India A 243 for 0 (Gaikwad 125*, Gill 109*) beat Sri Lanka A 242 for 7 (Jayasuriya 101, Jayaratne 79, Dube 2-47, Deshpande 2-51) by 10 wickets

India A continued their winning run against Sri Lanka A, romping to a ten-wicket victory in just 33.3 overs in the second one-dayer on Saturday.

Put in to bat at Union Gymkhana Ground in Belgaum, the Sri Lankans could put up only 242 for 7, and centuries from openers Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shubman Gill meant an easy victory for the home team. Gill retired hurt with cramps when he was on 109 (off 96 balls), with the team score at 226 for no loss in 30 overs, but Gaikwad knocked off the remaining runs with No. 3 Prashant Chopra for company.

Gaikwad followed his 187* in the first match with a second consecutive unbeaten century, ending with 125 not out off 94 balls in this game. All the Sri Lanka A bowlers came in for some heavy punishment, with only Asitha Fernando going at less than a run a ball, conceding 28 runs in five overs.

Gaikwad and Gill were rapid from the start. While Gill got to his half-century in 40 balls, Gaikwad got to the milestone soon after, getting there off 44 balls. While Gill kept his pace even, Gaikwad accelerated sharply, getting to a century in just 78 balls, while Gill took 93.

Like Gaikwad, Shehan Jayasuriya also hit a second consecutive century, but his 101 off 139 balls could only shore up Sri Lanka A's innings after a horror start: Jayasuriya walked in at 7 for 2 in four overs, and quickly saw that become 27 for 4 inside the first ten overs.

Sri Lanka A had a couple of brief partnerships after that but the stand that revived their innings came only once they had been reduced to 81 for 6. Ishan Jayaratne, whose highest score in List A cricket was 42 coming into this game, hit out for 79 not out off 73 balls, sharing in a 142-run stand with Jayasuriya that ended only in the 49th over.

For India A, Tushar Deshpande took 2 for 51 and Shivam Dube had 2 for 47 and Shreyas Gopal was parsimonious, taking 1 for 26 in seven overs. Washington Sundar was the only bowler without a wicket, but he bowled ten economical overs for 38.

South Africa coach Ottis Gibson wants the focus to turn from AB de Villiers back to the cricket, as his team prepares to take on West Indies in a game they really cannot afford to lose. Speaking in Southampton on Saturday, Gibson was clearly not happy to entertain too many questions on de Villiers.

"Personally I suspect there are a lot of people wanting AB to be here [more] than AB himself," Gibson said. "If he wanted to be here he would be here."

During the course of the press conference, he went on to say: "Are we going to talk about this all the time? Or are we going to prepare for the West Indies game." He also said: "Feels like its a court case here."

On Thursday, ESPNcricinfo reported that de Villiers had offered to come out of retirement to play the World Cup, just a day before the squad was named. The team management turned de Villiers down since he did fulfil the selection criteria - playing domestic and international cricket in the months leading up to the World Cup - and they felt picking him would be unfair on the players who had been performing in his absence. De Villiers had retired from international cricket in May 2018, saying he was tired.

South Africa have begun World Cup 2019 with three losses in a row, and they would need to win most of their remaining six games to have a realistic chance of progressing to the semi-finals. Gibson said of the situation: "I can't recall in recent history a team picking a guy that's retired."

"Nobody's shaken up, nobody's died or anything... When we played in South Africa we won eight of the last 10 games... You guys [the media] weren't asking those questions then."

He said he hoped the players picked in de Villiers' absence would take this opportunity to show their mettle and that they deserved to be at the World Cup. "I would want them to flip it the other way and show everyone that they deserve to be here.

"It's only us that can change it [perceptions]... We can talk about AB all we want but he's not here and he cannot help us. Only we can help us.

"We have to keep believing in ourselves and in the people who are here to do well in the tournament."

Gibson admitted the team management was wary of the de Villiers story popping up during the tournament, and said they had spoken with the team about keeping focus should such "distractions" occur. "I guess guys are disappointed that it's come out at the time that it's come out," he said. "When we got together in camp, we spoke about managing distractions, that was one of the things that we said could come up.

"I don't imagine it is going to affect the way that we play cricket, [but] we haven't played very well so far and it is disappointing."

More to follow

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

A net bowler working with the Australian team at The Oval has been given the all-clear after a precautionary scan, after he was struck on the head during training.

