Mike Ulmer has worked for seven news organizations including the National Post and, most recently, the Toronto Sun. Mike has written about the Toronto sports scene for more than 10 years and has penned several books on sports and culture.



May 1, 2007

(TORONTO) -- Morris Peterson lived up to his promise.

Vince Carter earned each and every point he garnered in Tuesday night’s Game 5 against the Raptors.

That had been the plan from the beginning, Peterson said.

“You mean the plan was that he would have to go through you,” it was put to Mo Pete.

“No,” he said. “Through the Raptors.”

The Raptors needed contributions from everyone to pick up the win Tuesday. (Graig Abel/NBAE/Getty Images)

And that, as well as any other explanation covers off the Raptors 98-96 wins in a wild Eastern Conference Quarter-Final.

The New Jersey Nets had to go through the Raptors. All of them

Twelve Raptors dressed. Twelve men played. Eight scored and at the end of the night, the affable Darrick Martin was the last point guard standing.

The Raptors lost starter T.J. Ford in the first quarter after he was run over by Carter. Ford, who lost a season to a neck injury, had a stinger in both arms. Jose Calderon jumped off the bench and scored a career high 25 points before he too went down with a suspected is a sprained right ankle. The status of both players is anybody’s guess.

“We’ll get some treatment on some guys, try to get some of them feeling better and try to win in New Jersey,” said Raptors coach Sam Mitchell, who as much as anyone earned some validation last night.

After two spectacularly one-sided losses in New Jersey, Mitchell inserted Peterson into the lineup and moved seven-foot-rookie Andrea Bargnani to the middle. Rasho Nesterovic, who had averaged 4.3 points in the series, was shifted to the bench.

There is much significance in this. Peterson has struggled all season to find his groove. The longest standing Raptor is a free agent at season’s end. He is also an immensely decent person and when his night was over and he had fouled out guarding Carter, he left to a thunderous ovation. It was a thank-you, for a hard night’s play and a great body of work.

Bargnani, meanwhile, laid one more plank in his platform as the one of the dominant players in the franchise with a 18-point night and an evening of ethereal calm. At one point in the first quarter, Bargnani eyeballed a three-point shot. New Jersey guard Jason Kidd ran towards him as if he was on fire. Bargnani pump faked, and then stood, the ball throat high, watching Kidd soar by as if the Nets great guard was a hot-air balloon spied on a stroll through the park.. About the time Kidd came back to earth, the ball was spinning into the netting.

Calderon knocked down 12 of 20 and when the Raptors offence lagged, as it did through most of the second half, it fell to Calderon to salvage something. Usually he did.

The Raptors raced to a 33-13 first-quarter lead. Bargnani was good for 13 of those points and Anthony parker added another 11. The Nets righted themselves, outscored the Raptors 29-26 in the second quarter and two trends snaked their way through the game: the Nets constantly narrowed the gap and Chris Bosh endured a nightmarish night.

Bosh was in foul trouble all night and finished with 11 points. He missed what would have been a game-sealing dunk off a rebound and finished a miserable three of eleven from the field.

Carter, meanwhile, steadied himself after a middling start to card 30 points. He played with a reckless disregard for his own safety that saw him become entangled with a cameraman under the basket as well as plow into the luckless Ford. He is a wonder when he wants to play but hitting only six of 10 free throws helped give the Raptors the margin of victory. Still, he was four of seven from the arc and stood out all night as the Nets most dangerous player.

“Not enough,” he said. “We didn’t win.”

Not enough was a theme Mitchell saved for Bosh who scored a combined 23 points in the two losses in New Jersey.

“He’s just got to pick it up. You can say it’s the officiating, you can say this, you can say that, but he’s got to pick it up,” said Mitchell.

“He just hadn’t played well.”

The Nets narrowed the gap to one point late in the fourth and had one final chance for the win. Carter had the ball deep in the key but spun and found Bostjan Nachbar at the three-point line. Nachbar’s shot just missed.

“Vince Carter did a great job sucking in the defence and I had a wide open shot. I missed it. It’s as simple as that. It was a big play, they showed trust in me and I screwed up,” Nachbar said.

In the end, it fell to Mitchell to put things in perspective.

“It took everything,” he said, “and it took everybody.”