MILWAUKEE—When it comes to making sense of the dominance of home teams in the NBA playoffs, there are a few standby explanations. There’s the hard-to-measure effects of a loud partisan crowd, and the well-documented tendency of referees to respond to their environment by giving a favourable whistle to the locals. There’s a litany of old basketball standbys, too. Familiar shooting backgrounds matter. Rims vary. Benches don’t travel.
Heading into Thursday’s Game 5 of the deadlocked Eastern Conference final, none of it offered a satisfying summation of Toronto’s struggles away from their Bay Street base during this post-season. The Raptors came into the game with a 3-4 record on the road in these playoffs.