RAPTORS BOW OUT IN BLOWOUT LOSS
The Toronto Raptors have taught their fans a cruel lesson in these playoffs: it can always get worse. After three games in which the Raptors deserved better than an 0-3 hole, they collapsed utterly in Game 4, allowing the Cleveland Cavaliers to score at will in sweeping them out of the post-season with a 128-93 blowout win.
The repercussions of this defeat could be significant, as the Raptors reinvented themselves in the off-season and rose to the top seed in the East, only to end up with yet another casual dismissal at LeBron James’ hands. No numberone seed had ever been swept in the conference semifinals in NBA history before Monday night.
It wasn’t the late blown lead of Game 1, or the heartbreaking James dagger of Game 3, but Game 4 was dispiriting for the Raptors in new and ugly ways. From the outset, they were a disaster on defence, repeatedly losing Cavs players on screens, which turned into wide-open shots, or allowing them to penetrate the lane easily, which turned into layups. Cleveland shot 65% for the first quarter and 62% for the first half.
This time it wasn’t even James torching the Raptors, but everyone else. The non-LeBron starters, who had been lampooned on the weekend in a Saturday Night Live skit about the “other Cavs,” roared out of the gate with 47 of Cleveland’s 63 first-half points. Kevin Love, J.R. Smith, George Hill and Kyle Korver also shot a combined 73 per cent for the half. Perhaps someone in the Toronto organization could talk SNL into mocking the Raptors in time for next year’s playoffs.
If there was a sequence that demonstrated Toronto’s neartotal lack of answers, it came with about two minutes left in that first half. Coach Dwane Casey, who had already shuffled his starting lineup by benching Jonas Valanciunas in favour of C.J. Miles, brought Lucas Nogueira in for Serge Ibaka. The lanky Brazilian, who hadn’t played a minute since Game 2 of the Washington series, looked understandably out of sorts at both ends. The Cavs closed the quarter on a 12-2 run to get to halftime with a 16-point lead. The Raptors, in a season so full of promise, were down to their last wheeze.
That this was the best the Raptors, who hadn’t lost three straight games all season long until Saturday night, could come up with an elimination game was alarming.
For two days, they kept saying they knew they were better than the team that had dug itself such a huge hole.
“I haven’t given up on our team, I think we have a group of guys that are warriors, you know, and I know that they are going to bounce back,” Casey said on Monday before Game 4, “As far as the fight, I love what we did the other night, and (if ) we cut down that 17 turnovers, get it down to our normal 12, 13 somewhere in there, it’s a different ball game. You know you’re down 3-0, but you don’t give up on this group because we’ve been resilient the entire season.”
C. J. Miles said there was regret over the missed opportunities of the first three games, but the Raptors still felt like they could turn it around. “There’s no lack of confidence. We don’t feel over-matched or anything, there’s none of that. It’s just about knowing where we have to draw the line in some of the things we need to do to get over that hump.”
Miles said it wasn’t like the Raptors had no idea what to do: “It’s not like there’s no door to get out of the room, you know?”
But instead of cleaning up those mistakes that had plagued them, Toronto’s small lineup was continually punished on Monday night. Play after play, one Cavalier or another was burying an open jumper or finishing easily at the rim. Valanciunas is not a great rim defender, but he was Dikembe Mutombo relative to what the Raptors were getting in interior defence from the combination of Miles and Ibaka.
From a 59-win team that swore up and down that they were confident and comfortable in facing the Cavs this time, to a quivering wreck, all in the space of a week. Cleveland was getting big contributions from all of its starters, and Casey was throwing out unfamiliar lineups and combinations that the Cavs were able to exploit. Eventually, with the game out of hand, James was back to hitting tough fadeaways like he was doing it for kicks. In the spring, LeBron is the cat and the Raptors are the dying, crippled mouse. His Cavaliers have now eliminated the Raptors in three straight playoffs and have won 10 straight games against Toronto in the postseason.
On Sunday after practice, DeMar DeRozan had said he hated the waiting that came after LeBron’s heartless Game 3 buzzerbeater.
“There’s nothing much you can do but watch the time go by and wait for the time to come to be able to get this feeling off you,” he said. “Extremely long night,” DeRozan said.
And now, a long summer.