The medium-pacer, Jai Kishan, was bowling to David Warner and was hit by a shot that came back at him before he could react.

Kishan was treated immediately on the field by the medical staff present at the ground before being strapped onto a medivac and transferred to hospital. He was reportedly conscious and smiling before he left.

A CT scan showed no damage, though he is still being monitored for delayed concussion and other after-effects. He has since spoken to the Australian doctor and said he is feeling much better

The Australian players, clearly shaken by the incident, suspended their training for around 20 minutes and gathered at the side of the nets. Aaron Finch, speaking to the media just after the incident, said Warner had been particularly affected.

"Dave was obviously pretty shaken up," Finch said. "The young guy seems to be in pretty good spirits at the moment. He's obviously been taken off to hospital and will continue to be assessed just to make sure that everything is okay. But yeah, Dave was pretty shaken up, no doubt. It was a decent hit to the head. Hopefully everything keeps going well for the youngster and he's back up and running shortly. It was tough to watch."

While it is not a common occurrence for net bowlers to be hit during training, there have been a number of incidents that have raised concerns in the past. England Test bowler James Anderson has previously suggested that net bowlers could wear protective equipment, such as helmets.

"Yeah, that could be a decent idea, Finch said. "Again, it's a bit like everything; it's such a personal preference for net bowlers, and we're very lucky to have so many of them come in and want to bowl to us and help us prepare as best we can for the game. But I think it's going to be a personal preference. It's lucky that there were so many good medical team on standby.

"It's quite rare that somebody gets hit, and it's obviously very unfortunate. The medical staff that were on hand, obviously our own medical staff, doctor and physio and also the medical staff, paramedics at the ground, did a great job in being there very quickly to assess and make sure that all the right protocols and right processes were put in place. Yeah, maybe -- it is a difficult one because you get some guys that are coming in and who probably aren't as well-equipped with their game to be able to deal with that."

Big picture

It began exactly three months ago, in Ranchi. Coming into that game, Australia had won only eight of their last 33 ODIs going back to the start of 2017, and were still coming to terms with their two best batsmen serving a year-long ban. Their captain Aaron Finch was struggling to buy a run, and India's fast bowlers, away and at home, had been ruthlessly zoning in on his frailties against the incoming ball.

India had just beaten Australia 2-1 in an ODI series in their own backyard, and were leading the five-match return series 2-0.

Everything turned around in Ranchi, where Finch made 93 in a 32-run win for Australia. Since that innings, Finch has averaged 71.44. Since that match, Australia have won ten ODIs on the bounce, the last two at this World Cup with a full-strength squad including David Warner and Steven Smith.

This Australian resurgence has challenged what had been a pretty set narrative in the months preceding the World Cup, that England and India would be the teams to beat, with the rest trailing some way behind. Nope, Australia have snarled. We're here too.

And, in their most recent game against West Indies, they did that most Australian thing, that don't-kid-yourselves-thinking-we're-beaten thing. Think Mohali, 1996, or Headingley, 1999, or Port Elizabeth, 2003. The fear factor is back.

Their opponents on Sunday, however, won't be scared. India occupy a different level of ODI pedigree to the two teams Australia have beaten at this tournament so far. Their batsmen aren't going to get out slogging when the required rate is under control, as West Indies' did. Their bowlers, you suspect, wouldn't have let them turn 79 for 5 to 288 all out. India will give Australia plenty to worry about - if not fear - themselves. Jasprit Bumrah is bowling like a demon, the wristspinners are whirring away menacingly, Rohit Sharma has begun his tournament with a match-winning hundred, and Virat Kohli is, well, Virat Kohli.

This World Cup has already seen some fine contests. We've seen Pakistan defy expectations against England, Bangladesh methodically dismantle South Africa, West Indies rattle Australia, and New Zealand wobble alarmingly against Bangladesh. But we haven't yet seen a clash of the big contenders. Sunday will be just that.

Form guide

Australia WWWWW (last five completed matches, most recent first)
India WLLLW

In the spotlight

Usman Khawaja's form leading up to the World Cup - five fifties and two hundreds in his last ten innings, at the top of the order - prompted Australia to push him to No. 3 and leave out Shaun Marsh to accommodate David Warner and Steven Smith. His first two innings at the tournament, however, have brought him scores of 15 and 13, and awkward dismissals on both occasions. Can he turn his form around against one of the best bowling attacks in the world?

