LEBRON STOPS RAPTORS’ RUN
James shows off his superstar status with 33 points in Cavaliers’ 113-87 win
LeBron James was apparently done screwing around.
In an Eastern Conference final in which one of the best players ever casually had his way with the Raptors but never dominated the scoring himself, James exploded for 33 points Friday in a 113-87 Cleveland victory that put an end to the Raptors’ best-ever playoff run.
In a game that was a mess of strange officiating that stifled runs, the Cavs managed to do at the Air Canada Centre what they had previously only done on their home court — they shot the lights out. Cleveland bombed 10 threepointers in the first half alone — on just 15 attempts — while Toronto did just the opposite. The Raptors were just 2-of-12 from distance in the first half, a disparity that gave Cleveland a 14-point halftime lead — and a hole from which the home side could not climb.
Kyle Lowry, game as always, had 35 points of his own, but resembled the kid brother trying to outgun his bigger, stronger sibling. Lowry would bury a threepointer to trim the Cleveland lead, James would get an easy layup at the other end.
Sometimes, the greatest player of his generation is simply too much.
The rough end gave Cleveland a 4-2 win in Toronto’s first appearance in a conference final and it was a distinct nosedive from the strong play that had carried the Raptors to two surprising wins at the Air Canada Centre — surprising only because the Cavaliers had dominated so thoroughly in the opening two games of the series.
But the loss shouldn’t diminish what the Raptors accomplished over the last six weeks. They came into these playoffs an unproven team with a history of embarrassing playoff exits. They leave them as a group that overcame nerves and injuries for a string of stirring victories.
The Raptors did not just take a big step forward. They took several. The “Let’s Go Raptors” chant that rang out as the game ended was, properly, quite celebratory.
Masai Ujiri has always refused to make his public expectations for the team overly specific. The idea, he has always said, is constant improvement. There was no point in getting hung up on short-term goals.
Last season, of course, ended up an awkward step back. The team improved in the regular season before falling apart in the playoffs. Lowry, as this season’s playoff run began, offered a succinct assessment of last year’s unit: “We was trash.” That team never really got sorted, it played awful defence and when the firstround sweep was over, there was a case to be made that Ujiri could have given on up on the core — Lowry, DeRozan, Valanciunas, Casey — and moved at least one of the parts.
Instead, he re-upped with this bunch, bringing in DeMarre Carroll, Cory Joseph and Bismack Biyombo as a new batch of complementary players.
The result was a franchise record in regular-season wins, followed by a franchise record in playoff wins. They had made it out of the first round just once, 15 years ago when it was still a bestof-five. This season, they played in 20 playoff games and won 10.
By Ujiri’s yardstick, that counts as serious improvement.
One of the interesting things about covering the Eastern Conference final was being able to gauge the reaction of the U.S. media to the presence of the Raptors. They were, in a word, bewildered. It was like they kept having to remind themselves this wasn’t a lark: the Toronto Raptors were in the conference final and they even made a series of it.
One American broadcaster put it to me this way: it’s not that the U.S. fans dislike the Raptors, it’s that they never think about them. They never have regular-season games on network television and their recent playoff appearances have always been shunted off to NBA TV whenever possible — not the mainstage or even the second stage, but the weird one out by the parking lot where they have spoken-word shows and experimental jazz. They were 29th in the 30-team NBA in average attendance on the road.
America is violently uninterested in this team.
Against that backdrop, the Raptors finally muscled their way into The Show. They made themselves known. They beat teams led by true NBA superstars in Paul George and Dwyane Wade, and proved they could do better than simply wilt in the blastfurnace of the playoffs. Then they ran into a transcendent superstar and his pretty impressive supporting cast, and it was simply too much.
Asked before Game 5 if it was easier to get his players to respond after a lopsided loss, coach Dwane Casey said, “No question. We know what we didn’t do and what we need to do and it’s up to us to get it done. Talking about it isn’t going to do it. We’ve got to get out and do it.”
But when the horn sounded, the Raptors could not quite do it. James was every bit the monster Casey had alluded to earlier in the series and the Toronto coach meant it as a compliment. He buried three three-pointers in the first half, along with a thunderous alley-oop on the break and a soaring one-handed dunk along the baseline that did not look like the work of a 31-year-old.
The Raptors, over 20 games in these playoffs, absorbed all kinds of heavy punches, and always managed to throw one back.
But they hadn’t taken LeBron James’ best shot — and it was a knockout blow.