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Why you should remember the Nets vs. Raptors series

Tom Szczerbowski / USA TODAY Sports

The undisputed best first round in NBA playoff history gave us plenty to remember for a long time, but with Western Conference supremacy and more marquee series stealing the spotlight, a fabulous Nets/Raptors epic might be forgotten without getting its due.

In terms of a single-season rivalry, Brooklyn vs. Toronto in 2013-14 was as good as it gets.

The Nets and Raptors were both part of the East’s resurgence in the second half of the season and along with teams like the Bulls, Wizards and even Bobcats, were a big part of the reason the Conference was looked at with at least a shred of respectability by the end of the year. They contested the Atlantic Division crown until the final weekend of the season and contested most of their matchups in thrilling fashion.

When it was all said and done after Kyle Lowry’s potential series-winning floater was blocked by Paul Pierce on Sunday afternoon, the two teams had played 11 games against each other, with the cumulative score of those 11 games being 1070-1070. That’s almost unfathomable.

Six of those 11 games finished within five points, including three playoff games, and they ended up in a seven-game playoff series that literally came down to the final play at the final buzzer of Game 7.

The series had plenty of trash talk and slight animosity, too. Terrence Ross said he personally wanted the Nets in a Reddit ‘AMA’ earlier in the season, prompting a “Be careful what tree your bark up” from Andray Blatche. Then the Nets appeared to strategically slump their way into the No. 6 seed and a first round meeting with the less experienced Raptors, giving the Raptors their turn to tell the Brooklynites to be careful what they wished for, with the in-arena song during Nets intros in Toronto even echoing that sentiment.

Masai Ujiri delivered one of the soundbites of the first round minutes before Game 1 by shouting “F**k Brooklyn!” to thousands of Raptors fans outside the Air Canada Centre. Jason Kidd replied by saying he didn’t even know who Toronto’s General Manager was, while Kevin Garnett warned, as the series headed to New York, that he didn’t think “you can say ‘F-Brooklyn’ and then come into Brooklyn.”

And we haven’t even mentioned how the whole experience vs. youth angle was played up by a Toronto newspaper as ‘Raptors vs. Dinosaurs,’ or how papers in Toronto and New York exchanged some tabloid headline gold.

You had an absolutely raucous Air Canada Centre crowd shaming the quieter Barclays Center at every opportunity, especially after a tweet from the Nets’ official account urged Brooklyn fans to be more like the loud Raptors fans. During Game 7, the ACC video board even showed a shot of the Barclays Center with cricket sound effects.

On top of all that, you had Drake vs. Jay-Z, Drake’s instantly viral lint-rolling, and even a student vs. teacher storyline, as Jason Kidd went up against one of his old assistant coaches in Dwane Casey.

The matchup and the series had all the makings of a classic, and while not as stylistically appealing as some of those aforementioned Western Conference matchups, the basketball itself lived up to the hype, too, at least from a competitive standpoint.

For the Raptors, they leave a rejuvenated fanbase and hope for the future in their wake. Decisions on both Lowry’s and Casey’s Toronto futures are now top priority, as Ujiri looks to make this surprising season North of the border a stepping stone for sustainable success and not just a flash in the pan in a down year for the East.

The Nets and their big name vets live to see another day and another series, heading off to Miami to play the second round matchup everyone (outside of Canada, at least) has been waiting for after Brooklyn swept the four-game season series against the champs.

As for this series, the Nets didn’t out-experience the Raptors, as some assumed they would - In fact the Nets made just as many puzzling mistakes in late game collapses as the Raptors did. And they didn’t ‘just want it more’ than the young Raptors did, either, as is often the simplistic way so-called analysts spin things in a Game 7 situation. No, the Nets were simply the better basketball team on this day and in this series, and they executed well enough to give themselves just enough separation in the end, in a matchup where there didn’t seem to be any.

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