India's last ODI visit to The Oval wasn't a happy one, but their defeat in the Champions Trophy final included one incredible innings: Hardik Pandya's 43-ball 76, with six sixes and a control percentage of 100. Pandya was out injured during India's recent home series against Australia, and his subsequent return to fitness and peak hitting form has been one of the team's biggest positives going into the World Cup.

Team news

Australia have played the same XI in both their games so far, and though some of their players haven't hit top form just yet, there isn't a compelling reason to make any changes just yet.

Australia (probable): 1 David Warner, 2 Aaron Finch (capt), 3 Usman Khawaja, 4 Steven Smith, 5 Glenn Maxwell, 6 Marcus Stoinis, 7 Alex Carey (wk), 8 Nathan Coulter-Nile, 9 Pat Cummins, 10 Mitchell Starc, 11 Adam Zampa

Given Australia's troubles against the short ball against West Indies, India could look to bring Mohammed Shami - who can hurry batsmen with the bouncer, as he showed during a six-wicket haul in the Perth Test in December - into their attack. Who could he come in for, though? Bhuvneshwar Kumar would be the obvious option, but without him India's tail will begin at No. 8, unless they also replace one of the wristspinners with Ravindra Jadeja. Playing all three quicks could also be an option, if the conditions point in that direction.

India (probable): 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 KL Rahul, 5 MS Dhoni (wk), 6 Kedar Jadhav, 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

Pitch and conditions

The Oval has been among the most high-scoring grounds in England since the 2015 World Cup, and a flat pitch can be expected once again. The weather is expected to be dry with a bit of wind about.

Strategy punts

• If Australia go in with the same team balance they chose against West Indies, they'll again need Glenn Maxwell and Marcus Stoinis to share the fifth bowler's quota. Given that they're likeliest to bowl the bulk of their overs through the middle Powerplay (11-40), India could think of promoting Hardik Pandya to No. 5, if they're in a position to do so, and take advantage of having only four fielders protecting the boundary. Apart from Maxwell and Stoinis, it would also put pressure on Adam Zampa, who has suffered at Pandya's six-hitting hands in the past.

• One way for Australia to use up a couple of Maxwell's overs could be to give him the new ball. Shikhar Dhawan has been out six times to offspin in ODIs since the start of 2018, and averages 22.50 against that style of bowling in that period.

Stats and trivia

• Australia have an 8-3 record against India in the World Cup, and have only lost once in seven meetings - the 2011 quarter-final in Ahmedabad - since the 1992 edition.

• Australia (11 out of 11) and India (5 out of 5) are the only two teams to have taken 100% of their catches at the World Cup so far.

• Apart from the middle overs, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have also been a valuable source of wickets in the early death overs (41-45). Chahal has 18 wickets at an average of 14.27 in this phase, while conceding just 5.39 per over. Kuldeep has been almost as impressive: 16 wickets, an average of 18.12, and an economy rate of 6.49.

• Marcus Stoinis needs 18 runs to get to 1000 in ODIs.

Quotes

"Winning those last three games in India gave us some self-belief we can beat this side in their home conditions and that gives us real confidence coming into a game like this."
Australia captain Aaron Finch

"See, short ball for any batsman is not easy. Even the best guy who can pull the ball, who can hook the ball, will find it difficult. We understand that. And probably we have the bowling attack to do that. Having said that, you don't want to be carried away with that."
Rohit Sharma weighs in on the biggest tactical trend of this World Cup

It's not quite the new India-Sri Lanka, but if auditions were being held for India's new go-to opponent, it's fair to say Australia would be a shoo-in. All that's needed is for India to postpone a series, or pull out of one and rope Australia in as a last-minute banker. It will happen soon enough.

The two sides have already played eight ODIs across both countries this year alone, and without looking it up, if you can remember how the two series panned out, you're welcome to take over Statsguru.

A lot has been made of the ICC's desire to ensure India and Pakistan play at every one of their events. But the two teams that have actually played against each other most often at ICC events? India and Australia. And the punchline to this is that New Zealand and Sri Lanka are the two other teams who have played each other most often at ICC events (both rivalries, 20 games young now).

But it's not just those eight ODIs - and Tests and T20Is. It's also about how the IPL is a virtual home for Australians, opponents to and team-mates of the players they take on at The Oval on Sunday. For the degree of familiarity, if the two teams combined to put out one team at an ICC event, nobody would bat an eyelid.

