TORONTO — With about two minutes remaining in the third quarter of Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals, the Toronto Raptors — trailing the Milwaukee Bucks by 15 points Saturday night — had become so well-versed at digging themselves out of holes that they couldn’t possibly ascribe any mysticism to the completion of a comeback.

They were crowned and clowned by Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 3 of the second round, accruing a 2-1 deficit before winning in the seventh game. They let Game 1 against the Bucks slip away and got blown out in Game 2. They started Game 4 in an 18-3 hole.

No grand exultations sparked the seven-minute run that led to a 100-94 victory that cemented the Raptors’ season and spelled Milwaukee’s demise. “[Raptors coach Nick Nurse] was pretty composed. He told us that we were just here last game and to keep fighting, keep striving, one possession at a time,” Kawhi Leonard, who had 27 points, 17 rebounds and seven assists, said after the game.

They knew the drill. They had the tools. From there, it was a matter of harnessing them. “Marc [Gasol] was telling Serge [Ibaka] what he saw and how he could affect the game,” said Norman Powell. “Me and Fred [VanVleet] were talking and Kyle [Lowry] was talking to us. Kawhi was talking to us.

Kawhi Leonard and the Raptors are Eastern Conference champions. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP) More

“The one thing Kawhi really stressed to us was just to enjoy it. Don't get too out of character, just enjoy the moment and go out there and just lay it on the floor. It was an amazing feeling just to be able to battle and chip away at it. It's how you make history.” One rotation at a time.

When things were bad, they used to get worse. Now, when things are bad, Leonard comes to the rescue.

Desperate force and tactical grift — a jump-shooting foul here, an offensive rebound after a free throw there — sparked Leonard’s own 10-0 run that turned into a 26-3 flood that turned a 2-0 series deficit into a 4-2 victory and Toronto’s first NBA Finals berth. “I think your team’s temperament flows through your best players,” said Nurse. “[Leonard’s] as even-keeled maybe as I've ever seen. So that spreads pretty quickly around the locker room. And on top of that, he makes a lot of big plays.” Enough to turn the team that used to lose every time it was supposed to win into the team that wins every time it’s supposed to lose.

There was a time, after all, that the Raptors didn’t have “it” and Paul Pierce did. The Raptors were the team that always fell short, in the city where Chris Bosh thought he couldn’t watch NBA League Pass, where Hedo Turkoglu infamously said “ball” and Andrea Bargnani taped Primo Pasta ads, where Vince Carter missed the shot that could have changed everything and forced his way out three years later. It became LeBronto, the place where the deepest run in playoff history didn’t even register as an “adverse situation” in the mind of their opponent. It was the place where, after trading DeMar DeRozan for Leonard, president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri basically had to implore the city to regard itself with self-belief, not self-pity.

There was a time when Lowry was the pudgy point guard who was supposed to come off the bench and get traded to New York before falling into a 9-2 swing that sparked a six-year playoff run that culminated in this Finals berth. In time, his attitude (and his diet) shifted and evolved, and so did the team around him: Greivis Vasquez became Powell and OG Anunoby. Patrick Patterson and Amir Johnson walked. Jonas Valanciunas became Gasol. Lowry’s best friend, DeRozan, was traded for this shot at a championship. Through it all, Lowry kept hitting the deck, nicking elbows and spraining ankles, watching his efforts turn into indignities, his reputation constantly toggling back and forth between disappointing and resilient, as though one could ever be the latter without experiencing the former. The last time he was this close, back in 2016, when LeBron James and the Cavaliers bounced the Raptors out of the playoffs for the first time, he was distraught. “It was a waste of a year,” he recalled Saturday night. “It was a bad feeling. But that feeling is over.”

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