All of history seems sweeping in retrospect. Except for the sort that involves sports. That turns in a moment.
The Toronto Raptors didn't beat the Indiana Pacers 102-99. They stole a game from them. This was all going one way. And then it flipped. This game was a loss. You would've bet it at the end of the third quarter. There was no way the Raptors were going to undo the Paul George curse. For three quarters, George was so far inside the Raptors mind, it'd have taken a brain surgeon and a cranial saw to get him out. But they did. The Raptors didn't just negate George. They made him irrelevant during what is supposed to be his golden hour.
How much sense did it make to watch? None. And I watched it.
Over nine remarkable minutes spanning the end of the third quarter and the late stages of the fourth, the Raptors went on a 23-2 run. Indiana scored only nine points in the final frame.
They did much of it with a lineup pulled from a Kurosawa film – all-star Kyle Lowry; subs Cory Joseph, Terrence Ross and Bismack Biyombo; and rookie Norman Powell. How much sense did that make? None. And it worked.
"We thought we'd go down with the group that was swinging," coach Dwane Casey said.
Casey is occasionally ripped by obsessives for his conservative substitutions. In that case, this was Casey letting his freak flag fly at the most crucial point in his Toronto career. At this rate, he might be playing two trainers and the mascot in Game 6.
There were storylines all across the Toronto lineup. In an oddly quiet fashion, DeRozan snapped his personal playoff duck with a 34-point night on 45-per-cent shooting. For the first time in the series, he did not look as if he was trying to put a beach ball through the hoop.
"It means nothing," George shrugged of DeRozan's performance afterward.
Ross, the slow learner who keeps skipping class, hit the crucial three that let the crowd back into it. They were his only points of the game. It's proof that it's not always about averages. Once in a while, it's just a question of timing.
For most of the first half, Biyombo was Toronto's best player. He was the only one who didn't seem like he was spending timeouts mentally planning his getaway flight to Cancun. His muscular work inside made up for another off-night by Jonas Valanciunas, and prevented Indiana's big men from taking over, as they had in the previous game.
But the evening was decided by one man and one moment – both on the Pacers side of the ball.
First, there was Paul George.
What we've learned in ten days is that George's magic is not in elevating his own game (though he can do that). It is in sinking his opponents'. Whenever he is on the court, Toronto's performance sags. He is basketball kryptonite.
Though he has dominated much of the series, Game 5 was shaping up as George's to-date masterpiece. At one point, he had five three-pointers while the Raptors' team had three.
Toronto could stage small runs when he was off taking a breather. Once he returned, the Raptors collective spirit sagged. He'd lope up the floor in that sneaky-fast way he has, turn a corner, get three hands in his face and sink another. He's the sort of player whose statistics should be recorded in reverse – misses first.
Toronto's deficit after one quarter was 15.
No real inroads had been made by the third quarter.
That's when you felt it – the humid stink of collapse settling on the place. Toronto coaches had talked a lot about responding to the first "punch in the face." In fairness, lying down and rolling around is a sort of response.
It reached its nadir in that quarter. The PA announcer – ostensibly a neutral arbiter of game action – tried to lead a chant of "We. The. North."
All the people standing around in their ill-judged giveaway T-shirts – featuring a fighting beaver and a flaming snowball – refused to join in.
This building is always loud at Raptor games. Over the past couple of years, it's gotten quieter in the playoffs. Having been burned too many times over that span, no one wants to get ahead of themselves. Not even if they think it might help.
During that third quarter, the Raptors may have felt as lonely down on that court as they ever have. The roster was walking into another first-round collapse and the existential wood chipper that would follow.
And then the second part – the pivotal moment.
It came in the middle of the run, when everything was happening too fast and it still seemed very unlikely. Rodney Stuckey walked the ball up the court. Once he'd gotten into the offensive half, he fell over.
"He tripped over Drake," Casey said. "I was more worried about Drake than I was Stuckey."
It'd be more correct to say he fell "on" Drake (who leapt out of his seat and cheered Stuckey off like a matador who'd just been publicly gored). That's when people began to really believe that the luck – which is trusted far more around these parts than talent – had shifted.
It ended with the predictable gut-churning. Trailing by three with a couple of seconds left, Indiana's Solomon Hill could not get his (successful) shot off in time. Everyone had to wait long minutes for the replay to verify that.
But there was no sense of anti-climax, only relief. Toronto is now one victory on Friday in Indiana from a series win. They've been in this exact situation before – against Brooklyn two years ago.
Accepting that anything can still happen, it feels different this time around. Being better than Indiana is one thing. Being luckier than them?
It doesn't make any sense, but that feels like it actually matters.
Cathal Kelly