Yet the overkill has served a purpose for Australia at least. It was the ODI series in India earlier this year where they turned around their ODI form, form which now is accompanied by all those murmurs that this (like five others) is Australia's World Cup.

Now it's not as if they are genetically wired to win cricket tournaments, but you can see why people are thinking it. They're winning games - and the win over West Indies was exactly the kind of win that's not going to dial this talk down.

Steven Smith and David Warner are back, with runs. It's Australia. They've found a way to win an early tough game. Their captain believed, even without Warner and Smith, and back when they couldn't win a backyard game, that he had the side to win this World Cup. Watch out. This is a trope that endures as much as the one around Pakistan at these tournaments.

But that familiarity with India will help them on Sunday in, for example, knowing what to expect when Kuldeep Yadav or Yuzvendra Chahal come on. On that last tour, Australia picked up quick on how to play each and controlling Kuldeep was instrumental in turning a 0-2 deficit into a 3-2 win.

"Yeah, I think winning them last three games is really important for us in India, to one, get some self-belief that we can beat this Indian side in their home conditions," Aaron Finch said. "For that, I think when you look back, it comes down to taking them key moments in games and making sure that no matter what the situation of the game or the series or the tournament, whenever you're playing India, you have to believe that you can beat them because they're a world-class side.

"So to be able to beat them in their home conditions three times in a row was really important for the confidence of the side, especially going into a game like this."

The problem with this India attack - and side - is that it isn't just the one or two. There's difficulties everywhere. Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar to see off, there's Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli to see the backs of. There's Hardik Pandya to account for. Even late-career MS Dhoni, nowadays modelling the Misbah-ul-Haq approach with the bat.

And as much as Australia have the confidence of beating them recently, and playing with and against them a lot, one-off tournament games are unforgiving. Before you know it they're over and if you learnt something in the way you were dismissed, or how one batsman played you, there's no immediate point: this isn't a bilateral series.

"We saw in the latest series we played against them that regardless of what the scoreline might be, whoever turns up and produces their best on the day will win," Finch said. "It's about everyone chipping in and contributing as best they can to help Australia win tomorrow."

PARIS -- Novak Djokovic's 26-match Grand Slam winning streak ended with a dramatic 6-2, 3-6, 7-5, 5-7, 7-5 loss Saturday to Dominic Thiem in a rain-interrupted French Open semifinal that spanned more than four hours over two days.

Thiem wasted two match points with quick unforced errors when serving for the victory at 5-3 in the fifth, but he made his third chance count, smacking a forehand winner to break Djokovic in the last game.

"It's never easy to go on, go off, put the system on 100% and go down to 0% in the locker," Thiem said. "But if you win, everything is good."

The top-ranked Djokovic had trouble with Thiem, to be sure, but also with the weather, with the chair umpire and with his odd propensity for heading to the net much more often than usual, including some serve-and-volleying that often failed.

"Look, there is always something large at stake when you're one of the top players of the world and play in the biggest tournaments," Djokovic said. "These kind of matches, one or two points decide a winner."

He was stopped two victories short of collecting his fourth consecutive major championship, a run that began on the grass at Wimbledon last July, then continued on the hard courts of the US Open and Australian Open.

Instead, it is Thiem, an Austrian ranked No. 4, who now gets a chance to win his first Grand Slam trophy on the red clay of Roland Garros.

Thiem will face 11-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal on Sunday in a rematch of last year's final. Nadal won that one, part of an 8-4 lead for the Spaniard in their head-to-head series.

"All the time, if someone reaches the finals here, it's against Rafa," Thiem said with a laugh.

It will be the fourth straight day that Thiem is in action because of postponements, whereas Nadal will be well-rested, having played his quarterfinal Tuesday and his semifinal Friday, when he beat Roger Federer 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.

On Friday, Thiem had just broken Djokovic to go up a break at 3-1 in the third set when their match was suspended because of a shower. They resumed 18 1/2 hours later, in dry, breezy conditions. The wind that was so fierce Friday -- spreading loose, rust-colored clay dust from the court surface all over the place, making for something that seemed like a sandstorm -- was much more manageable Saturday. It rippled players' shirts but did not cause havoc with serve tosses and shots the way it had the evening prior.

