Posted on May 16, 2019, by Travis Pulver
It was looking good for the Toronto Raptors through the first three quarters of Game One of the Eastern Conference Finals. They had gotten out to an 11-point lead after the first quarter and heading into the final quarter they stilled by seven. But then a worst-case scenario happened.
Everybody went cold; everyone but Kyle Lowry, that is.
Lowry had 14-points in the fourth quarter which would normally be considered a phenomenal quarter by a single player. But Toronto only had 17 in the quarter as no one other than Lowry made a shot from the floor (Kawhi Leonard hit a pair of free throws and Pascal Siakam hit one).
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Lowry was 5-7 in the quarter while the rest of the team was 0-15.
“Pretty frustrating,” Lowry said after the game, via ESPN. “Fourth quarter killed us. … They outplayed us in the fourth quarter. [They] got a little bit more aggressive. They made some big shots, made some big plays.”
Early on it looked like Toronto might be able to steal home court advantage away from the Bucks. A 16-0 run in the first led to an early double-digit lead for the Raptors. When the quarter came to an end, Toronto held an 11-point advantage, 34-23.
Milwaukee was able to chip away at in the second. But heading into halftime, the Raptors were still ahead, 59-51.
A hot start by Milwaukee in the third got the Bucks within a point early in the second half. Toronto was not ready to give up the lead, though, stretched back out to ten before settling for a seven-point lead heading into the fourth quarter, 83-76.
That was when everything went wrong for the Raptors and right for the Bucks.
“We just don’t quit as a unit,” Bucks center Brooks Lopez said after the game. “We keep hounding, keep hounding, keep hounding and grinding, and then we finally got there. There’s no quit in our team. I don’t think it’s really in our DNA at all.”
Milwaukee, led by 13-points from Brooks Lopez, outscored the Raptors 32-17 in the quarter, including a 10-0 run to end the game. They went on to take Game One, 108-100.
Lopez led the way for the Bucks on the scoreboard with 29 points, a new career playoff high. But he was one of three Bucks players to record a double-double for the game (he had 11 rebounds); Giannis Antetokounmpo (24 points and 14 rebounds) and Khris Middleton (11 points and 11 rebounds) were the other two.
Kawhi Leonard led the way for the Raptors with 31 points followed by Kyle Lowry with 30. Pascal Siakam struggled with his shot making just six of 20 attempts (and just two of nine from three-point range) for 15 points.
Toronto will get a chance to even up the series at a game apiece when they take on the Bucks in Game Two Friday night in Milwaukee. But the early line on the game has the Bucks favored by 6.5.