TORONTO — When it comes to high-leverage playoff games, having help from unexpected sources is crucial, especially for the underdog.

The Toronto Raptors got it in their pivotal Game 3 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, when breakout star rookie Collin Murray-Boyles set a franchise record for points scored by a first-year player with 22 points on 11-of-15 shooting and his standard reign of havoc defensively.

One of the reasons the Raptors found their legs in the second half of Game 2 was the way backup big man Sandro Mamukelashvili found his, chipping in 12 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.

But as Game 4 approaches, with the Raptors looking to even the first-round best-of-seven series at two games apiece — to really make it a series — it’s time for Toronto itself to make an impact.

Not the crowd at Scotiabank Arena, or outside at Jurassic Park, who certainly did their part Friday, both encouraging and riding the fourth-quarter momentum that saw the Raptors win in a joyous blowout.

No, we’re talking about the crowd at any of Toronto’s downtown night spots.

If playoff games are decided by matchups, the matchup between James Harden and Toronto’s reputation as a place to have a good time for visiting athletes and celebrities could tip the balance in a game which starts at 1 p.m. ET Sunday. After all, that’s only 11 hours after the clubs close — and those are just the clubs the average Toronto Joe can go to. Big Night James likely knows people.

Normally, there would be some hesitation about implying an NBA player could be lured down a low-performance path by the temptations of the night, but this is Harden, who has been camped out in Toronto since Thursday night.

Conjecture? Speculation? Rumour?

Well, consider what his ex-teammates say about the bearded wonder who has engineered both a hall-of-fame career and hall-of-hame reputation as an all-time bon vivant.

“(The) man could sit up here and go out,” Robert Covington, who played with Harden on the Houston Rockets in 2013-14, said recently on the Run Your Race podcast. "James be out all night, till four, five in the morning, and that man up at seven o’clock working out … and I’m talking about drinking heavy. We’re not talking about, like, (what) we here sipping right now. We’re talking about 10, 12, 13, 15 shots. Bottles, like, bottles. Great time. And he going to go home, going to have that little power nap and he’ll be in that gym."

And Toronto’s reputation as a road city that requires careful navigation is well earned. In the earliest days of the........

© Sportsnet