They repeatedly engaged in long and entertaining baseline exchanges that lasted 10 shots, 20 shots or more. They used speed and anticipation to track down each other's shots. They walloped the ball from all angles.

The very longest of these tended to go Djokovic's way: He won 37 of 61 points (61%) of nine or more strokes.

For whatever reason, Djokovic felt compelled to try to shorten points on occasion, hardly his usual strategy.

So that led to this key statistic: He won only 35 of 71 points when he went to the net. Thiem, meanwhile, took 18 of 20 on his more judicious forays forward.

The most glaring examples of this came at the end of the third set, when it appeared Djokovic might really be letting the whole match get away.

Serving at 15-all while down 6-5, Djokovic was agitated by a warning from chair umpire Jaume Campistol for letting the serve clock expire and wouldn't let it go, complaining during the game and, more vociferously, at the changeover, so much so that he was called for unsportsmanlike conduct.

The lack of focus drifted into his choices during points, too, including a mediocre volley that let Thiem deposit a backhand passing winner for a fourth set point. Yet another serve-and-volley attempt came next, and Thiem produced a low forehand return right at Djokovic's feet to end the set.

All match, Djokovic kept digging a hole, then climbing out. Could he do it again?

He was three points from defeat while serving at love-15, down 5-4 in the fourth set, but came through there to hold, broke in the next game when Thiem double-faulted, and forced a fifth.

Then Djokovic got broken to trail 3-1 in the deciding set when he missed a volley, and Thiem held for 4-1.

At deuce in the ensuing game, a shower came. Shortly before they came back to play, Djokovic tried to stay loose by playing soccer with a tennis ball while Thiem did sprints in a stadium hallway.

On the first point when they returned, Djokovic paused, thinking a shot by Thiem landed out. Campistol ruled it was in. Djokovic eventually took that game. But he was a point from losing when Thiem served at 5-3, 40-15. Except, Thiem just couldn't close.

Dumped a backhand into the net. Pushed a backhand wide. Sent a forehand long. Slapped a backhand into the net.

That could have been it for him. Hard to recover from that sort of collapse, especially against someone like Djokovic.

But Thiem regrouped in time. It was Djokovic who faltered, something not seen on a Grand Slam stage since the 2018 French Open quarterfinals.

Ashleigh Barty stormed to her first Grand Slam title Saturday, defeating Marketa Vondrousova 6-1, 6-3 to win the French Open title.

In the first major final for both players, Barty was dominant, breaking Vondrousova on all three of her service games in the first set and twice more in the second, including the title-clinching game.

Vondrousova, 19, was the first teenage finalist at the French Open in more than a decade. She had not lost a set in this tournament prior to Saturday.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- It can happen so suddenly -- the end of a season, a dynasty, an arena. Few people in and around the NBA had internalized the idea -- swirled it around in their brains, digested it, felt it -- that the Toronto Raptors, the NBA's accidental pseudo-contender who catapulted themselves toward something greater with a trade for the ages, could clinch the NBA championship Monday.

The two fans I met from Malaysia who paid more than $10,000 each for tickets to Games 3, 4, and 5 did not expect that they might get to see the series-clincher on Monday. One Raptors assistant coach wandered onto the floor after Toronto's Game 4 decimation of the Golden State Warriors, a bewildered look on his face, and tried to retrieve his wife and two young children from the crowd of 500 or so delirious Raptors fans who stayed half an hour after the game singing songs.

The Raptors are here for lots of reasons, but mostly because of Kawhi Leonard, who has asserted his claim as the world's best player over the past month. Leonard did something that only LeBron James had approximated before him, and LeBron had help from another all-world scorer in Kyrie Irving, who poured in 90 combined points over the last three games of the 2016 Finals -- when the Cleveland Cavaliers completed the unprecedented comeback Golden State will attempt now.

Leonard broke the Warriors.

If there was a moment when you knew it, perhaps this was it:

That is what Leonard had reduced Golden State to: leaving Danny Green, one of the great 3-point shooters in NBA Finals history, wide open in the strongside corner -- a no-no against even average shooters. A team that does that is desperate. A team that does that is out of answers. It has lost itself.

I asked Green in the locker room after the game if he was surprised to be left so open. "That open? Yes." Green said. "But teams have been doing that. You've got [Leonard], a special guy, going off, and you gotta help from somewhere."

