The Toronto Raptors have been a big problem for the Golden State Warriors because of their length. It is for this reason the Raptors have been dubbed the best defensive team the Warriors have faced during their five-year championship run.
It has been heavily documented that the San Antonio Spurs, with Kawhi Leonard in the lineup in 2017, had the Warriors down by 25 points before Leonard fell to the ground in pain after landing on the foot of then-Warriors center Zaza Pachulia with 7:55 left in the third quarter.
Per ESPN’s The Undefeated reporter Marc Spears, Leonard described his ankle injury as “very painful”:
It’s just hard to tell right now. I definitely couldn’t go in that third quarter, with six minutes left. But we’ll see how I get better each day.
The Warriors were able to come back and beat the Spurs, 113-111, in route to sweeping San Antonio in the Western Conference Finals. After Game 1 of the series, Leonard sat out all but a handful of games during the 2017-18 season.
Fast-forward of a couple of years, Leonard’s new team, the Toronto Raptors, have a 3-2 lead over the Warriors. Both teams head back to Oracle Arena for Game 6 of the NBA Finals.
Enter eight-time NBA All-Star Dwight Howard, who was linked to possibly signing with Golden State this past offseason. (The Warriors signed DeMarcus Cousins instead.) Howard was interviewed on the red carpet of the New York premiere of Shaft on Monday night by Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson.
During the interview, Howard shared why the Raptors have a 3-2 lead on the Warriors in this years NBA Finals:
They have a lot of guys, who have been on teams that went to championships, and went deep in the playoffs and I think that experience has really helped them in this series. If you look at the roster of Toronto, they basically have every team that has beat Golden State. They got Memphis; they beat them during the playoffs. They have San Antonio, and they got Oklahoma City. So, they have three teams, who have competed against Golden State. So, I think all that knowledge that they learned from playing against Golden State over the years, they put it together with what Toronto is doing and they are killing.
Game 6 at Oracle Arena starts at 9:00 ET on Thursday and can be seen on ABC.
