Sixers somehow avoid disaster against Raptors, and are suddenly very much alive | David Murphy

TORONTO — Salvation came in a flurry, with a loose ball bounding all over the court, with Kawhi Leonard passing up another attempt at an impossible shot to free up a teammate for a clean look at the rim, with Danny Green’s shot rattling in and out, with the ball finally finding its way into the frantic grasp of Tobias Harris. With three seconds left, the whistle blew. As the seats began to empty, the Sixers were left to walk to the opposite end alone, their postseason life not just intact, but renewed.

It will take plenty of contemplation and several gigabytes of game video to digest this one, but all that mattered in the immediate aftermath on Monday night was that the Sixers were 94-89 winners, and this best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals was, somehow, tied, 1-1.

It was the game that was decided in the final 15 minutes, after the Sixers should have won it in the first 20. The end, then, would mean one of two things: Either the series was anybody’s to win, or it was over. Those were the stakes.

With 2 minutes, 50 second remaining in the third quarter, the Sixers were clinging to a one-point lead and looking every bit a team en route to a spirit-crushing defeat. The gravity of their situation centered less on where they were and more on where they had been. For the first 20 minutes of Game 2, they had looked like a team that was quite capable of making this a series. In the eight minutes that followed, they’d looked drunk.

Thanks to a slew of dramatic adjustments that coach Brett Brown promised after his team’s blowout loss in Game 1, the Sixers spent most of the first half confounding the Raptors with a revamped defensive scheme that saw Joel Embiid guarding Pascal Siakam — “The goal was to make him drive, make him go left,” Embiid said — and Ben Simmons and a rotating cast of backline help defenders swarming Leonard.

The combinations seemed to wreak havoc on the Raptors’ offensive flow. While Leonard would finish with 35 points, he also missed 11 of his 24 shots from the field, including seven of his 10 attempts from three. This, after he missed just seven of 23 in Game 1. That alone made a crucial difference.

“It was a good adjustment by them,” Raptors guard Kyle Lowry said. “It was a game-plan adjustment by them. ... They came out more aggressive than us. We didn’t come out aggressive enough. ... They played really desperate and super hard.”

But then came Act II. The Raptors adjusted to the adjustments, and the Sixers began tripping over themselves on the offensive end. Their last nine possessions of the first half featured four turnovers and only one field goal in six attempts, their lone saving grace coming in the form of a five-point play that saw Jimmy Butler get fouled while draining a three-pointer followed by a Raptors technical foul. The second half started no better, their lead steadily evaporating amid a cacophony of turnovers (four), and missed shots (11 of 16). For a brief stretch, confusion reigned. Twice, Boban Marjanovic jogged down to the scorer’s table, only to be sent back to the bench a few moments later, warmup shirt in hand.

Meanwhile, the storm they’d mostly avoided finally began to gather as Leonard morphed back into the player who’d dropped 45 points in Game 1. He drained a corner three-pointer with Greg Monroe in his face. He hit a pull-up three in transition after rocking Harris backward. After finishing the first half with 15 points on 6-of-10 shooting, Leonard went 4-for-7 in the third quarter with 11 points and two assists.

All of which left us here, the Sixers leading, 61-60, the Raptors slowly, steadily beginning to impose their will. Despite the stellar defense by Simmons and Embiid, despite the hero-ball performance from Butler, despite the crucial performances from James Ennis and, yes, Monroe, the Sixers saw it slipping away. Of the 106 teams to fall behind 0-2 in the conference semifinals since 1970-71, only four went on to win the series. The odds of coming back from a collapse such as this would have felt even longer.

Somehow, someway, they answered. Sparked by Butler’s 30 points, 11 rebounds, and five assists, the Sixers would push the lead to double digits, then hang on for dear life. With 1:19 left in the third quarter, he took Norman Powell off the dribble, dropped a layup off the glass, and picked up a foul, the ensuing free throw giving the Sixers a five-point lead and the first hint of sunlight of the period. With 2:11 remaining in the game, he knocked down a three-pointer off a great pass from a doubled Embiid to put the Sixers up, 88-81.

“This was James Butler," Brown said, his voice emphasizing that first-name formalization. “That was the adult in the gym. ... He was just a tremendous, just a tremendous, sort of rock. He willed us to a lot of different situations. ... He was a stud.”

It was either going to be an impressive win or a crushing loss. The climactic sequence came, fittingly, in the game’s closing minute, Siakam following his own miss to cut the Sixers’ lead to 90-89, Embiid answering on the following possession, working his way through the paint and then dropping a layup off the glass to move the lead back up to three with 24.3 seconds remaining. After Green’s three-point attempt rattled out, Harris corralled the rebound, and picked up the foul.

And that was that. It wasn’t pretty, but, then, it wasn’t designed to be.

“We guarded,” Butler said. "That was why we won."

Somehow, the Sixers held a lead for the game’s last 42:27. Now, as the series heads back to Philadelphia, they are very much alive.