Raptors stun Cavs, silence skeptics and secure biggest win in franchise history
Toronto held off Cleveland in Game 4 to even up the Eastern Conference finals
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5 min read
TORONTO -- Bismack Biyombo's smile stretched about as wide as Canada, having grabbed his 14th rebound of the game and secured the biggest win in Toronto Raptors history. Cleveland Cavaliers big man Channing Frye fouled Biyombo with 4.3 seconds on the clock and the Raptors leading 105-99 on Monday. Before Biyombo walked to the other end of the court, Toronto forward Patrick Patterson gave him a chest bump. The grinning Biyombo bounced the ball off the top of his own head, then passed it to an official.
Biyombo missed two inconsequential free throws, but the noise in the Air Canada Centre told the story. The fans in attendance, so loud that Raptors guard Kyle Lowry couldn't hear Biyombo calling out coverages earlier in the game, chanted "M-V-P" with the center at the line.
The emergence of Biyombo has been about as unlikely as Toronto being tied 2-2 with Cleveland in the Eastern Conference finals. The Raptors wildly outperformed expectations with their 56-win regular season, and they did that with their major offseason acquisition and highest-paid player, DeMarre Carroll, sidelined for most of it. They were inconsistent through most of the playoffs' first two rounds, and they lost the first two games of the series by a combined 50 points.
Last summer, the Charlotte Hornets elected not to pick up Biyombo's fourth-year option, making him an unrestricted free agent. He went to Toronto to serve as Jonas Valanciunas' backup, but with Valanciunas hurt, he has become indispensable. Raptors coach Dwane Casey hasn't stopped raving about him in the playoffs, and he credited Biyombo for his rebounding, screening and switching onto smaller players in Game 4.
"Biz is one of our best athletes," Casey said. "He's always teasing about chasing lions and everything in the Congo. I gotta go over there in the summer and see that."
If a few balls had bounced differently, Toronto would not have been in such a jovial mood. The Cavaliers erased an 18-point deficit and took a couple of brief leads in the fourth quarter, at one point scoring on 14 straight possessions. Most of their damage was done with variations of the same play, where LeBron James caught the ball on the elbow, handed it off to Matthew Dellavedova and rolled to the rim. The Raptors got the few stops they needed down the stretch, though, and their two main scorers came through.
Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan combined for 21 points on 11 shots in the fourth quarter. With about 1 1/2 minutes left and a two-point lead, DeRozan missed a tough turnaround jumper at the end of the shot clock. Two Cleveland defenders boxed out Biyombo, allowing Patterson to get the rebound. He passed it to DeRozan, who attacked the basket, took contact from Frye, hung in the air and scored off the glass.
The Raptors had a four-point lead when Casey called timeout with 42 seconds left. He called a simple play to get J.R. Smith switched onto Lowry. Toronto's best player hit Smith with a couple of crossovers, then simply blew by him and made a layup. That was the final basket of the game, and it gave Lowry a game-high 35 points on 14-for-20 shooting. DeRozan scored 32, going 14-for-23.
"You tip your hat to DeMar and Kyle," James said. "They did a great job. They're All-Stars for a reason. That's why they're here today. They've carried this team all season."
Lowry and DeRozan are the faces of the franchise, but they've had a bumpy ride since the end of the regular season. Through two seven-game series against the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat, they never shot 50 percent in the same game. The Raptors managed to win ugly enough times to get to the conference finals, and then they got blown out twice in Cleveland before finding themselves. They would not have had a chance without their guards at the top of their games.
"Better late than never," Patterson said.
On Monday Lowry and DeRozan became the first teammates to both score 30 points on 60 percent shooting in the conference finals since the Phoenix Suns' Charles Barkley and Dan Majerle 23 years ago, per ESPN's Brian Windhorst. DeRozan told Lowry throughout the postseason that they had to stay confident and comfortable, and they'd have the opportunity to make up for it.
"It's a cakewalk for me once he gets going," DeRozan said. "It opens up everything for me on the floor. Teams try to focus in on him, and he knows when to get me going. He got the ball, he's our point guard, he's our leader of this team, and he knows how to orchestrate what needs to be done out there."
"I know the work he's put in and I know the work I've put in," Lowry said. "You can't go away from that. You have to continue to stay with the work and the process that you've put in throughout your career, throughout the years. I think the thing that we've learned from ourselves is one game, two games erases everything that has happened before."
Before the series turned upside down in Toronto, the Cavs had won 10 straight playoff games. James rejected the notion that they were planning to sweep the East, saying that it came from the media. He only watches cartoons, movie channels and Man vs. Wild, he said.
Few people expected the Raptors to play their two best games of the playoffs when it seemed like everything was clicking for Cleveland. Even fewer fans want to see Lowry and DeRozan advance instead of James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. Just like James, though, Toronto wants people to believe that it is not focused on any storylines -- even when they're changing.
"We could care less about the rest of the world," Patterson said. "We could care less about the criticism, the critics, the skeptics, the naysayers, the doubters, the non-believers. We could care less about them. At the end of the day, the only things that matters are these men in the locker room, the effort that we put in every single night, what we see, what we believe and what we want to achieve."
The Raptors came close to losing to the offensively challenged Pacers and the injured Heat. They've dealt with slumping stars and an injury to their third-best player. They were widely dismissed before catching fire at home, and their season is already a success. Now, as they head back to Cleveland with nothing to lose, they might as well get greedy.
"We're in it to compete for a championship," Casey said.
