OAKLAND, CALIF.—Nick Nurse searches, he always searches, moving quickly from one idea to the next if things aren’t going well for the Raptors.

He and his team try to figure it out on the fly because rotations sometimes change, lineups don’t always look the same, and there’s no reason to dawdle with the stakes being so high.

And in the biggest game of the season — at least before this coming Monday night at home — Nurse’s rapid-fire decision-making never came as quickly.

Danny Green struggles early? Get him out for Fred VanVleet after about six minutes.

Getting hammered on the boards? Go with the big lineup of Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka.

Getting good production from both? Roll with them.

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Ibaka and VanVleet, and Nurse’s decision to go with them and stick with them, propelled the Raptors to within one game of history after a 105-92 win over the Golden State Warriors on Friday night.

VanVleet had five assists in the third quarter, after starting the second half in place of Green, and Ibaka had 12 of his 20 points in five minutes of the third quarter and seven minutes of the fourth as Nurse’s decisions worked out.

“We had a big problem with the third quarter in Game 2 (when Golden State started with an 18-0 run), so we had to make some adjustments there to try to combat the way they come out of the half,” Nurse said. “They have been historically really good at that. We made the decision to put Fred in, in Game 3, and then Game 4 again tonight.

“And mostly it’s to try to keep the pace of our offence going; it gives us two point guards out there that can push the ball, get it in and get it going, and it kind of paid off.”

Toronto now leads the best-of-seven NBA Finals 3-1 and can finish a truly storybook season at the Scotiabank Arena on Monday night.

Kawhi Leonard was expectedly brilliant, with 36 points including 17 in a mesmerizing third quarter, but Ibaka was a revelation and a testament to Nurse’s ability to gauge what a game needs and milk it. Ibaka had two blocked shots and five rebounds to go with his 20 points.

“I was just trying to play basketball out there, and we knew they would try to take Kawhi away, double him,” Ibaka said. “So I just tried to play in the space. And also Kawhi and Kyle, all the guys, they did a great job to find me every time I was moving.”

VanVleet left the game in the fourth quarter to get a seven-stitch cut to his head tended to, but not before he had helped turn the game around.

Toronto was awful in the first half — 2-for-17 from three-point range collectively — and out of sorts because of badly missed open shots. It’s folly to think a third quarter resurgence on Friday was solely because of VanVleet but Toronto did take its first lead of the game with VanVleet and Lowry in the backcourt.

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Leonard drilled three-pointers on his first two shots of the third, VanVleet played 101/2 minutes while dishing out five assists and the Raptors turned the game with a 37-point outburst.

It was the same story as in Game 3; the Warriors are known as one the best third-quarter teams in the league but the Raptors did not let them get going. A small adjustment led to a big reward.

What do you think?

It would seem counterproductive to make a lineup change at halftime of an NBA Finals game when the Raptors had won six of seven games before it, but it’s the way Nurse rolls.

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“It’s a tricky thing, I think, in the playoffs,” he said before the game. “You have to make adjustments even when you’re winning. You have to fix things and change things and change matchups and rotations and all those things because, I don’t know, I just feel that you have to.

“If you don’t, then you’re going to be making them after a loss if you don’t.”

Nurse is able to improvise as he sees fit because he’s got a group of intelligent players who don’t tend to get ruffled and have seen enough different lineups that they aren’t thrown for a loop by something they haven’t seen in a while.

“That helps when you’re trying to make adjustments in the game, you throw something at them maybe they have never seen before, and they go out and do it pretty well because they have been around the block,” he said. “And they also trust each other. That’s important. It makes my job a lot easier, I tell you that.”