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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - A couple hours after the final buzzer sounded on his team's Game 1 loss to the Miami Heat, Kyle Lowry sat under the far basket on the Air Canada Centre court, taking a break from his now famed late-night shooting session.

With his head buried in a black hoodie, the Raptors' point guard reflected on his worst performance of the post-season - a seven-point, 3-for-13 outing. A lost soul desperately trying to fix his broken shot, Lowry launched jumper after jumper until he got tired and went home.

Nearly two weeks later, in the aftermath of a series-deciding Game 7 victory, Lowry was long gone. There would be no late-night shooting for the two-time all-star, no soul searching. The building was dead silent, the calm after the storm, but now, hours after the biggest win in Toronto's 21-year franchise history, the only thing under that basket was confetti, mesh cut off the rim above.

What if their stars - Lowry and DeMar DeRozan - looked like stars again, we all wondered not long ago. What if the team's shots started to fall? What if they, you know, actually played well? What if they played like the second-seeded, 56-win club that impressed during the regular season? The answer came on Sunday, at the most opportune time, when the Raptors turned in their best showing of the playoffs to eliminate the Heat and advance to their first ever Eastern Conference Final.

Not coincidently, they did it on the shoulders of their best and most important player.

"Just the things that we'd been through this year, and how hard we've worked," Lowry said when asked what he was thinking about on the bench as Toronto put the finishing touches on a convincing 116-89 win. "[It was] just kind of an emotional time, just being able to sit there and relax, and kind of breathe, and not be going to overtime. Playing against a team like Miami, it pushed us to the limit, and so it was just a time to relax and just think about the things that we've done, and we have to continue to do."

He wasn't kidding. Nothing about their second-round series came easy and, up until Sunday, it certainly wasn't pretty. Both teams lost their starting centres to injury early in the proceedings, with just about everybody else playing through something, from sore thumbs to bruised wrists to stitched up faces. Three of seven games went to overtime, just one short of the NBA record. The Raptors, one of the league's top offensive teams during the season, failed to score 100 points in each contest until the finale.

With each game mirroring the result of their first-round series against Indiana, the Raptors would again surrender control after taking 2-1 and 3-2 leads. Naturally, Game 7 seemed destined to come down to one final play, one final shot, and almost certainly end in disappointment.

Why wouldn't it? Two years earlier, when their first-round series with the Nets went to a deciding Game 7, Lowry's last-second shot was blocked by Paul Pierce. They lost by one. Thirteen years before that, the last and only time they were close enough to smell the Conference Finals, Vince Carter's jumper rimmed out in Philadelphia. They lost by one.

You were right to be nervous but, on this night, they would leave nothing to chance. Smart.

Like Miami did in Friday's Game 6, Toronto won every quarter. Occasionally, they bent but never broke and by the middle of the fourth quarter they extended their lead to 28. Garbage time in Game 7, for the Raptors - a team DeRozan refers to as "drama queens", in this series of all series' - you had to see it to believe it.

The Heat had been playing small since Hassan Whiteside and Jonas Valanciunas went down in Game 3, it won them Friday's contest, but the Raptors finally put their size advantage to good use. Toronto bested Miami by 20 rebounds. They grabbed 20 on the offensive glass alone, including 13 from Bismack Biyombo and Patrick Patterson, who both enjoyed their best games of the series.

"[I was] talking to Biz before the game, talking about how many [rebounds] we could get and how we had to take advantage whenever they go small," Patterson said. Biyombo would elaborate: their goal was to grab 20 offensive boards between them and joked they "did a terrible job" after coming up short.

Patterson had been one of the team's more vocal players throughout the series, delivering locker room speeches before each game. On Sunday it went something like this:

"I had one question for everybody," Patterson said. "Are we satisfied with what we've done individually and what we've done collectively as a team, how far we've come? Do we want more? Do we want to go even further? Do we want to make history? Do we want to keep playing or do we want to go home?"

They looked the part of a team that was digging deep, that wanted it more. A lot of things had to come together for the Raptors to get it done - DeRozan poured in 28 points, Biyombo and Patterson were spectacular, DeMarre Carroll stepped up on both ends and even Terrence Ross hit some big shots - but, in most cases, when Lowry is the best player on the court by as much as he was Sunday, they're going to be the winning team. 

A month ago the franchise and many of its current players had never won a best-of-seven playoff series, now they have two under their belt as they get set to face the red-hot Cleveland Cavaliers, just four wins away from the NBA Finals.

Nobody believes they have a chance at getting there, and to be clear they probably don't, but regardless of what happens from here we can say, unequivocally, this is the best Raptors season, and the best Raptors team ever. That's no small feat.

"I’m not a sentimental person," head coach Dwane Casey said following the win. "But for this program, from where we started to where we are now, it’s very important. I think we’ve done everything we set out to do."

"We’re not done yet," he continued, with some clarification. "I know what it’s like to win a championship – I’m not saying we can do that – but I think this group is hungry, and never say never. I know one thing, our guys will compete, that’s all you ask at this time of year, guys play hard, lay it on the line for 48 minutes no matter who is in the game."

"Personally it’s rewarding to see but again, we have another series to go in the Eastern Conference."