MILWAUKEE—One by one, they fell away. Pascal Siakam had banged his elbow in the first quarter and it went numb, and he had ice on it after the game: he said it didn’t bother him too much, but he missed 14 of 20 shots, and admitted he shrank from them as the game went on. Marc Gasol talked in the morning about being ready to shoot: he missed nine of 11, and didn’t score in the second half. Danny Green barely saw shots at all. The bench sunk. Tough night.

The funny part is, they could have won. The Raptors controlled Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final for three quarters, led by seven, and were outscored 32-17 in the fourth to lose to the Milwaukee Bucks, 108-100. This was a blown chance, and they’re only allowed three more.

“When you’ve got a team down like that you’ve got to be mature enough and professional enough to try to keep them there,” said Green, who went 1-for-5 from the field. “Obviously it’s a great ball club over there, but this is one I thought we could have had, and could have gotten.

“I feel like this one, we let it slip away.”

All game long they had accomplished a lot of what coach Nick Nurse demanded. Defensively, they limited galactic monster Giannis Antetokounmpo and still got back out to Milwaukee’s many shooters, who missed a pile of shots. The Bucks missed plenty at the rim, too. Toronto got a near-unconscious 30 points from Kyle Lowry, despite his sprained left thumb. For much of the game they absorbed every Milwaukee run and responded, after a spectacular start. It was close to a very good game.

And then came the fourth, and once you added it all up, this team didn’t have enough fluidity, enough scoring, enough offence, again. In the second half, only three Raptors scored: Lowry with 21, Kawhi Leonard with 17, and Siakam with four on 1-of-8 shooting. Every other Raptor combined to miss every one of their 15 shots, with Gasol missing seven of those. In the fourth, Lowry went 5-for-7 from the field; every other Raptor combined to go 0-for-15.

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Milwaukee took all that and raced out in transition, put back offensive rebounds, and rode the energy of a home crowd that rejoiced as they came back. Kawhi in particular had a tough night as it progressed; he had to fight to get past the swarming limbs of Khris Middleton and Malcolm Brogdon, but was finding ways; with 3:10 left, Kawhi hit those free throws to give Toronto a 100-98 lead.

Gasol then missed an open three; Green was fouled with no call and turned a ball over to lead to a fast-break dunk; Kawhi missed a three, then tried to step through for a jumper in the lane that got blocked by Brook Lopez. Toronto missed everything the rest of the way, committed some bad turnovers, came undone. Lopez bombed distant threes and finished with 29 points and four blocked shots; Giannis was held to 24 points, 13 rebounds, six assists, three blocks, two steals. Other than Brogdon, the Raptors limited so many of Milwaukee’s guys. Their offence simply broke.

“Missed a lot of shots, obviously,” said Gasol.

“I missed a lot of shots,” said Siakam. “That didn’t help.”

“Hopefully we can make some of our open looks,” said Kawhi, who scored 31 on 10-for-26 shooting. “We had a lot of clean looks in that second half.”

How many times has this team sung that song? Count the losses, mostly. Internally, Toronto believed that the offence would actually do better against Milwaukee’s top-ranked D than it did against Philadelphia, because the 76ers size was simply devastating. It was noted that Fred VanVleet and Norman Powell had played well against the Bucks in the past, and the Raptors hoped they would be playable again.

Well, not in three-reserve lineups, they weren’t: Along with a quiet Serge Ibaka, those three bled points to start the fourth, which was a theme against Philadelphia. And though the Bucks aren’t as bruising as the Sixers, or as big, they are a challenge. Poor Siakam got away from Joel Embiid only to run into Antetokounmpo, who is one of the few humans on earth who can make the Cameroonian look like a mini-me. Kawhi had to take tougher shots than he might like, and was 5-for-15 after halftime. Gasol was left open, again. He is a good shooter. He is not shooting well.

“I mean, I think for some guys, you could even actually use those exact words: You had a clean slate,” said Nurse before the game. “This series presents a new team, a new set of opportunities, right, a new set of issues, whatever it is. And man, I hope we make some more of those shots. I’ve been saying that for a while, though.”

It all fell apart against a Milwaukee team that had been sitting around for a week after waxing Boston. This series was a collision of interlocking pieces, and if you looked at them individually you could see similarities. Two-way superstars? Giannis and Kawhi. Long, limb-y scoring forwards? Middleton and Siakam. Fireplug point guards? Eric Bledsoe and Lowry. Lopez and Gasol at centre, Nik Mirotic and Ibaka as helpful power forwards, and Green and Brogdon as sharpshooting guards.

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And as much as they are underdogs, the Raptors won two fewer games than Milwaukee this season while mixing and matching and experimenting, while the Bucks were the college student who had everything in order more or less all year long. You could also argue the Bucks hadn’t really played anybody yet, since Detroit’s best player was on one leg, and Boston was so sick of Kyrie Irving that all Milwaukee had to do was locate the self-destruct button, and gently urge the Celtics to push it.

This was a game Toronto should have stolen, or just won. And the Raptors put them on a hook, and let them off.

“It shows that we can do it,” said VanVleet, who went 1-for-4. “We know that we can create offence. That’s kind of the way that they play defence. We know that we’ll have some clean looks. We’ve got to step up and knock them down. We’ve just got to continue to run the offence.”

The Raptors can play in this series, but they missed their first shot. This will be hard.

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