Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

Game 6: Raptors at Pacers, 7:30 p.m. Friday, FSI, ESPNews, NBA

They are loud, and they are coming. Those basketball fans in Toronto, they’re not normal. They are NFL fans with an NBA team. They travel. They drink. They scream.

And they’re headed this way.

Game 6 is Friday. Could be the last time you see this particular group of Pacers, who need to beat the Raptors just to extend this playoff series – and their season – to a seventh game on Sunday in Toronto. The Pacers then would have to win there, or it’s over. The odds are long, though not as long as they looked historically when the 2016 playoffs began:

Since 1999, No. 7 seeds are 1-33 in best-of-seven series against the No. 2 seed. And that number can be updated to 1-34, given that the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed, San Antonio, already has eliminated the No. 7-seeded Grizzlies in four games.

To move ahead, the Pacers cannot look back. How they’ll manage to do that, I have no idea. They are professionals, not kids, but they are also human and the loss Tuesday in Game 5 was cruel, inhumane.

The Pacers led by 17 points near the end of the first quarter and by 13 points at the start of the fourth. They could do little wrong to that point, assisting on 17 of their first 21 baskets and shooting better than 50 percent from the floor overall and from 3-point range, and making 20-of-21 free throws.

Pacers’ bench once again pedestrian in playoffs

And then they could do little right. Rodney Stuckey was a stumbling shell of himself, missing field goals and free throws and even tripping himself near the sideline, falling out of bounds and landing in front of the rapper Drake. But it wasn’t just Stuckey. The whole team went cold at the wrong time. The Raptors were hot. Solomon Hill's game-tying shot was a split-second late. The loss was crushing.

“Probably the toughest one of my career,” said Ty Lawson.

“Definitely worst,” said Hill.

We will see what the Pacers are made of in Game 6. They already have shown such steel, rebounding from losses in Games 2 and 3 to win Game 4 with a ruthless display of aggression and physicality. But they showed a soft underbelly in Game 5, crumbling in the fourth quarter, scoring an unfathomable four points in the first 11 minutes of the 12-minute period.

They return home, and home is good, but the Raptors are coming and they are bringing Toronto with them. Hundreds of Raptors fans made the trip for Game 4, many of them – too many of them – finding their way into Bankers Life Fieldhouse. At various times the chant “Let’s go Pacers” started up, only to be canceled by the boisterous Canadian contingent chanting “Let’s go RAP-tors!”

Expect more of the same Friday. For sure you can expect to see Stephan Schweitzer, a Raptors fan who says he works “in the oil field” and saw my IndyStar hat Wednesday morning on the train from downtown Toronto to Pearson International Airport.

“Pacers, huh?” he said, wincing.

Then he told me he had his choice of tickets for Game 6 in Indianapolis after struggling to find one for Game 5 in his own town.

“Tickets are so much easier to get (at Bankers Life) than here,” he was saying. “There’s so much more available it’s crazy. We’ll be there, man. We’ll be there.”

OK, Stephan, thanks –

“And great seats, man! Middle section, Row 16.”

Thanks Stephan. This is my stop.

Is this the last stop for the 2015-16 Pacers? And if so, how many of them will we see again in this organization? Team President Larry Bird started a roster overhaul after last season when he said goodbye to older, slower mainstays Roy Hibbert and David West and brought in sleek speed in Myles Turner and Monta Ellis. That wasn’t the end of Bird’s renovations. That was the beginning.

Insider: Vogel has had to unlearn a lot of what he believes in

The elephant in the corner, the one we’ll address briefly here, is coach Frank Vogel. The loudest voices you hear on social media want Bird to give Vogel the same treatment he gave West and Hibbert – goodbye – but that won’t sway Bird. What will? Perhaps the Game 5 collapse. Perhaps the timing of revamping a franchise that played one way for so long, and now wants to play another.

Perhaps Vogel is coming back to coach the Pacers next season, regardless. Perhaps he’ll be back later next week, leading the Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the winner of the Miami-Charlotte series.

So many unknowns, starting Friday night with the most basic of questions: Can the Pacers recover psychologically from one of the worst collapses in franchise history? Can George Hill stay hot? Can C.J. Miles get hot? Can Ty Lawson please not play anymore? Can Paul George summon another bit of brilliance?

So much still to learn about this series, but one thing we know:

Canada is coming, Pacers fans. They’re coming with their black shirts and their white towels. They want to buy your tickets and watch the Raptors end your season and then parade back to Toronto to present Drake with a love offering: the Pacers’ season on a stick.

“We the North,” is what they’ll be screaming.

You the ones with a decision to make, Pacers fans. First you, before the game. Then your team, during it. Then Larry Bird, after it.

But one thing at a time. Toronto is coming. You can open the door to Bankers Life Fieldhouse, or slam it in their face.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

Game 6: Raptors at Pacers, 7:30 p.m. Friday, FSI, ESPNews, NBA