The Raptors Never Take the Easy Path

There is something to be said for reliability. For predictability. For staying on-brand. Those traits are generally considered to be comfortable, to reduce anxieties with certainty, to be a mark of maturity, even. When it comes to the Toronto Raptors, though, the inevitability with which they've long operated is anything but assuaging.

No, the Raptors' particular brand of reliability flips the idea of certainty on its head, because the only certainty is that wherever the Raptors wind up, they're going to take the most arduous, circuitous, and stressful path to reach that end.

Naturally, then, the Raptors couldn't just close out their series with the Milwaukee Bucks in smooth fashion. It just wouldn't fit. The Raptors had already stayed true to their history of dropping Game 1s at home, after all, and correcting mistakes from earlier in the series with the consistent application of adjustments would be too procedural. For the Raptors to truly turn the page from the Bucks toward the Cleveland Cavaliers, they needed to trip just one more time. The Raptors didn't enter the game with the specter of impending nervousness hanging over Game 6, because that cloud is just the ecosystem within which they exist.

Milwaukee getting out to an 8-2 lead in the game's opening minutes was no surprise. It hardly seemed to move the needle, and other than early foul trouble for Serge Ibaka, the Raptors seemed mostly unmoved by a slow start that's become familiar over the last two seasons. They settled in from there, and as the second quarter wore on, the strange feeling greeting the game was that there was little strange at all—the Raptors were mostly taking care of business. They built a 13-point lead at halftime, and out of the break, that quickly jumped to 25. The Raptors had 17:15 left to play, and all they had to do was not cough up a substantial lead in epic fashion.

Cue a 34-7 run for the Bucks.

No, seriously. The game in hand, the series within their grasp, the opportunity to close out in something less than the maximum number of games within their fingertips, the wheels fell off for the Raptors. Over roughly 14 minutes, the Raptors went away from everything that had worked to that point in the game. They struggled to pass, coughing up nine turnovers to just two assists and three field-goals during that stretch. They suddenly couldn't protect their own glass, grabbing just eight of 15 potential defensive rebounds. Their defense, stout for games on end now, couldn't stop Milwaukee from scoring or from getting to the line (Toronto has some shaky free-throw shooting from Giannis Antetokounmpo to thank for this not getting even scarier).

Ultimately, the Raptors settled things down. Throughout the comeback, head coach Dwane Casey had tried to tweak lineups, going with six different groups, but none of them could slow the run down. Once the Bucks took the lead, a Raptors' timeout gave the team a beat to breathe, to collect themselves, and to try to calm each other ahead of a final three minutes that, instead of being the playground of Lucas Nogueira and Jakob Poeltl and Delon Wright, held a potential Game 7 in the balance.

Whatever was said in the timeout worked. DeMar DeRozan scored quickly, Patrick Patterson threw down a dunk, Cory Joseph, quiet all night, drained a corner three, and DeRozan drove for another dunk to put the Raptors back up five. Another punch sustained, another scare averted, and… wait, nope. The Raptors would go back up by seven with 33 seconds to go, only for that lead to be cut to one in the closing seconds before DeRozan iced things with free-throws and Patterson stole a last-ditch inbounds.

It was a whole thing.

This is who the Raptors are and have been, though, and their collapse was met mostly with a collective eye-roll in real time. Because of course the Raptors couldn't get out of their own way. A year ago, they were a two-seed who struggled to narrow seven-game victories over a pair of lower-seeded teams, coughing up Game 1 at home in each and laying complete eggs on the road in each Game 6. They're the team that has led the league in double-digit comeback victories for two years in a row, appearing generally incapable of getting themselves going without defeat breathing heavily on the backs of their necks. This is a team that's consistently started slow for years, that no-showed an entire playoff series two years ago, and that drew up a series-winning play for the wrong side of the floor the year before that.

The Raptors have experienced immense success, by their standards, over the last four years. They are in the process of growing into a model franchise, or something close to it. Being consistently good is important. But they're still finding their way into that new skin, and for a few years now, they've been able to shed the reputation of a moribund franchise but not some of the groan-inducing stumbles that line their past.

They'll get there. The last two years have been about vanquishing ghosts of the past, whether it be the inability to win a seven-game series, to win a second series, to close out in fewer games than necessary, or so on. At some point, they might even win a Game 1.

The Raptors need to shake their penchant for making life harder for themselves now, though. They survived a scare—in the series and in Game 6—from the Bucks, and they did so because they're better but also perhaps because they were more experienced and better tested in these situations. They won't have that edge against the Cavaliers, and while the window to beat them is more open than in years prior, the margin for error is exceptionally slim.

Cleveland took six games to beat Toronto a year ago, but the series wasn't really as close as that, as the Cavaliers won their four games with ease. This Raptors team is better than last year's but somehow seem even more liable to turn in bad outings, which just won't fly in the second round.

For two years now, the Raptors have grown successful enough that their focus has been able to turn to the powerhouse standing in their way. If they're going to have any chance of pulling off the upset they've been working toward, they'll first need to get out of their own way themselves.