TORONTO — When it comes to high-leverage playoff games, having help from unexpected sources is crucial, especially for the underdog.
The Toronto Raptors got it in their pivotal Game 3 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, when breakout star rookie Collin Murray-Boyles set a franchise record for points scored by a first-year player with 22 points on 11-of-15 shooting and his standard reign of havoc defensively.
One of the reasons the Raptors found their legs in the second half of Game 2 was the way backup big man Sandro Mamukelashvili found his, chipping in 12 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.
But as Game 4 approaches, with the Raptors looking to even the first-round best-of-seven series at two games apiece — to really make it a series — it’s time for Toronto itself to make an impact.
Not the crowd at Scotiabank Arena, or outside at Jurassic Park, who certainly did their part Friday, both encouraging and riding the fourth-quarter momentum that saw the Raptors win in a joyous blowout.
No, we’re talking about the crowd at any of Toronto’s downtown night spots.
If playoff games are decided by matchups, the matchup between James Harden and Toronto’s reputation as a place to have a good time for visiting athletes and celebrities could tip the balance in a game which starts at 1 p.m. ET Sunday. After all, that’s only 11 hours after the clubs close — and those are just the clubs the average Toronto Joe can go to. Big Night James likely knows people.
Normally, there would be some hesitation about implying an NBA player could be lured down a low-performance path by the temptations of the night, but this is Harden, who has been camped out in Toronto since Thursday night.
Conjecture? Speculation? Rumour?
Well, consider what his ex-teammates say about the bearded wonder who has engineered both a hall-of-fame career and hall-of-hame reputation as an all-time bon vivant.
“(The) man could sit up here and go out,” Robert Covington, who played with Harden on the Houston Rockets in 2013-14, said recently on the Run Your Race podcast. “James be out all night, till four, five in the morning, and that man up at seven o’clock working out … and I’m talking about drinking heavy. We’re not talking about, like, (what) we here sipping right now. We’re talking about 10, 12, 13, 15 shots. Bottles, like, bottles. Great time. And he going to go home, going to have that little power nap and he’ll be in that gym.”
And Toronto’s reputation as a road city that requires careful navigation is well earned. In the earliest days of the franchise, former Raptors general manager Isiah Thomas’s decision to introduce 1 p.m. Sunday starts was very intentional as he was looking for every advantage he could find. As he told me once about the intended awkwardness of the early tip: “NBA players work nights.”
Could a long night and an early start have been the secret ingredient that fueled the Raptors’ legendary upset of Michael Jordan during their (then) record-setting 72-win season in 1995-96? Maybe. Former Raptors assistant and head coach Darrell Walker was a close friend of Jordan’s, and keeping the Bulls star occupied the night before games in Toronto was a strategy to level the playing field against one of the NBA’s all-time dynasties.
A prominent U.S. sports columnist eventually dubbed Toronto ‘White Vegas’, which took on a double meaning when the Raptors hosted the 2016 NBA All-Star Game in the midst of a record-setting polar vortex.
Flashing forward, Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic introduced a number of tactical wrinkles that helped the Raptors get over the top in Game 3. Ones that, in particular, limited the effectiveness of Harden, who was averaging 25 points and seven assists and 3.5 steals on 53.5 per cent shooting after the first two games in Cleveland, but mustered just 18 points, four assists and no steals — along with a game-high eight turnovers — in Game 3.
And that was after being in Toronto on a Wednesday night.
But maybe in Game 4, in addition to having Raptors star Scottie Barnes cover Harden as much as possible, having King Street play a match-up zone both Friday and Saturday night could have an effect?
Which isn’t to say Harden would go full Beard mode in these circumstances. You’d think an important playoff game would be enough for him to make the choice to cozy up in his suite at the Shangri-La to stream and chill for a couple of nights. The man is 36; all good things come to an end.
But conforming to external expectations of behaviour has never been Harden’s thing. There was, for example, the Christmas Party he attended at a Houston strip club during the pandemic, where he violated league rules, got COVID and caused the NBA to suspend the Houston Rockets (Harden’s team at the time) game against the Oklahoma City Thunder because Houston didn’t have enough eligible players. Harden was fined $50,000 for ignoring COVID protocols.
