Sixers playoff flashback: Kawhi Leonard sends Sixers home with historic Game 7 shot

With the NBA playoffs on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, here are some memorable 76ers playoff games dating to when they moved from Syracuse before the 1963-64 season. Is your favorite missing? Send feedback to Marc Narducci at mnarducci@inquirer.com.

Seventh of 12 parts

Leo Rautins is a former 76ers first-round draft choice who had one of the best seats in the house. He had a clear view of a play that had never happened before in NBA Game 7 playoff history.

It’s a play that energized one city and one country and tore the hearts out of the Sixers and their faithful.

Rautins is a basketball analyst, working for Sportsnet, which was televising Game 7 of the Sixers at the Toronto Raptors on May 12, 2019, throughout Canada. Born in Toronto, Rautins has been a studio or game analyst for the Raptors since their inception. This is Toronto’s 25th NBA season.

And when the historic Game 7 play took place, Rautins stayed silent.

“You are letting it breathe, you let it go,” he said in a recent interview.

There is no mystery as to what play we are talking about.

The Sixers and Raptors were tied, 90-90, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. There were 4.2 seconds left with Toronto inbounding inside halfcourt near their own basket.

The Sixers and their fans know this conclusion all too well.

Toronto’s Marc Gasol had the inbounds pass

“From a defensive standpoint, the last person I want to let even touch and I would have killed myself to not let him get the ball is Kawhi Leonard,” Rautins said.

Leonard did, indeed, catch the inbounds pass, past the top of the key and near where Rautins was sitting.

“He’s not looking where he is going to go, he has his mind made up, he’s going to the corner,” Rautins said.

The Sixers’ Ben Simmons was initially guarding him.

“That pursuit of Simmons seemed just casual and it seemed like, ‘OK, I will let him go where he is going and somebody else will get him,’ ” Rautins said. “I didn’t understand that.”

That somebody was Joel Embiid, who picked up Leonard before his fourth dribble and stayed with him through his fifth.

Embiid got a hand up and forced Leonard to fade as he fired his shot from the corner.

“One thing about Kawhi, his shot is always flat and he shoots a great percentage,” Rautins said. “He knows with Embiid there, he has to get in his stance and elevate back. The shot has to have a bit of an arc.”

A flat shot would have been rejected by Embiid, so Leonard put some extra arc on the shot as he launched it.

“That is about as high an arc as you will see him shoot,” Rautins said.

During this sequence, play-by-play man Matt Devlin was calling the action. Rautins, like any strong color analyst, let the play-by-play guy make the call with no interruption.

“Ultimately, you want to get the call right and let the pictures tell the story,” Devlin said.

Devlin then made the call

“Gasol to inbound it,” he said before there was a slight pause. “Kawhi up top, looks at the clock, turns the corner, for the winnnnnn ...”

When he says “win,” the ball takes the first of what would be four bounces on the rim, so Devlin has to pause.

“In the eyes of someone calling play-by-play, at that moment you are trying to describe what you are seeing and what you are feeling and there is an element of suspense happening because the ball is bouncing,” Devlin said.

And as the ball was bouncing each time, Devlin remained silent. When the ball incredibly went in after the fourth bounce that gave the Raptors the 92-90 win, Devlin continued.

“Yes! Kawhi Leonard with the game-winner, hanging in the air, the ball suspended in air, some 18 years waiting the Raptors get the shot to go, 41 points for Kawhi Leonard and for the second time in franchise history the Toronto Raptors are headed to the Eastern Conference finals.”

The 18 years he was referring to was the Sixers’ eliminating the Raptors in seven games during the 2001 Eastern Conference semifinals. This was the first playoff meeting between the two teams since, a series that finished with Toronto’s Vince Carter missing a corner jumper.

After Devlin made his call, he and Rautins remained silent, allowing the pictures to tell the story.

“That final 4.2 seconds felt like 30 minutes,” Rautins said.

Imagine how the Sixers felt.

In September, Sixers coach Brett Brown talked about the Leonard shot.

“I have experienced pain,” he said, talking about two close playoff losses as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs. “I haven’t experienced that type of pain.”

After that win, the Raptors beat the Milwaukee Bucks in six games in the Eastern Conference finals and the Golden State Warriors in six to win the franchise’s first NBA championship.

Nobody pushed the Raptors the way the Sixers did.

“Philly presented a lot of problems with their length and matchups,” Rautins said. “Plus, all season and for most of the playoffs, Toronto got great production from its bench. But that series, Philly was able to take those guys out of the mix.”

So much happened in that game, but most fans will remember only the game winner by Leonard.

As Devlin said in his call of the winning shot, Leonard ended with 41 points, a fact that often gets lost.

Leonard needed 39 shots, hitting 16. He is a two-time NBA Finals MVP and has appeared in 111 playoff games and only twice in his career has taken 30 or more shots.

During his career, he has scored 40 or more points in a playoff game three times. Two of those came in that series. He scored 45 in the Raptors' 108-95 win in Game 1. In the seven games against the Sixers, he averaged 34.7 points and 9.9 rebounds.

Few will remember that all five Sixers starters played at least 40 minutes that night. Or that Embiid led the Sixers with 21 points, but shot 6-for-18.

"Another thing that was lost was Serge Ibaka coming off the bench to score 17 points,” Devlin said.

Two other possibly forgotten facts: Jimmy Butler scored 10 of his 16 points in the fourth quarter, keeping the Sixers in the game. Leonard, who shot poorly the first three quarters, was 6-for-9 in the fourth quarter, with 15 points.

Incredibly, this was the first Game 7 buzzer-beater in NBA history.

“It was like a true heavyweight fight,” Devlin said. “The first Game 7 game-winner; what a way to end.”