Goran Dragic, Heat force Game 7 against Raptors: Four things to know
Miami and Toronto will play Game 7 on Sunday at the Air Canada Centre, thanks in part to Goran Dragic's aggressiveness.
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4 min read
Of course the Toronto Raptors and Miami Heat's second-round series is going seven games. The Heat beat the Raptors 103-91 in Game 6 on Friday, so this slugfest that has already seen three overtime games will conclude on Sunday at the Air Canada Centre.
Four things to know as Game 7 approaches:
1. Goran the magic dragon
After being relatively quiet in Games 2 through 5, Heat guard Goran Dragic was the best player on the floor in Game 6. Miami outscored Toronto by 25 points when he was playing, and he finished with 30 points on 12-for-21 shooting, plus seven rebounds and four assists. All season long, the Heat have been at their best when Dragic has been relentless, getting into the paint and pushing the ball in transition. That has remained true in the playoffs, and this game was the best example. Despite Bismack Biyombo's presence inside, Dragic was fearless, calmly hitting floaters over him.
"Some of it, he wasn't getting all the way to the rim," Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. "It was the in-between game, the pull-ups. He had a heck of a night."
Before the series started, Casey said that staying in front of Dragic would be a huge priority. Then he watched Dragic knife through the defense over and over and score 26 points in Game 1. Casey has reiterated the importance of containing him ever since, and Toronto was doing a decent job for a few games. When Dragic gets rolling, though, slowing him down is a lot easier said than done.
"I was just aggressive," Dragic said. "I don't want to go back to Europe."
2. Where was the Raptors' bench?
This was a totally weird game for Toronto's supporting cast. Only seven Raptors played more than six minutes, but 11 of them saw some playing time. Casey elected to start the fourth quarter with James Johnson and Lucas Nogueira -- benchwarmers for almost all of the playoffs -- on the court together.
Cory Joseph played good defense but was largely held in check. Terrence Ross had a monstrous dunk, but missed all four of his 3-pointers. Bismack Biyombo was a defensive force, as usual, but the Heat did not allow him to punish them with powerful dunks. DeMarre Carroll, playing with a wrist injury, was quiet.
This was a new way for the Raptors to lose. Until Game 5 on Wednesday, their stars had struggled for the majority of the postseason, but the team cobbled together just enough offense to survive. This time, Kyle Lowry scored a game-high 36 points on 12-for-27 shooting, and DeMar DeRozan contributed 23 points on 8-for-21 shooting, but Toronto wasted all of that. The rest of the roster shot 14-for-34.
Looking ahead, can the Raptors count on their stars keeping it going? If not, can everybody else step up? Toronto's depth has been arguably its biggest advantage over the opposition this year, and that is even more true against a banged-up Heat team.
3. Size doesn't matter, I guess
With Hassan Whiteside out of the lineup for Miami, the Raptors have a distinct advantage on the inside. Biyombo is the only true center left in the series, and Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has completely abandoned the idea of trying to match size with size. Spoelstra inserted Justise Winslow into the starting lineup in place of Amar'e Stoudemire, and neither Stoudemire nor Udonis Haslem even entered the game.
You would think that what Miami gave up on the glass, it would make up for with defensive versatility and spacing. Instead, the Heat didn't even really give up anything on the glass. Everybody competed for rebounds, and Spoelstra said this was out of necessity.
"We have to be a five-man rebounding team," Spoelstra said. "We don't have a glass eater anymore, somebody who's going to get 17, 18 rebounds. I think sometimes we could all take that for granted, what Hassan brought from that department, up over the crowd, without block-outs."
If Toronto is going to close out Miami at home, it is going to need make Spoelstra rethink this strategy. The Raptors should have punished the Heat on the inside, and instead, late in the game, there was Dwyane Wade blocking Biyombo and Luol Deng blocking DeRozan. Miami earned this one.
4. Can the Heat sustain this offense?
Spoelstra pointed out that this was the first time all series that the Heat scored 100 points in regulation. Toronto hasn't done that even once. This has been extremely ugly for both teams (and viewers!), but the Heat sort of broke out here.
"We felt like we've been playing in mud," Spoelstra said. "We looked a little bit more like us tonight. Goran looked like him. We were able to hit some gaps and make some plays."
Miami didn't do anything fancy. It just put pressure on the Raptors' one-on-one defense and maintained better spacing than in previous games. Spoelstra also shortened his bench, using only Josh McRoberts, Tyler Johnson and Josh Richardson.
"It was just our ability to keep the ball in front of us and contain the basketball and keep it under control," Casey said.
The most encouraging thing for the Heat: Wade played an excellent game -- 22 points, six rebounds, five assists, two steals, three blocks, one turnover -- but he wasn't all that efficient. Wade needed 21 shots to score those points, and Toronto is well aware that he's capable of being sharper. With both team's seasons at stake on Sunday, everyone will be expecting his best.
