The Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors will settle their first-round series in Game 7 on Sunday night, with the winner moving on to an Eastern Conference semifinal that begins Tuesday. Toronto forced the decider with a 112-110 overtime victory in Game 6, sealed when RJ Barrett’s 3-pointer from the top of the key with 1.2 seconds left hit the back rim, bounced high above the backboard and dropped through the net.
It was the kind of finish that can reset a series in a single shot. Barrett said the Raptors now have to “kind of forget everything that’s happened so far” because there is “one game to decide it all,” while Donovan Mitchell reduced Cleveland’s task to one command: “Protect home court. It doesn’t matter if we lost by 30 or two, protect home court. That’s all you can do.”
The weight of Sunday’s game goes beyond one matchup. The winners of the two Game 7s will meet in an Eastern Conference semifinal series that could begin in Detroit, Cleveland or Toronto, and the Cavaliers know the feeling of surviving this round. Cleveland beat Orlando 106-94 in its 2024 first-round Game 7 to advance, a result that gives the Cavs a recent example of what home court can do when the pressure peaks.
The backdrop makes the Raptors’ task steeper and more specific. The first six games of the series were all won by the home team, and Toronto is trying to become the first club since Dallas in the 2022 Western Conference semifinals to win a Game 7 on the road after the opening six games broke that way. Barrett said the team has been “tough and resilient” and has “fought through the toughest of tasks all year long,” but he also called going to Cleveland “a tough task.”
That tension is what makes this finish feel bigger than a standard first-round decider. Toronto has already shown it can recover from a 3-1 deficit and has now pushed the series to 3-3 after a 24-point second-half deficit in Game 6, while Cleveland has the memory of last year’s Game 7 win and the cleaner path that comes with playing at home. The Cavaliers and Raptors wrap up the first round in primetime, and the team that handles Sunday’s final possessions best will keep playing into Tuesday.