In a miserable season, now with 30 losses tallied up, the Raptors have perfected the fake comeback. There’s a script to it: they’ll fall behind early or suffer through a grotesque stretch of basketball, then push themselves into form in the fourth quarter — just enough to make a game competitive, but not enough to actually pull off a victory. Heck, Pascal Siakam alone has missed four potential game-winners this season. It’s as close to a fake comeback becoming a stolen win as you can get.
Well, karma comes around eventually. In what fell neatly into the script of another fake comeback — the Raptors took a fourth quarter lead after trailing by as many as 17, only to watch Russell Westbrook rip off a 5-0 run in the last two minutes — Toronto went and stole the game.