Holy smokes, what a shot. I mean, what a shot! Last night, the Toronto Raptors beat the Philadelphia 76ers 92-90. As the final seconds of the tense Game 7 ran down, Toronto’s Kawhi Leonard took one last desperation shot that beat the buzzer and sent the Raptors to the Third Round of the NBA Playoffs. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favour and check it out.
Has there ever been a better ending to a game? The ball bounced off the rim not once, not twice, not thrice, but FOUR times! I can’t imagine how many near heart-attacks were felt across the continent as fans waited for the ball to decide where it was going to drop, but my goodness, it was worth the wait.
With that shot, Leonard made history. For the first time in NBA history, a series was decided in Game 7 by a buzzer-beater, which is honestly a little surprising. In the NHL, there have been forty-four Game 7s decided in overtime, so normally I would have assumed that there had been lots of Game 7 buzzer-beaters in the NBA. But a buzzer-beater has won an NBA playoff series just four times before last night, and only one out of those four was a winner-take-all game. That one was when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls took on the Cleveland Cavaliers back in 1989. But that was a Game 5 in a best-of-five series. You may have seen it before, as it’s famously known as “The Shot” and is one of Jordan’s most iconic moments (in a career of many iconic moments).
A final note about that Jordan shot. It’s the only buzzer-beater where if the shot had missed, the other team would have won the game and the series. At least Jordan’s shot had the courtesy to go through the net decisively, allowing Cleveland fans to quickly return to their crippling depression.
Leonard’s shot, on the other hand, let the Sixers die slowly and painfully. Basketball can be an amazing and cruel sport sometimes.
Note: An earlier edition of this post incorrectly stated that this was the first time the Toronto Raptors have advanced to Eastern Conference Finals. This was actually their second trip. The first was in 2016, when they lost against the Cleveland Cavaliers, who went on to defeat the Golden State Warriors in the Finals.
Hat-tip to Sportscasting.
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