Rather than heading back to Toronto for a joyous celebration of a first-round playoff series victory, the Indiana Pacers will be joining the Raptors on the court at the Air Canada Centre on Sunday for a winner-take-all Game 7 after using a big second half to avoid elimination with a 101-83 victory in Game 6.
Toronto held a four-point lead at halftime, but struggled mightily in the second half, getting outscored 61-39 to send the series back to “The 6” where all the pressure rests on their shoulders. While people will be quick to discuss the team’s previous playoff struggles and failure to close out the Brooklyn Nets when they were in a similar situation two years ago, the current struggles of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan are bigger concerns than coming up short the last two season.
The All-Star duo went 7-for-27 on Friday night, combining for 18 points and just four free throw attempts in the loss. DeMarre Carroll and Cory Joseph led the way for the Dinos with 15 points each, while Jonas Valanciunas chipped in with 14. For the second straight game, Patrick Patterson started and struggled, collecting five points on 2-for-7 shooting in 27 minutes.
Conversely, Indiana got balanced production, with all five starters scoring in double figures, with Paul George leading the way, as always.
Now it all comes down to Sunday and the Raptors and their fans can’t feel great about their chances going in.
Lowry has been terrible from the floor since banging up his elbow on March 20 against Orlando, shooting just .310 overall and a woeful .179 from deep this series; by comparison, he shot .419 overall and .388 from three in the regular season. DeRozan hasn’t been much better, hitting at a .321 clip and averaging a shade under 16 after shooting .446 for the season and averaging 23.5 in 78 contests.
More than previous poor results, it’s their continued struggles that raise eyebrows for Raptors fans, though Lowry and DeRozan going cold in the playoffs has been a theme in each of the last two postseason collapses as well. And it seems like two different things for the dynamic regular season backcourt.
With Lowry, it always feels like fatigue; as if the miles he accumulates over the regular season hit him like a ton of bricks when he needs to play 35-40 minutes a night and lead this team when the pressure is on. It makes you wonder why coach Dwane Casey and general manager Masai Ujiri didn’t just keep the point guard out of the lineup down the stretch, allowing him to rest his balky elbow and avoid unnecessary minutes when the Raptors had the No. 2 seed locked up?
For DeRozan, it just seems like he can’t get the same looks when the games get tighter and the whistles don’t come as readily as they do in the regular season. Teams play him closer, roughing him up, making him work on every possession and it leads to tough shots and a lot of scowling from the shooting guard. He’s never found a way to adjust his game in the postseason – going to more post-ups, driving more, looking for 12-footers instead of 18-footers – and every year, he struggles.
If they keep struggling on Sunday, Toronto will again come up short and have to explain what went wrong.