Throughout these strange, injury-ravaged Finals, there has been a debate over how much help the Warriors should send at Leonard -- that perhaps they should let Leonard "get his," or try to, and stay closer to Toronto's army of outside shooters. Nick Nurse, Toronto's head coach, said he felt Golden State creeping toward the right balance in the Warriors' Game 2 win.

He urged his team to veer just a bit away from the pick-and-roll -- to use more off-ball screening and cutting.

"They've done a great job of clogging up our pick-and-rolls," Nurse told ESPN after Game 3. "We've got stuck in them a lot. So we tried to get away from them a little -- a little more cutting." The Raptors, at times, looked like the old-school, Kevin-Durant-less Warriors.

When they ran the NBA's staple play, Nurse pushed his players to vary both the combinations of players involved and the techniques. So there was Leonard in the second half of Game 3 scampering up the right wing to screen for Pascal Siakam, a nominal power forward who's really just a Pascal Siakam, only Leonard never set the screen; he darted suddenly away from Siakam and toward the top of the arc, earning just enough separation from a temporarily startled Draymond Green to ease into an open catch-and-shoot 3.

Kyle Lowry executed the same slip-the-screen trickery with Leonard -- fading out to the right wing on a cut in Game 3 that jumbled Golden State's defense and conjured another open look.

Lowry and Leonard struggled to develop the sort of two-man chemistry Lowry enjoyed with DeMar DeRozan. Lowry was startlingly passive for the first 40 or 50 games of the season. Even in grinding through these playoffs, the Lowry-Leonard pick-and-roll -- such an enticing weapon, something that should be an automatic mismatch generator -- never really got rolling.

Until Game 3. "For me, it has been adjusting to what he does," Lowry told ESPN before Game 4.

The Warriors couldn't dictate how much help they might send at Leonard -- and when -- if they didn't know what was coming.

At times in Game 4, the Raptors let Leonard work without a pick. He bludgeoned Golden State, drawing fouls and rising for long 2s:

Leonard has a unique combination of footwork and strength. Defenders bounce off him, he hits the brakes, and what looked half a second ago like a difficult shot becomes a 50/50 proposition. That is the ultimate playoff weapon. When there are only four and then two teams alive, you don't get to pick the shots you want. You take the shot you get, or the shots you are given, and make the best out of them. Those shots allow Toronto to control the tempo of the series.

Leonard is an absolute battering ram. When Kevon Looney, replacing the shade of DeMarcus Cousins, pressured Leonard on the pick-and-roll in Game 4, Leonard revealed counter after counter.

He waited out the trap, and coaxed Looney into retreating with a canny pass fake to Marc Gasol. And then Leonard just kind of meandered and burrowed to where he wanted to go. When he rose up, Looney rose with him -- exposing a 2-on-1 under the rim. Looney probably should have let Andre Iguodala handle Leonard alone there. That is the kind of thing you say when you haven't watched Leonard rain midrange death on everyone for the past two months.

From there, it's Siakam to Gasol on a gorgeous sequence that is emblematic in its own way of how Toronto has pushed the Curry-era Warriors into the deepest hole it has ever faced -- with or without Durant. When the Warriors loaded up Leonard in Game 4, he trusted the other Raptors, and they paid off that trust with some of their best passing sequences of the postseason.

Ibaka makes the first pass to his most convenient release valve -- Lowry -- and keeps going. Lowry follows with the give-back -- the pass the defense doesn't expect.

By the fourth quarter, the Warriors didn't know what was coming. A defense that has spent the past half-decade playing one step ahead -- sneering and roaring at opponents who didn't expect them to pop up right there -- was suddenly playing from two steps behind. Those are the sorts of sequences Masai Ujiri and his staff envisioned when they acquired Gasol. They essentially bet that adding one more passing hub -- a big man equivalent to Lowry -- would give them access to a different style of offense when they needed one.

The passing carried over into those precarious minutes at the start of the second and fourth quarters when Nurse rested Lowry and Leonard at the same time. (If the Warriors can't win those minutes, they are toast.)

Ibaka has thrown three or four inside-out passes like that over the past two games. They have been some of the finest passes of his career. Ibaka is still not exactly a good passer. He is probably the worst passer in Toronto's playoff rotation. He doesn't read the floor as fast, or possess the sense of anticipation of Lowry and Gasol. But he has worked at it. The work is painstaking, boring, outside his skill set. It has paid off over these past few games, including Game 4, one of the best of Ibaka's career.

