TORONTO – Joel Embiid had been waiting a long time for that moment.
In 2019, the 76ers star left Scotiabank Arena in tears after Kawhi Leonard’s Game 7 buzzer beater put an end to his season. On Wednesday, he flipped the script.
There were 2.6 seconds left in overtime of a tied Game 3 and less than a second remaining on the shot clock for Philadelphia. Former Raptor Danny Green inbounded from the same spot Marc Gasol threw the ball in nearly three years earlier. Using a screen from Tobias Harris, Embiid popped to the left corner, opposite Toronto’s bench where Kawhi hit his iconic shot.
Thanks to some miscommunication on the part of the Raptors’ defence, Embiid got a clean look. The seven-footer caught the ball, turned, and let it fly.
The crowd of nearly 20,000 fans stood and the building went silent as the ball hung in the air, just like it did in May of 2019, only this time it stayed quiet. This time, Embiid and the Sixers were the ones celebrating.
“Me and Joel talked about that,” Harris said after Philly’s 104-101 OT win. “We understand coming into this arena what happened to us last time we were here.”
It’s not a one-for-one comparison, of course. This is the first round of the playoffs, not the second. It was Game 3 instead of Game 7. And the series is not over, at least not officially.
But barring a historic comeback, the end is near for this pesky, overachieving 2021-22 Raptors club. No NBA team has ever overcome a 3-0 series deficit, and that’s exactly where they find themselves after a heartbreaking loss on Wednesday.
Coming home following a couple lopsided losses in Philadelphia, this was their chance to make a real mark on the series. The Raptors were hosting a playoff contest in Toronto for the first time since Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals, 1,045 days prior, and the crowd was into it.
With Embiid fresh off a dominant performance in Monday’s Game 2, fans booed the Sixers’ big man every time he touched the ball. They chanted and shouted obscenities at him throughout a first half, where he was held to just five points on five shots.
For the first time in the series, the Raptors had rediscovered the identity that powered them to a 48-win regular season. They were forcing turnovers and turning them into scoring opportunities (21 of their 46 points came off Philly’s 15 first-half turnovers). Their defence was locked in, sending enough help to disrupt Embiid while also rotating out to shooters. The Raptors finally looked like the Raptors.
They were up by as many as 17 points in the first half. Philadelphia didn’t take its first lead until 11 seconds into the overtime period. In the end, Embiid – who finished with 33 points on 12-of-20 shooting – and the Sixers simply executed better down the stretch. The Raptors couldn’t hang on, which stung way worse than the blowout losses in the first two games of the series.
“It’s tough,” Nick Nurse said afterwards. “I’ve got to think about this, but that’s about as tough a loss as I can remember in my time [here]. Obviously, if we pull that thing out, we got ourselves a series and instead, you got yourself a really, really deep hole to dig out of.”
“We definitely thought we should’ve won,” said OG Anunoby.
Now, sitting on the brink of elimination, the Raptors find themselves in the position of having to reconcile silver linings and valuable playoff experience for a young team that desperately wanted and needed them with disappointing results. There have been plenty of both in this series.
With their stars, Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet, struggling on Wednesday night, it was three players under the age of 25 who nearly saved the season.
Anunoby, 24, led the team in scoring with 26 points, including 12 in the fourth quarter and overtime. The fifth-year forward has scored at least 20 points in all three games. He, not Siakam or VanVleet, has been Toronto’s best and most consistent player in the series.
Outside of Anunoby, 23-year-old Gary Trent Jr. was the only other Raptors player to score in OT. He finished with 24 points and logged 45 minutes despite playing through a viral illness that limited him in the first two games. He’s lost around eight pounds and has been battling high fevers all week.
Precious Achiuwa, Toronto’s 22-year-old sophomore who broke out in the second half of the season, hit nine of his 11 shots, scored 20 points off the bench, and made some big late-game plays on both ends of the floor. His put-back layup gave the Raptors a five-point lead with two minutes left in regulation, and then he drew the sixth foul on James Harden inside the final 30 seconds. He also missed what would have been the go-ahead and game-winning free throws.
