Ugly may be the only answer
Raptors need to rein in Cavs’ James and fast
The Cleveland Cavaliers had eight days off, then they blew out the Toronto Raptors on Monday night. On Tuesday, they decided to skip practice.
The Cavs are not exactly reeling.
The Raptors, meanwhile, are trying to convince themselves that they can hang with LeBron James and company, despite a fourth straight thumping at Quicken Loans Arena in the postseason.
Coach Dwane Casey, before practice on Tuesday, noted that the Raptors and Cavaliers had the same win total in the regular season. Both good teams, he said.
“Hey, they put their pants on one leg at a time, too,” Casey said. “I haven’t seen them jump in and pull them both up at the same time.”
This is true. Although I bet James could put his pants on that way if he really set his mind to it.
But if Toronto is going to do something that they have not yet managed to do, which is win a playoff game against t he Cavs on t he shores of Lake Erie rather than Lake Ontario, they will likely have to do one of two things: win a track meet or a wrestling match.
Casey, somewhat surprisingly, sounds like he is leaning toward door No. 1.
When the Raptors added Serge Ibaka and P. J. Tucker at the NBA trade deadline, it gave them extra bodies to throw at James. Between the new guys and DeMarre Carroll, Patrick Patterson and the occasional defence of DeMar DeRozan, Toronto had a host of players with the size and speed to, at the least, get in James’ way. They did precious little of that in last year’s playoff matchup and coming into this series, it seemed likely that Toronto would try to impede, annoy, frustrate and just generally bother James.
Instead, James scored what looked like an effortless 35 points in Game 1 and grabbed a beer from a courtside vendor. If you have ever seen a cat wound a mouse and then take an agonizingly long time to get around to finishing it off, that was James on Monday night. ( The Raptors were the mouse.)
So could the Raptors try to ugly it up in Game 2 on Wednesday? More traps on James, more double teams, more attention and some of it even legal?
“All that’s in play,” Casey said. “We gotta get a little closer ( to them). I don’t know if they felt us last night whatsoever. We were half a step off, respecting their speed a little too much. We gotta make them feel us a little bit better.”
It was almost the most common of hockey coach cliches: take away the opponent’s time and space. But it suggested one possible adjustment for the Raptors: obstructionist playoff hockey, except minus the sticks to the head.
But Casey and his players didn’t sound like they expected to turn this series into a bunch of 85- 82 games either. Kyle Lowry said the Raptors need to crank up the pace on offence and push the ball up the floor even when the Cavaliers make baskets. Toronto tends to run in transition only off turnovers and misses, but Lowry said they can do that at other times, too.
“They made a shot, we took our time,” Lowry said.
Casey agreed t hat i ncreased aggression didn’t just have to take place on the defensive end and he said in today’s NBA, sometimes you are going to have to deal with scoring explosions. The way to deal with them is to match with an explosion of your own.
“The game is changing,” Casey said. “We can’t get caught up in, ‘ We gotta stop them.’”
Some of this can be said to be Casey trying to remain positive about his team surrendering yet another huge total to the Cavaliers — Cleveland has averaged 114 points against the Raptors in home playoff games and almost 64 points in the first half of those games.
The coach made a couple of references to San Antonio getting drilled at home Monday night — Houston scored 126 on the Spurs — which was another way of saying, ‘ Hey, we weren’t that bad.’ But his overall point, that the NBA is becoming more of scoring league, is valid. Certainly when you get deeper into the playoffs, there are lot of teams that can score in streaks. The Raptors need to do more of that themselves and stop the Cavs from going on so many of them.
“We have the confidence and the understanding of how to get back on our feet,” DeRozan said.
This is fair enough. It’s not the playoffs until the Raptors are rebounding from adversity.
The coach feels the same way.
“I have a belief that we will play better and get to that next gear next game,” Casey said.
They had better if they plan to make this a series.