Toronto Raptors forward RJ Barrett shoots the ball scoring the winning basket against the Cleveland Cavaliers in game six on Friday.Nick Turchiaro/Reuters
When R.J. Barrett came to the Toronto Raptors via trade in 2023, it was a homecoming. It was also a bit of a surrender. The player going the other way, OG Anunoby, was the last strong connection to the club’s championship season.
After five up and down years in New York with the Knicks, the biggest superlative on Barrett’s Raptors resume was his Canadianness.
Since then, he has worked in the light reflected off Scottie Barnes and, more recently, Brandon Ingram. But it is in the nature of basketball that at the right moment with the ball in your hands, anybody can become the player they dream of being.
The Raptors should have lost Game 6 on Friday night. That’s generally what happens when you leak away a 15-point lead and let it get to overtime. At several points in that extra frame, things threatened to tilt toward Cleveland. Toronto kept slipping the vise.
With what could have been the final possession, they marched down the floor, trailing by one. Barnes penetrated, then kicked the ball back to Barrett, who was standing at on his own a few feet beyond the arc.
The shot he launched missed long. Considerably long. But it hit the back of the rim and took a strange bounce straight up in the air. A good ten feet - higher than the shot clock. And then it dropped in.
“I still knew it was good because it went straight up,” Barrett said afterward. “I know that if it’s straight up, you got a chance.”
Barrett isn’t Kawhi Leonard and this wasn’t The Shot. It’s only Game 6 vs. Leonard in Game 7. One bounce vs. four. But what a moment. What a reaction. The Scotiabank Arena hasn’t been that loud since the last time the Raptors were doing incredible things in a post-season.
Barrett soaks it all in.Cole Burston/Getty Images
Cleveland had their own chance to create a magic moment in the dying seconds, but missed. That was the game - 112-110.
“Glory to God,” Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic said afterward. “Call me crazy. Call me psychic, but I saw this one coming.”
So now we’re into the supernatural, not just one, but two ways.
In order to advance, the Raptors still have to go back to Cleveland and play Sunday, where they have never won a playoff game.
But regardless of how that turns out, I think it’s fair to say that Raptors basketball is back. For the first time since Leonard was on the roster, you just get that feeling about this team. That when the occasion arrives, they are capable of things nobody but them thinks they are capable of.
A small moment in the game that illustrates that idea. Midway through the second quarter, Cleveland’s James Harden made one of his intermittent attempts at playing defence.
Barnes was rampaging toward him on a breakaway. Harden - a sensible player, and that’s not a compliment - angled his body to receive contact. Barnes spun around him and dunked.
On the next sequence, at the other end of the floor, Harden tried something like the same maneuver. Barnes doesn’t need angles. He stood there daring Harden to go up, over or around him. Harden’s good sense came into play again. He didn’t really bother trying.
That’s the the story of this series - a battle of innocence vs. experience. On Friday, night innocence took the momentum.
All the way up and down the Raptors line-up, people you’d never thought much about are making significant contributions.
Just before The Shot II, Collin Murray-Boyles had the Artful Dodger moment of the game, slapping a ball out of Evan Mobley’s hands as the Cavs tried to wind down the clock. It bounced out of bounds. Raptors’ ball. Nine times out of ten, that either doesn’t work or it’s a foul. Murray-Boyles picked the optimal moment to have the one time.
Elsewhere, and alongside the usual suspects, Barnes and Barrett, second-year guard Ja’Kobe Walter had 24 points
Afterward, Walter revealed the key to his surging game: “The Lord, he keeps me steady.”
Him again.
If history is our guide, we know how this ends. The Raptors go to Cleveland, where the ghost of LeBronto haunts them, and they lose a squeaker. Cue another long off-season.
If this series had ended two games ago, we’d be into more of the same. Same sort of summer. Same sort of set-up for next year. Same expectations.
But if they lose now, the Raptors have already jumped a level. Next year, they are contenders. That’s what their fans will think. The playoffs won’t be good enough any more. Now we’re talking about real expectations. The Raptors suddenly find themselves back where they were just before their mid-2010s rise to genuine contender.
The Raptors players think they’re there already. After the game, Barnes assured the crowd that they would “talk again soon.”
Usually, a group that’s never there before doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. But sometimes it knows just enough to be dangerous.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Jamal Shead as the player who knocked the ball out of Evan Mobley’s hands. This version has been corrected.