NBA
Pacers-Raptors Game 7 Recap
Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.
All posts by Jeff HawkinsUpdated15 Oct 2021
DeMar DeRozan got hot, the Pacers couldn’t keep up and that pretty much was all it took to wrap up a surprisingly competitive series.
While DeRozan still didn’t shoot particularly well (he was an atrocious 10-for-32 for the game), he managed to rifle off an impressive 30 points, including 15 by halftime and 28 by the end of the third quarter.
This time around, though, for the first time really in this series, Toronto got some significant contributions from multiple members of the rotation outside of DeRozan, Kyle Lowry or Jonas Valanciunas. Patrick Patterson knocked down a handful of big threes and both Cory Joseph (eight points, four assists) and Normal Powell (13 points) had their moments, as well, especially in the first half. Lowry stunk again, having shot 5-for-14 for the game and scoring only 11 points, but DeRozan came through when it mattered and that meant everything for the Raptors in an important Game 7, not only for the year but for the future of the Toronto organization.
The Pacers weren’t all bad. Monta Ellis had one of his better games of the series, scoring 15 points, while George Hill chipped in 19 and Paul George was as consistently awesome as he’s been all playoffs with 26 points and 12 rebounds of his own.
George really was the MVP of the series (and probably the entire first-round), finishing with averages of 27.3 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 4.3 APG and two SPG for the series, but the rest of that lineup wasn’t good enough often enough to get Indiana a first-round upset against one of the East’s best teams this past season.
Just getting to seven games was a bit of a moral victory for Indiana, though, and they’re well-positioned to make a push at the postseason again next year, especially with another year of development out of Myles Turner, who also had a surprisingly strong first postseason.
As for the Raptors, they move onto Eastern Conference Semifinals, where they’ll host the Miami HEAT. There is every expectation that it will be just as hotly-contested of a series as this one was.
