TORONTO — With three minutes left in the Toronto Raptors’ commanding 108-95 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals Saturday, head coach Nick Nurse turned to his bench and looked at reserve guard Jodie Meeks. Kawhi Leonard, who notched a career high 45 points, had put in more than a day’s work. Flooded by MVP chants — the fourth time this evening — he jogged over to the sidelines, high-fived his teammates and took a seat on the bench.

He ambled up to the podium 108 minutes and a postgame treatment session later and said that rather than trying to stay in the game and break his career high, he had already been looking toward Nurse on the sidelines at the five-minute mark, when the Raptors led by 20, signaling that he’d like to come out of the game.

“Individual stuff is not big for me,” Leonard said. “It’s great when you do it and you can win, but my focus is on winning the ball game. That’s why we’re playing this game. We’re not playing this game so we can score 50 or 40 points. We’re all on this team so that we can hear, ‘Raptors win,’ at the end of the day.”

The Raptors stumbled out of the gate — second-guessing cuts, fighting to grip passes away from Philadelphia’s lengthy starting lineup, sauntering up the floor when the edict was to run — until Pascal Siakam (who finished with 29 points) and Leonard, as Nurse put it, “Got the jitters out.”

“I didn’t think we were moving great at the start,” Nurse said. “Again, it’s the start of another big series and we weren’t pushing has hard as I would have liked.”

Kawhi Leonard had a game for the ages Saturday against the 76ers. (Getty Images) More

The Raptors’ tortured Game 1 history is well-documented. They insist this team is different. The difference, as we all know, is Kawhi Leonard. On the same night that DeMar DeRozan, the franchise icon who was shipped out for Leonard, fizzled out — missing his first five shots and coughing the ball up twice in the first quarter as the Spurs were eliminated by the Nuggets — Leonard joined Vince Carter as the only Raptors to drop more than 40 points in a playoff game. He brutalized Jimmy Butler, sped past Tobias Harris and muscled away Ben Simmons, taking 23 shots to get his 45, displaying the patience and force that lately has inspired the occasional Michael Jordan comparison — not in skill or greatness, comments section, but in style. “I just liked the force,” said Nurse. “Pushing up the floor, punching gaps, determined to get to spaces.”

When great players construct great performances, they invoke nostalgia — and then comparison. In 2017, Marc Gasol was on the receiving end of Leonard’s previous career high, when he dropped 43 points on the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 4 of the first round. When asked about it, Gasol said he was simply happy to be on the other side this time.

Danny Green, who has played with Leonard since his rookie year, thought of the other great performance of Leonard’s last playoff run: Game 1 of the 2017 Western Conference finals against the Golden State Warriors. “That first half was one of the most efficient halves I’ve ever seen,” Green said, remembering a time when he too was in San Antonio and the Spurs, leading by 21 at Oracle Arena, looked as though they were on the verge of making their dreams come true. But at the 8:03 mark, Leonard missed a pull-up jumper and injured his ankle landing on Zaza Pachulia’s foot, immediately making the Warriors big man one of the most hated athletes in Texas, setting off the mysterious series of events that led to Leonard’s exit from San Antonio, a strict and controversial load management program, and his comeback in a Raptors uniform. “These guys did a good job of putting a plan together and making sure I’d be healthy at this point,” Leonard said. “I have no complaints right now.”

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