“I’m really proud of the way he played,” Nurse said. “He’ll continue to improve in that area. I don’t want him to live in that play because he was really, really effective and forceful out there tonight. And that’s just what happens, man. You get out there and you play this game, you’re gonna get put in situations like that and you’re gonna live and die with the results.”
That the season would come down to the highs and lows of their youngest and most inexperienced players seems fitting. That’s always what this year was going to be about: development, first and foremost. That never changed, even after the team exceeded initial expectations and eventually earned its way into the fifth seed and a guaranteed playoff spot. If goal 1A was to upset Philadelphia and win this series, just behind that – or perhaps in line with it – was goal 1B, to get this group some valuable postseason reps.
“There are no moral victories right now,” VanVleet said. “We can sit back once it’s all said and done and appreciate and have an optimistic perspective, but right now we’re still in the trenches, still in the fight. We’ve got to bring even more fight in a couple of days. There’s no room to look around and feel sorry for ourselves.
“We did a lot of good things tonight. We played a lot of minutes of great basketball and we’re going to have to do it again and bring even more fight, more intensity and more execution. We’re playing for our pride. Our pride is on the line.”
This is a confident and prideful group, but they also know the history. One hundred and forty-three teams had fallen behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven playoff series before Toronto did it on Wednesday, and none of them were able to win four straight games and advance. Based on what we’ve seen from them in this series, it’s hard to feel especially optimistic that the Raptors will be the first.
At this point, it’s human nature to start looking ahead to your vacation or planning your off-season and take your foot off the gas. It’s why 62 per cent of the teams down 3-0 have gotten swept.
However, the Raptors still feel like they have something to play for beyond pride or even the slimmest of chances at coming out of the series. Win or lose, and whether this lasts four games or seven games or somewhere in between, they want their young guys to get as much playoff experience as possible.
With that in mind, you could argue that the most disappointing thing about this past week wasn’t how the series unfolded, it’s the fact that Scottie Barnes hasn’t been able to experience most of it. When Embiid came down on the left foot of the talented rookie late in Game 1, it looked like his first career playoff run might be capped at 31 very promising minutes.
A serious injury wouldn’t have just ended his series; it could have cut into his upcoming and extremely important off-season. Fortunately, it appears those fears have been alleviated. Initial X-rays on his ankle came back negative and an MRI revealed only a sprain. He’s shed the boot that he was wearing ahead of Monday’s Game 2, and while we still haven’t seen him run or cut, he was walking without a limp at shoot around on Wednesday morning.
Both before and after Wednesday’s contest, Nurse indicated that the plan is for Barnes to play in Game 4 on Saturday. It could be gamesmanship on his part, but at this point, why bother? The expectation is that Barnes will return in some capacity, and while it’s fair to wonder if it’s worth the risk of re-injury given that the result of the series is all but decided, the Raptors seem determined to squeeze everything they can from it for as long as they can.
“Listen, we need more games,” Nurse said. “We gotta figure out a way to dig in there Saturday afternoon and figure out how to get more games because I think you can see [guys like] Precious, OG, Chris [Boucher], those guys, need these moments.”
CLEVELAND (AP) — Restricted free agent forward Isaac Okoro has agreed to re-sign with the Cleveland Cavaliers on a three-year contract, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Okoro’s new deal is worth $38 million, according to the person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the contract has not been signed or announced by the team.
ESPN.com first reported the agreement, citing Okoro’s representation.
The fifth overall pick in the 2020 NBA draft, Okoro is Cleveland’s best perimeter defender, often drawing the assignment of guarding the opponent’s top scorer. Okoro also has worked to improve his offensive game.
The 23-year-old averaged 9.4 points and 3.0 rebounds in 69 games — 42 starts — last season for the Cavs, who beat Orlando in the opening round of the playoffs before losing to eventual champion Boston.
Okoro shot a career-best 39% on 3-pointers, forcing teams to come out and guard him.
His agreement caps an extraordinarily busy summer for the Cavs that began with coach J.B. Bickerstaff being fired and replaced by Kenny Atkinson. All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell signed a three-year, $150 million extension in July, ending months of speculation that he wanted out of Cleveland.
Also, power forward Evan Mobley signed a five-year, $224 deal and center Jarrett Allen signed a three-year, $91 million extension.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
