the series the Raptors out-rebounded Philly with a significant edge in offensive boards. Serge, Marc and Pascal along with the others really worked hard on the glass.

As far as shooting goes, let's just say we made the shot that mattered most and leave it at that.

[Zak24gege]

What a shot! The greatest moment in Raptor history, Sunday May 12, 2019. Kawhi Leonard has forever cemented his status as Playoff Kawhi. I purposely avoided reading and commenting on RR during the game or even last night as the anxiety level was thru the roof....The first 47:59:56 of the game was some of the ugliest basketball seen so far this playoff run. But man, those last 4 seconds and in particular when the ball bounced up and around the rim before dropping thru were absolutely magical.

Not much time to celebrate as the Bucks have been waiting for our series to finish. We will need to play solid at both ends of the court as I don't think 92 points will be enough to win any games.

[G__Deane]

A couple of notes.
Embiid with a less than overpowering game but still lead the team in scoring. Didn't even participate in the full warmup again, couldn't do full burn.
Butler was finally kept relatively in check with 16 points.

Kawhi 243 points in the series (3rd most ever)
Sixers were gifted free throws 30-19 that's hard to overcome.

[G__Deane]

Watching endless replays of The Dagger this morning, even non-Rap fans are texting me saying "what a game"
The view from the other end of the of the court is awesome; not a single fan in the arena is even on their feet for that shot or any of the four bounces. No one thought that was going in....

Then, fandemonium

[KHD]

That was insane! We really are not worthy.

The anxiety level was at an all time high. Up 9, down 1, up 4, down 3... just back and forth. Another putrid offensive game from our guys. Guys were scared.. guys missed clean looks. Defense was great as usual.. but a nail biter down to the wire.

Couldn't believe Kawhi missed that free throw and Butler tied it up. Felt like it was going to OT and was getting ready for it.

4 bounces off the rim.. my god was that intense.

That shot will be talked about for 20+ years. I can't imagine any reason why he leaves now. That shot was just so poetic. It erases Vince's shot. It probably saves Nurse's job. Maybe Lowry's time as a Raptor. We probably keep Kawhi now.. How does he leave now? Did you see that smile on his face? Wow!

And give it up to Serge Ibaka! What a damn fine performance. 17 points, 8 rebounds (4 offensive). 2 threes! And a team high +22 off the bench. Wow!

Lowry was quiet offensively but hit a big 3.. grabbed some huge rebounds.. and had some nice deflections.

Still stunned.. will take me a day or two to process and yet we still have to go to Milwaukee for game 1.

Congrats everyone! That was one tough mother fucking series. And yet it was only round 2.


Doug Smith sums up the night perfectly:

you know it's a crazy play when even Doug Smith has a fan's reaction.

[Dzykei]

Hello, RR, greetings from Vilnius, Lithuania

Long time reader, first time poster inspired by Kawhi game winner here

I'm Raps fan for like 10 years (picked it, because it was the only team outside USA, underdogs, not very liked team and etc, also liked CB4 playstyle, copied his moves ^^). Started to watch full-game replays of every regular season games, since the beginning of Casey era and have got up in midnight to watch live every PO game. Suffered all that ugly Raptors playoffs basketball, sometimes they managed to grind it further, sometimes it was embarrassing first round exit and all my friend started to comment about "brick brothers", PO chockers, ugly ISO gamestyle, but new seasons started and i was always confirming to myself and others that this season is different, Casey, DD and Lowry made adjustments and they will go further in PO and even give a legitimate shot at cup. However, it has never become true, but man oh man, this season is different for real. Yesterday we had classic ugly Raptors PO game, where they cant hit anything and just star running iso, but still, i was so calm with Kawhi on the roster. I'm so happy for the ability to see him playing with my beloved team's jersey, i feel like this is endgame for real, something that we got for all those disappointing previous PO performances and even if that's for one year, even if we wont past Buck, we should be happy to see these historical performances by historical player.

LETS GO RAPTORS! WE THE NORTH!

[Rudy Bargnani]

Embiid was +10 in 45 minutes and they lost.
Go Raptors!

[RandomGuy]

Creepy. Trying to film it instead of experiencing it and I'm not even old.

On the other note, Kawhi is a monster.

[Scraptor]

How is anyone supposed to work on Monday morning? I'm going to be completely useless.

[Hotshot]

I laughed for at least 2 minutes at that photo.