When I entered the Raptors' locker room after Game 4, Ibaka and Green were standing facing each other; Ibaka was reenacting a sequence in which he had demurred on a contested floater and touched a pass to Siakam in the corner. He was proud. Green told him he remembered the play. They dissected it together.

Both Ibaka and Gasol over the past two games in Oracle Arena ramped up their rolling to the rim. Both prefer to pop for jumpers, or flare out for dribble handoffs. But they and Nurse's coaching staff noticed they could get behind Cousins and Andrew Bogut if they cut hard out of screens for Leonard and Lowry, and it worked. They both dunked, and drew fouls. Gasol drew help, and dished to corner shooters.

That's a simple play, but it stands out as unusual for Leonard -- an early pass, not one that comes only after the defense has swarmed him.

Leonard even hid down in the dunker spot, usually a place for bit players, as Ibaka and Fred VanVleet worked the pick-and-roll late in the third quarter Friday; Leonard floated under the play and across the paint for a bucket to put Toronto up by 12. That was not vintage Leonard. That was unexpected Leonard.

To get this close to a title, you have to be a shapeshifter on both ends. A team that was once predictable and monotonous has proven itself as such even though its lead superstar is not known as a playmaker. They have toggled seamlessly from one variety of half-court set to another, and another, and another. When they sensed chances to run, they ran.

It all starts with Leonard -- his ability to both start and finish possessions in a variety of ways and dictate pace. We spend a lot of time nitpicking stars who fail by some impossible Jordanian standard in the playoffs. Some of that is dumb noise -- Damian Lillard hitting the second series-ending buzzer-beater of his career, and two rounds later facing questions about his viability as a postseason superstar.

Some of it is interesting and worthwhile: Is Chris Paul's career proof of the difficulty in building around a 6-foot player? What does it mean that James Harden has underperformed his incredible regular-season standards by 5 or 10% in most postseasons? The playoffs are harder than the regular season. Perhaps some slippage should be expected. But the questions are legitimate.

Perhaps we have not spent enough time amid all of that calling Leonard what he now indisputably is: one of the greatest postseason performers in the history of the sport, the rare superstar who gets better in the playoffs.

Leonard won Finals MVP in 2014, a year after exploding as a 21-year-old in the 2013 Finals. He averaged 28 points, eight rebounds and five assists in the 2017 playoffs -- and locked up everyone on defense -- before one false Zaza Pachulia step ended his season, and really his San Antonio career.

In Game 4 of the first round against Memphis that year, Leonard scored 43 points and swiped six steals in almost single-handedly dragging the Spurs to a win in one of those incredible feats that gets lost in history because it happened in an unremarkable first-round series.

He took the ball on one end, and scored on the other. He almost didn't need help. The memory of that game popped back up when Leonard opened the second half of Game 4 Friday with a 3-pointer, a steal, and another 3-pointer to give Toronto the lead.

He is one of two players to have logged at least 1,000 career postseason minutes and shot at least 50% overall and 40% from 3-point range. (Al Horford is the other, at much lower long-range volume.)

Leonard hit an all-time shot to win Game 7 against Philadelphia in the second round, and turned the next series when Nurse assigned him to Giannis Antetokounmpo in Game 3. But don't forget the triple Leonard hit over Joel Embiid with one minute left in Game 4 against Philadelphia to put Toronto up 94-90 -- on the road, and trailing the Sixers two games to one. Talk to people within the Raptors, and they'll tell you that game -- and the time between Games 3 and 4 of that series -- was their point of greatest stress in these playoffs.

Philadelphia overwhelmed them in Game 3. The Sixers' size troubled Toronto. The Raptors would have to summon more than they had expected. Leonard's shot held off a potential doomsday scenario.

Now he has them one win from history. If they finish the Warriors, some will cry "asterisk" because of injuries to Durant and Klay Thompson. Game 3 was indeed a bummer. It did not feel like a Finals game.

But you can only play the teams in front of you. Every postseason is marked by some important injury. Thompson missed only that one game, and the Warriors came into these Finals having won six straight playoff games -- and 31 of 32 overall -- when Curry played without Durant.

The Warriors are giants, as Steve Kerr called them after their Game 5 win over Houston. Never count them out. Toronto has work to do, still. Leonard will be ready.