Welcome back to the playoff stage, Paul George. It missed you — at least as much as the Toronto Raptors did not miss it.
After missing nearly all of the 2014-15 season following the devastating leg injury he suffered during a summertime USA Basketball scrimmage, the Indiana Pacers swingman continued a season-long return to stardom by taking over the opening game of the 2016 postseason. George scored 27 of his game-high 33 points in the second half on Saturday, torching fellow All-Star counterpart DeMar DeRozan on one end, locking him down on the other and setting up his teammates to lead seventh-seeded Indiana to a 100-90 win that wrests home-court advantage away from the second-seeded Raptors in their first-round playoff series.
"I love it. I love it," said George — who added six assists, four rebounds, four steals and two blocked shots in 37 1/2 minutes — after ESPN's Israel Gutierrez asked him about the feeling of being back in the playoffs in a post-game interview. "I'm looking at it as no pressure. I've been here before, being the low seed, my rookie year, so [...] all I've got to do is come out and play, try to do as best as I can leading. You know, my guys are behind me. They've got all the faith, all the trust in me. Coach [Frank Vogel] got the trust in me. Just got to come out and perform."
Perform he did, dominating the action after intermission to knock the Raptors back on their heels and stir the echoes of their ignominious postseason history. Eight times, Toronto has made the playoffs, and eight times, Toronto has lost its first playoff game. (The Raptors did come back to win their first-round series in 2001, knocking off the New York Knicks in five games.)
It has happened in each of the last two years for Raptors teams coming off the winningest season in franchise history under head coach Dwane Casey. The 2014 edition began a seven-game loss to the veteran Brooklyn Nets in which the Raps lost both the opening and deciding games on their home court. The 2015 version kicked off a four-game sweep at the hands of the Washington Wizards in which Toronto was, frankly, embarrassed.
After a franchise-record 56 wins that sewed up the No. 2 seed in the East behind stellar seasons from DeRozan and point guard Kyle Lowry, this year was supposed to be different. And yet, following a dispiriting effort in which the Raptors shot just 38 percent from the field as a team and committed 20 turnovers leading to 25 Pacer points, here they are again, in an 0-1 hole and, if not necessarily fearing the monster under the bed, at least wondering if he really might still be down there.
 | @bruce_arthur | |
It all looks so familiar, doesn't it?
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DeRozan wilted, proving largely unable to generate clean looks against the tenacious defense of one of the game's premier perimeter stoppers en route to 14 points on 5-for-19 shooting, and largely unable to prevent George from getting just about whatever he wanted on offensively.
 | @CandaceDBuckner | |
Frank Vogel on Paul George: “The biggest reason we won."
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Whether still bothered by the right elbow injury that affected his shot late in the season, by the physical and active defense of Indiana's George Hill, or both, Lowry was utterly ineffective. He scored just 11 points in 41 minutes, missing 10 of his 13 field goal attempts and five of his nine free throws, while undercutting his seven assists with six turnovers.
All afternoon long, the Raptors' stars looked tight, scanning and thinking rather than reading and reacting, due in part to Indiana's on-ball pressure at the point of attack and the specter of shot-blockers Ian Mahinmi and rookie Myles Turner at the rim.
 | @outsidethenba | |
Dwane Casey: “I hadn’t seen us play that tentative on the offensive end all year. That’ll change.”
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In the early going, they were able to push through the disjointed and stagnant offense, thanks largely to trips to the charity stripe — Lowry and DeRozan both drew fouls in the first 70 seconds, which seemed a good sign for a Raptors team that ranked third in the NBA this season in free-throw attempts per game and free-throw rate — and dominating work on the offensive glass, with center Jonas Valanciunas bulling his way to eight points and nine rebounds in the first quarter to help pace Toronto to a 24-19 lead after 12 minutes.
After playing DeRozan and Lowry for nearly the entire first quarter, Casey went with an all-bench unit to start the second — a relative rarity for the Raps, who feasted on opponents all season long at the starts of second and fourth quarters by having Lowry run with reserves Bismack Biyombo, Patrick Patterson, Terrence Ross and Cory Joseph. But with George getting an extended rest after having played the entire first period, Indiana continued to struggle offensively as well, falling behind by eight on a Patterson 3 midway through the second. A late-quarter surge led by five quick points from C.J. Miles, however, helped Indy go into the locker room down just two at half, 45-43, despite getting just six points on 2-for-9 shooting from George.
Once they got to the back, George went straight to the videotape.
"After the first half, I watched film in the back coming out," he told Gutierrez. "I was getting great looks; I just wasn't being smart about my approach. I did a better job with that."
Yeah, I think it's fair to say he did.
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