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How the Raptors advance or the Heat force Game 7
Dwyane Wade and DeMar DeRozan will be key in Game 6 between the Heat and Raptors. Steve Russell/Getty Images

How the Raptors advance or the Heat force Game 7

If you’ve been following the Toronto Raptors this NBA postseason, you probably noticed something a little different watching Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals matchup against the Miami Heat. Kyle Lowry was playing well, and DeMar DeRozan was playing well — and they were doing it in the same game!

For whatever reason, the Raptors' dynamic duo of Lowry and DeRozan has been struggling this postseason. Still, Toronto has survived and now looks poised to win Game 6 in Miami after the twosome combined for 59 points and a cumulative plus-30 rating in Toronto’s 99-91 win Wednesday night at home.

That being said, the Raptors have been consistent underachievers in the postseason the last few years, while the Heat, led by Dwyane Wade, have been strikingly resilient. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at what the Raptors need to accomplish for a Game 6 victory and what the Heat need to do to stay alive and force a Game 7.

1) How the Raptors win Game 6 and take the series

There’s an old saying in hockey that in the playoffs your best players have to be your best players. It seems redundantly obvious, but it holds remarkably true year after year.

Not shockingly, this adage is also true when it comes to the NBA postseason. That is unless you’re the 2015-16 Toronto Raptors prior to Game 5 of their second-round series with the Heat. Up until Wednesday night’s game at the Air Canada Centre, both Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan had not been getting the job done for head coach Dwane Casey on a nightly basis. In fact, both have been downright awful at times.

Through his first four games against Miami, DeRozan, Toronto’s leading scorer during the regular season, had been averaging 17.5 points per game on 35 percent shooting. Kyle Lowry has been struggling all postseason. Even after his 25-10-6 performance Wednesday, the All-Star point guard is still averaging just 15.8 points on a lowly 33.5 percent shooting from the field, along with three turnovers per game.

Obviously, that type of production from your top two players just isn’t good enough, which is exactly why the Raptors' Game 5 win sets up a simple template for the team to follow to win the series: Just have your best two players looks like themselves!

Look, it's far from earth-shattering analysis, but it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than this. I’m well aware Bismack Biyombo has stepped up and played what is probably the best basketball of his career in the absence of Jonas Valanciunas, but the Raptors didn’t have their best regular season in franchise history because of a player like Biyombo. It happened because both DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry played like absolute studs.

With both Chris Bosh and Hassan Whiteside sidelined, the Heat is a wounded animal. If the Raptors' best two individual players can be as competent as they were Wednesday night, they’ll have a tough time finding a way to lose in Miami.

2) How the Heat force a Game 7

Let’s get one thing straight first.

If Chris Bosh and Hassan Whiteside were healthy and playing, this series would have probably been over by now. But alas, the Heat’s top two big men are out, and neither of them appear to be returning anytime soon.

Not having his top low-post players has forced head coach Erik Spoelstra into making some tough choices. Spoelstra has been forced to start the corpse of a former All-Star known as Amar’e Stoudemire at center and rotate him with the always hard-working Udonis Haslem, another player who has seen his best days pass him by. Both are pretty crummy options.

Instead of rolling with Stoudemire and Haslem for the entire course of a 48-minute game, Spoelstra has decided to go with his five best players in crunch time, regardless of position. The Heat has been trotting out Goran Dragic, Dwyane Wade, Joe Johnson, Luol Deng and rookie small forward Justise Winslow as the fourth-quarter lineup. Although this is a lineup that will never dominate the boards, it’s Miami’s best option. More importantly, however, it’s an option that can work.

In order for the Heat to win Game 6, the team is going to need this lineup to make some three-pointers, something it hasn’t been doing. In a series that has seen three overtime games already, the Heat is averaging just 6.8 three-point makes per game. Points have been a scarce commodity this series, so in order for Miami to come out of Game 6 victorious, it MUST connect on a few more three-pointers. With these two teams matching up so evenly, the extra points from a couple more three balls could make all the difference for the Heat. Charles Barkley might hate the notion, but with a lack of size, the three-point shot is Miami’s best friend right now.

This isn’t to say the Heat should be jacking up threes like they’re ordering off an a la carte menu. Rather, players like Joe Johnson, Luol Deng, Goran Dragic and Josh Richardson shouldn’t shy away from taking them in favor of contested midrange jumpers. Miami was tied for the third least amount of three-point makes as a team during the the regular season, but the time has come for each player to embrace the money ball of the NBA.

Along with keeping up the stout play on the defensive side of the floor, if the Heat and its small-ball lineup can hit a few extra three-pointers Friday night in Miami, the Heat's chances of forcing a Game 7 will increase exponentially.

It’s either that or pray for two more poor shooting performances from Lowry and DeRozan. A prayer, that given the Raptors stars’ play this postseason, could very well be answered.

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