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TORONTO – Kawhi Leonard was looking for.
He needed to get to a place where he could get up and get shot. Game 7 was tied and there was 4.2 seconds remaining.
He grabbed the inbounds passage to the left of the top of the key. Mission accomplished for incoming Marc Gasol and for all members of the Toronto organization. They have the ball at the right guy.
"It's his call from there," said Raptors coach Nick Nurse.
Leonard's initial rotation to the right side of the ground led him to 30 feet from the basket, with Ben Simmons on his hip. Joel Embiid left Pascal Siakam to overtake Leonard's team, but instead of making him change direction, Embiid cut Simmons and pulled him out of the game.
By the time he found just enough room to rise, Leonard was in the right corner, where Serge Ibaka had started the game before leaving to free himself and his defender.
"Talk about running for you," said Marc Gasol. "He ran about three quarters of the yard."
Leonard still had Embiid on his tail, and as he lifted his fourth dribble and rose, the tall man made a little jumping bunny to time his last jump and challenge the shot.
Leonard had the shot just in time. And in order to pass the stretched right hand of Embiid, he had to put a little air in it.
"I just knew I had to shoot high," Leonard said afterwards. "Some goods before that, I had the same kind of shooting of 3 and I failed … I just thought I had to ride it even higher than that."
J.J. Redick was watching from Sixers' bench, having been replaced by James Ennis for defensive purposes. From there, he could tell that the shot was not going to be clean.
"It looked short," Redick admitted.
he was short, but the big bow has turned out to be the key. It was the angle of entry that gave a chance to the shot.
"It looks like it's coming in," the nurse thought. "It looks like it's been going on all the time for me."
The first rebound was the most critical, on the near side of the rim. It was a bounce up, right, and he reversed the rotation of the ball.
"When it hits that angle and it gets straight to the point," said Sixers coach Brett Brown, "it seems like there's a chance."
Fred VanVleet was on the Raptors bench, just behind Leonard when he started the shot.
"From this perspective," VanVleet said, "it did not seem like it was happening at all at first – it looked like it was a little left."
If the NBA had already adapted the rules of FIBA regarding basket interferences, Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris or James Ennis, all nested in the paint, could have jumped and overturned the ball to send the match in overtime . But they were all frozen, unable to do anything but watch.
The second rebound was the winner. He hit the same spot as the first rebound, but with the ball now counterclockwise, he carried the ball to the other side.
"Once, he touched the ledge once and twice," VanVleet said, "it was like:" It's Kawhi. This will fall. "
The third rebound hit the inside and the top of the rim.
The fourth and last rebound was the sweetest and the same place as the previous one. From there, the ball fell through the net.
That was Leonard's 39th shot of the night – "I did not want to leave any shot in my mind," he said – and that was the first match 7, a drummer winning the # 39, history of the NBA.
The arena at Scotiabank has exploded. Leonard was assaulted by his teammates. Embiid broke down in tears. Marc Gasol could not help consoling the 25-year-old center that he owned at 37% of the competition.
"Losing a match this way, last shot, after a hotly contested game, I can not explain it," said Embiid. "It's really bad."
The seventh game was tough, not because the teams played badly, but because they defended so well.
The Raptors cut the hand off J. J. Redick's dribbling, and when the ball moved, their rotations were on the point. The Sixers drew in their first nine possessions of the game, but the Raptors were led by just five minutes after 12 minutes because the Philadelphia defense was almost as good. The Sixers blocked Leonard's play of choice, preventing him from getting into the rhythmic jumps he'd achieved at Games 1-4.
In the seven games of this series, the team that won is the team that led after the first quarter. But after winning the first quarter in Game 7, the Raptors were relegated to second, third and fourth.
The situation was particularly tense in the middle of the third period when the Sixers turned a nine-point deficit into a seven-point lead with a 16-0 record. But Kyle Lowry, the only man who knows the difficulties of the playoffs in Toronto, saved the game and the season with a series of important games in the last three minutes of the third.
There were two offensive rebounds on the same possession, leading to a Leonard 3 who brought the Raptors back within one. There was a difficult transition on Embiid to move them forward. And after Embiid blocked VanVleet's quick break attempt, Lowry stripped Simmons of the ball and passed it to Serge Ibaka for a throw-in.
A Leonard attack allowed the Raptors to recover from mid-mid-fourth, but the Sixers drew with a pair of free-throw Butler and a three-point game from Redick. And when the Raptors' season was seemingly on the brink, they dug to get an elite defense of three titles.
They did not let Philly get into her trays easily, taking time out of the clock. They stopped Redick's dribbling and returned to Embiid. Each practice and each pass was confronted by a rotating defender.
The first possession ended with Butler holding the ball in the right corner, unable to do anything as the shooting clock expired with Siakam in his jersey. The second possession was over with Butler who threw a long half-point back to the sound of the ring that had no chance. And after Leonard gave the Raptors the advantage, the third was over with the fact that Lowry eliminated Embiid with just a second at the clock.
"We did everything," says the nurse. "We were putting pressure on the ball, we put the right players together for a split second with two of us, we were shooting or going back to ourselves, so putting two players on the ball does not mean that something is automatically And then we bounced back after playing. "
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