Maybe Harden has taken his off-court game down a notch. But then again, he had eight turnovers in the Raptors’ Game 3 win on Thursday, and that was an 8 p.m. start. It could have just been the Raptors’ strategy to attack him so relentlessly on defence that it left him rubber-legged on offence.
Could have been something else.
And while we’re on the subject? No judgement. Working hard and playing hard is an NBA tradition dating back to the Wilt Chamberlain era. Celtics legend Larry Bird enjoyed his beers and famously jeopardized a Celtics playoff run by busting up the thumb on his shooting hand in a bar fight.
Jordan saw nothing wrong with spending a long night and early morning in an Atlantic City casino during a tightly contested playoff series against the New York Knicks.
All of that makes for more entertaining stories than the admirable — though dull — mantra of cold tubs, treatment and post-game lifting that we have to get by on in the NBA’s wellness era.
Still, even if Harden zags and tucks himself early on Saturday night rather than early Sunday morning, just the oddness of a 1 p.m. tip — something NBA teams might have less than a handful of times in the regular season — could work in the Raptors’ favour.
Although it’s the same for both teams, only one team is playing at home.
Brandon Ingram — who famously takes 3–4-hour naps in the afternoon of night games — said his domestic environment might help get him some rest.
“My girl’s around so she’ll get on my nerves enough where I just want to go to sleep,” said Ingram, who dates hip-hop star GloRilla and is still looking for his breakout game in the series against a Cavaliers defence that has held him to 12 points per game on 39.4 per cent shooting, nearly 10 points less than his season average.“
Finding a way to similarly contain Harden is at the top of the Raptors scouting report. The results have been mixed so far, but Harden and the Cavs are 0-1 on the road, just saying.
If there was ever a time for Toronto’s nightlife to live up to its big-game reputation, this could be it.
In the playoffs, a little help defence can go a long way.
Barrett playing through the noise: RJ Barrett has been excellent for the Raptors through the series, averaging 26.3 points. 5.3 rebounds and 4.3 assists. He’s earned the respect of Ingram for how he’s approached the series and the season: “The thing that pops out for me is just how prepared he is for these games. You should see him in the locker room, his routine every single time that he comes into a game and stays the same, his face is locked in. He rarely cracks a smile when he does his routine. And he has the same approach every single night, whether he has a good or bad night. So that’s impressed me the most.”
More Ingram on Jamison Battle: The Raptors’ little-used wing might have earned a spot in the ‘stay ready’ Hall-of-Fame in Game 3. He came off the bench to score 14 points in nine fourth-quarter minutes on perfect 5-of-5 shooting to help put the Raptors over the top. He didn’t play at all in Game 2 and got only three minutes late in the Raptors’ Game 1 blowout loss. His minutes have been sporadic all season, but he still managed to shoot a team-best 41.2 per cent this season. His approach has caught Ingram’s eye: “I think guys like that have the ability to see the big picture of everything (can manage inconsistent minutes). You can go two ways. You can stay ready and know that your time is going to come at some point throughout the season to be effective,” said Ingram. “Or you can come in here and just say, ‘I’m not going to get in the game today, so I’m not going to put the work in today,’ and it spirals down. So he’s been a guy that, no matter if he’s getting in the game or not, he’s coming in. He’s doing the work that he needs to do to stay ready and it showed last game.
Colin Murray-Boyles, height no object: The Raptors rookie is shooting 72.7 per cent for the series and 84.2 per cent inside three feet, which is exceptional for any player. But especially for a six-foot-seven rookie playing most of his minutes at centre against a Cavs team that features elite rim protectors Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. Why doesn’t the presence of seven-footers seem to bother him? “He’s really physical and really explosive,” said Jakob Poeltl, the Raptors’ resident seven-footer. “So even though he might be like, undersized, he still, if you give him a little bit of room, can create so much space for himself, and he’s a good finisher on top of that. So even though you might get a contest or challenge him at the rim, he can still finish a lot of those. So yeah, I don’t think the height difference really bothers him all that much.”