At the end of last night’s game between the Toronto Raptors and the Philadelphia 76ers—the seventh and final game of an up-and-down second-round playoff series—the quiet, martial forward Kawhi Leonard received the ball on an inbounds pass from his teammate Marc Gasol, following a timeout, with a little bit more than four seconds left in regulation. The score was tied ninety apiece, and the game had been close all the way. Leonard’s most famous teammates—including the young, better-every-day forward Pascal Siakam and the always-uneven-when-the-playoffs-arrive Kyle Lowry—had had disappointing performances, and he’d been required to take over the game, at the expense of the scoring efficiency that is usually his hallmark. With four seconds to go, he had thirty-nine points on an astonishing thirty-eight field-goal attempts. He’d kept his team even with the Sixers through a mix of mid-range floaters and elbow jumpers, plus the occasional pull-up three-pointer. When Leonard shoots, he rises suddenly, almost perfectly vertical, and then jabs both of his arms forward at a forty-five-degree angle. The maneuver looks more like a two-handed push than a shot, and one would expect it to produce a much flatter arc than Leonard somehow achieves. He’d made just enough of them; he needed one more to avoid overtime and get his team to the Eastern Conference finals.

The young and unpredictable Sixers seemed to have figured something out in the course of the series, and even across the duration of this game. The center Joel Embiid had been sick and slightly injured for much of the series; he’d played well but not up to the standard that convinces fans he might one day be the league’s best player. For most of Game Seven, he looked fluid, receiving passes, as he often does, at the top of the key, improbably disorienting his opponent with a slowly unfolding three-point fake that should not be convincing and yet nearly always earns him entry into the paint, where he has the size and the agility to make something good happen. Ben Simmons, the six-foot-ten-inch gazelle whose unwillingness to shoot from anywhere but within five feet of the hoop tends to render him less visible in tough moments than his talent should warrant, had decided to quit his disappearing act, and kept careening downcourt on fast breaks that were largely the product of his will. One of the newer additions to the team, Jimmy Butler, enlisted as a late-game “closer,” was living up to the title. He’d already made a few big shots and a pair of clutch free throws.

When Leonard got the ball from Gasol, he galloped toward the baseline. Simmons was guarding him at first, but Embiid quickly came, too, and, as Leonard kept rushing corner-ward, the center stayed with him. Then Leonard jumped. He’d gathered so much forward momentum that, as he rose and tried to square himself to the rim, his legs kept corkscrewing; when he released the ball, his torso faced the basket but both of his legs were fanning to his left, toward the other side of the court. Embiid stayed as close to him as one can without fouling—their bodies rose in tandem, their chests almost touched. The shot came down short, and hit the near side of the rim. But it bounced upward rather than away, and it hit the rim in roughly the same spot when it came down. Then it hopscotched over the cylinder to the rim’s other side, where it bounced again, gently caroming toward the backboard—teasing both teams, the whole crowd in Toronto, and all us viewers, mid-conniption, for multiple, eternal seconds.

The best record of those waiting seconds is a photograph by Rick Madonik for the Toronto Star. Leonard and Embiid have both returned to the ground. Leonard sits in a total squat with his arms still outstretched, looking up at his shot with his tongue sticking out, as if hoping to gauge its destination by the direction of the wind. Embiid stands, looking sick, to Leonard’s right, regarding the scene at the basket the way many of us look, half-willingly, at horror movies. Crouching next to Leonard, at his left, is the Toronto guard Jordan Loyd, wearing street clothes. Loyd’s eyes are stretched wide, and his mouth forms a perfect “O.” Despite his obvious allegiance, his face seems to me to stand in for those of us without a rooting interest in either team: total entertainment; astonishment at the physical and narrative possibilities of the game. The ball, after making that little digression toward the glass, fell through the net, and the Raptors won, on a shot that will rightly be celebrated for as long as the people who watched it live are still around. Leonard, who usually comes off as an emotionless sentinel both on and away from the court, was thronged by his teammates, and let loose an ecstatic roar.