Chasing Heat, Raptors matching them ugly for ugly

TORONTO – "Ugly," assessed Kyle Lowry.

"Uggg-ly," agreed DeMar DeRozan.

No, they weren't talking about their shooting, but the overall aesthetics of a playoff series they and everyone else, it seems, are more enduring than enjoying. The Raptors and the Heat have gone overtime twice now, spending 108 minutes locked in a grim embrace that's been equal parts bear hug and Heimlich manoeuvre for both of them, and head south now all square in the standing, the bruises and the grousing. It's been grim, excruciating viewing, and for the Raptors' long-suffering fanbase, Millhouse's old line comes to mind: "I fear to watch but I cannot look away."

This is ground the Heat know well, and the kind of acreage the Raptors are eyeing with their constant mantras of "process" and "identity" and culture-building. They're very close in terms of their makeup, these two, set up a bit old-school with a marked disdain (or inability) to play Warriors-styled bombs away -- but it's the experience that comes with a couple of championships personified here by canny Dwyane Wade and perennial contending for two decades under the guidance of Pat Riley that marks the Heat apart, and ahead.

The playoffs is where that ground is claimed, and so far it has nothing to do with pretty spin moves from DeRozan or daggers from Lowry, who were scattershooting again in what ended up a 96-92 Toronto win. But brute smashes? There have been plenty of those, this Game 2 result down to a couple of smithy types in Jonas Valanciunas and Demarre Carroll. When Lowry missed, Valanciunas was there to clean up, to knock over, to put back. When DeRozan flashed off a screen, it was usualliy Valanciunas setting it (and sometimes, re-setting it). Carroll, meantime, finally shut down Joe Johnson, a fellow with deep experience of inflicting pain in these parts, and added 21 points of offence at the other end.

The next rung of this playoff ladder will surely have the Cavaliers waiting, and it likely ends there. But that's secondary for now, in a series that is slowly acquiring an edge. Goran Dragic was bloodied by a DeRozan elbow and to add insult was called for a foul on the play -- he got in a nice curse at a courtside fan on his way to being stitched up. Wade and the Heat's human eraser Hassan Whiteside both spent time writhing on the floor only to come back. The ACC boiled over. No, this wasn't pretty. But it sure looked familiar to the Heat - and to Dragic, whose playoff bonuses might well have to be allocated toward bridgework.

Up in the fifth row of the expensive Platinums over the visitors' bench, a well-dressed one of those visitors in a charcoal suit wasn't taking his eyes off it, not even when some poor noob came down during a late timeout and asked for a selfie. He asked again, but the guy just kept on staring at the floor where the Heat were frittering away a late lead. Security eventually shoo'd the guy off, and Alonzo Mourning, who once refused to come here and now is a Heat executive - how times and circumstances change - got back to watching in solitude.

Maybe he could be convinced to invite Dwane Casey out on the floor next game for a ride on his leg, just for old time's sake. That kind of history, this kind of combat, 'Zo and the Heat understand it. The Raptors? For one night, anyway, they matched them ugly for ugly.