Raptors need to rise to occasion
Playoffs far cry from regular season play
When John McKay coached the winless and hapless Tampa Bay Buccaneers way back when, he was asked what he thought of his team’s execution.
“I’m all in favour of it,” quipped McKay. The Buccaneers didn’t win a game in their first NFL season. But the line has endured nicely over time.
Coach Dwane Casey hasn’ t reached the point of trying to be funny about anything that’s gone on in the first two games of the Toronto Raptors playoff series against the Cleveland Cavaliers — a loss that shouldn’ t have been, in Game 1, a blowout embarrassing Game 2 defeat — but he is in favour of his team’s execution.
In fact, he’s demanding an improvement, if possible, for Game 3 Saturday night here in Cleveland.
He’s not selling hope. Instead, he’s pulling out the list of coachspeak that he needs from his rather lost team.
“It’s pride, it’s toughness, it’s execution,” said Casey, who might well win coach of the year and be swept out of the second round of the NBA playoffs. “I didn’t think we played (very well) last night.
“Do you want to use the word hope?” he asked back to the questioner. “If we’re hoping we win, we shouldn’t be in the NBA. That’s not a good word to use if you’re a professional player. I think grit, pride, playing for your family name and your team’s name. I wouldn’t want to use the word hope because that’s like you’re fishing for something.”
Through two defeats, though, Casey has a long list of what he wants to correct itn time for Game 3. Bu in some ways it begins with an old coaching conundrum. Disappointing power forward Serge Ibaka has to play better to play more, and has to play more to play better, and he’s just one of a long list of difficulties the Raptors face as they go on the road where they have lost five-straight playoff games to the Cavs at the Q.
It’s not just five straight in Cleveland. It’ s eight straight against the Cavs. And it’s not only LeBron James in their heads, and never mind his off- the-charts talent, it’s the notion of getting past Cleveland.
Once, starting Satur - day night. Twice, Monday night. The odds are stacked terribly against the Raptors at this point for any kind of comeback, but the coach has to keep selling, pushing, prodding, trying to find what’s gone wrong and what’s gone missing through the first two defeats.
One thing is certainly missing , and it’ s evident when you go from playoff series to playoff series, professional sport to professional sport. You have to play great to advance from round to round. You have to play at a level you’ve prob - ably never reached before. You have to pick up your game.
The NBA playoffs looks nothing l i ke the regular season. The Stanley Cup playoffs look nothing like the regular season. You have to find a new level, find a new intensity, find a way to execute and compete, and if you can’t, you go away quietly, which is how the Raptors have gone away through two games in the series.
The defeats were so different. The first one came in a historic game in which the Cavaliers never led once through four quarters of basketball. They won the game in the fifth quarter. James looked tired and unengaged in Game 1.
And still the Cavs went ahead 1- 0.
And in Game 2, the Raptors and Cavs battled for a half and then James took over, Kevin Love took over, and the Raps looked tired annd slow a incapable an possibly intimidated in so many different ways.
In eight quarters of basketball, nine if you count the overtime of Game 1, the Raptors have gone f rom contending, to believing,
I DIDN’T THINK WE PLAYED (VERY WELL) LAST NIGHT.
to pushing back, to being unable to make a shot of consequence, to getting pushed around and basically laughed at in the second half of Game 2.
The pendulum has swung and taken their legs away, and maybe broken their hearts.
Whether they can offer up any kind of resistance at the Q, well, it’s now up to the Raptors players to demonstrate if they have any kind of answer. If you’re making a list after two games, ask yourself this: Who on the Raptors has competed at a playoff- intense manner? Who has picked their game up the way James did in Game 2, the way Love did, the way even some of the disregarded Cavalier players have?
Kyle Lowry had a strong first half in Game 2. But other than him, who else? James said before the series that every team is depend - ent upon their star players and the Raptors will go only as far as DeMar DeRozan and Lowry will carry them. So far, it hasn’t been very far. Ibaka has been a big zero to da te, and really, maybe only Jonas Valanciunas has played to his level, a contradiction considering he missed all those shots down the stretch that could have given the Raps a victory in Game 1.
It starts with execution. And who knows, by the end of the series, which could come soon, Dwane Casey might be in step with John McKay.
And that won’t be very funny at all.