“It’s gonna hurt if you want to win.”

That’s what Jason Kidd told his Milwaukee Bucks as they faced a 25-point hole, and the end of their season, late in the third quarter of Thursday’s Game 6. (Or, at least, so he said during his interview with TNT between the third and fourth quarters.) His young team accepted the challenge, working through punishing exhaustion to mount an absolutely stunning comeback and crawl out of a 25-point hole to take a lead over the Toronto Raptors late in the fourth quarter.

But the Raptors, no strangers to postseason pain, picked themselves up off the mat and responded, mounting just enough of a closing kick to keep the young Bucks at bay in a wild finish that sent Toronto on to the next round, and sent Milwaukee into its summer vacation.

DeMar DeRozan scored 32 points, including a monster two-handed dunk with 48 seconds remaining and three free throws in the final 16 seconds, to lead Toronto to a 92-89 victory. Kyle Lowry added 13 points, four rebounds, four assists, two steals and a block for the Raptors, who finished off a 4-2 win over the Bucks in their best-of-seven series. Third-seeded Toronto moves on to face the No. 2 Cleveland Cavaliers, who eliminated the Raptors in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals, and who have been off since Sunday after sweeping the Indiana Pacers.

The Raptors controlled the game for most of the first three quarters, building a 13-point halftime lead behind DeRozan’s finishing in the paint thanks in part to a short-circuiting Bucks attack in which no one save Giannis Antetokounmpo could seem to knock down shots. The Greek All-Star forward scored 18 first-half points on 7-for-13 shooting, but all other Bucks combined to go 7-for-23 from the field in the first two quarters, compounding the sins of seven turnovers and an inability to keep the Raptors off the glass (seven Toronto offensive rebounds for 14 second-chance points before intermission).

The lead ballooned after halftime, as the Raptors’ mid-series shift to a small-ball look — out went center Jonas Valanciunas, in came dynamic swingman Norman Powell — continued to pay dividends. Toronto’s nasty defense continued to fluster the young Bucks into turnovers and stalled possessions, and the Raptors kept driving into the teeth of Milwaukee’s once-fearsome defense, no longer seeming afraid of the length of Antetokounmpo, Thon Maker and Greg Monroe at the rim.

The penetration prompted collapses, which created opportunities for kickouts on which the Raptors feasted. Toronto scrambled Milwaukee’s defense, getting the ball to open shooters on the weak side of the floor for open shots like the corner 3 by Powell that gave the Raptors a 68-44 lead with 5:48 to go in the third, and the wide-open right wing triple by DeMarre Carroll (created by Giannis shading a bit too far toward helping on a DeRozan drive, one pass away from the open shooter) that pushed the lead to 25 with 5:17 to go, and made it look like it was all over but the shouting.

And then, the Bucks decided they were willing to feel the pain — and inflict some along the way.

Over the next 14 minutes of game time, the Bucks went on a nearly-impossible-to-believe-as-you-were-watching-it 34-7 run. They resumed completely suffocating the Raptors’ offense, forcing turnover after turnover after turnover — nine in that stretch, leading to 13 points — to kickstart the comeback. There were arms and legs and more arms and I think even some antlers everywhere, as they held the Raptors to just 2-for-14 shooting, including a scoreless stretch that spanned more than 6 1/2 minutes.

Giannis made shots. Khris Middleton snapped out of his funk and made plays. Matthew Dellavedova made shots and threw his body absolutely everywhere. Jason Terry — 153-year-old Jason Terry, who was this close to spending this season coaching in Conference USA — picked off a Lowry pass to ignite a fast break, grabbed three offensive rebounds, and drilled a left-wing bomb that completed the comeback, giving Milwaukee an 80-78 lead with 3:06 remaining and sending the crowd at BMO Harris Bradley Center into hysterics.

The lead gone and another postseason collapse in the books, Raptors head coach Dwane Casey called a timeout to refocus his team. The next three minutes — that’s all that mattered now. Could the Raptors relocate what they’d found that had shifted this series in their favor?

All of a sudden, DeRozan was knifing to the rack for a layup in traffic to break the scoring drought. All of a sudden, the ball movement was back, as Toronto changed sides of the floor ahead of the swarming but exhausted Bucks defense, with DeRozan finding a cutting Patrick Patterson for a dunk to tie the score at 82 with 2:08 remaining, and Patterson finding Cory Joseph in the corner — and wide open, thanks to a dynamite flare screen by Serge Ibaka — for a huge 3-pointer that put the Raptors up three with 1:27 to go.

With a chance to respond, the Bucks — who had expended so much energy in their comeback that it you could practically feel their muscles burning as you watched them gulp for air and front-rim free throws — blinked. Middleton pump-faked DeRozan into the air at the 3-point arc, then appeared to try to jump into him to draw contact, but didn’t connect and airballed a 3-pointer. On the other end, DeRozan blew past the 7-foot rookie Maker with a thunderous throwdown that put the Raptors back up by five with 48 ticks to go:

The Bucks responded with another turnover on the ensuing possession, giving Toronto the ball with a five-point lead and 37 seconds left. Forced to foul, Milwaukee sent Joseph to the line for a pair that put the Raps up 89-82 with 33 seconds left.

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The Bucks had one last burst in them, though, with Middleton drawing a foul on Ibaka (his sixth) on a 3-point attempt. He’d only get two out of three, though; this was a persistent problem for Milwaukee late, as their frenetic rebounding-and-turnovers-and-hustle-dependent comeback left them completely gassed, and they missed nine of their 18 free throws in the deciding quarter, with Anteteokounmpo going 3-for-8 and Middleton 3-for-6.

“There in that second half, we made a run, and gave ourselves an opportunity. We fought,” Kidd said after the game. “We always talk about, you know, the little things, and for us, when we look at this, it comes down to just free throws. It’s not that hard. We don’t need to overanalyze this. We got to the stripe, and we couldn’t capitalize on that.”

Terry continued his improbable money-game resurgence by drilling another big 3 to cut the deficit to 89-87 with 19 seconds to go, as the Bucks continued to play the foul game. DeRozan made the front end of his pair, but missed the second freebie, keeping it a one-possession game with 16.5 seconds left.

Out of timeouts, the Bucks needed a 3. Antetokounmpo was brilliant throughout Game 6, scoring 34 points on 13-for-23 shooting with nine rebounds, three assists, two steals and two blocks. But either the 22-year-old world-breaker didn’t know he didn’t really have time for the quick two, or — after Kidd kept him out there for nearly the entirety of the game, resting him for just 65 seconds prior to the start of this critical possession — he just forgot.

Giannis wanted to drive, and the Raptors let him, totally clearing the path to avoid giving up a 3, and allowing him to dunk with 3.5 seconds to go. The Bucks had to foul, and this time, DeRozan made both of his free throws, pushing the lead to three. Without a timeout, the Bucks had to go the length of the floor …

… but Tony Snell threw away the inbounds pass, which Patterson intercepted. Comeback over. Game over. Series over. Exhale, Toronto, and get ready. The rematch you’ve been waiting a year for starts Monday.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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