THAT’S A RAP FOLKS!
Cavs complete the sweep
And so, the only win for the Toronto Raptors in the second round of the playoffs was a moral victory.
After another comprehensive destruction by the Cleveland Cavaliers in which a late Toronto rally was casually snuffed out, the Raptors went 0-4 against the defending NBA champions, the latest blemish being Sunday’s 109-102 defeat at the Air Canada Centre.
Team president Masai Ujiri now has many difficult decisions to make, and few easy answers presenting themselves.
The step back in the 2017 playoffs — which, to be fair to the Raptors, was a step back only because they met the Cavs a round earlier when Cleveland decided not to try to win the top seed in the East — sends the team into an off-season of uncertainty.
Kyle Lowry, Serge Ibaka, P.J. Tucker and Patrick Patterson are all unrestricted free agents. Dwane Casey, the most successful coach in franchise history, could end up gone if management decides to bring back most of the veterans and try to be competitive again in the short term.
In that scenario, changing the coach would be one way to mix things up. There also remains the blow-it-up option, with the team letting the vets walk and handing most of the minutes to the collection of young players Ujiri amassed over the last few seasons. The president was prepared to go that route after he arrived in Toronto four years ago, but a late surge in 2014 squelched that idea.
The thumping at the hands of the Cavaliers would not have provided Ujiri with a lot of useful information as he considers his next move. LeBron James is now on an 11-game playoff win streak in which he has been basically unstoppable, and with Kyle Lowry spraining his ankle midway through Game 2, Toronto went from overmatched to really overmatched.
Casey said after Game 4 that he wished his team had played more like that for the first three games of the series. “I thought the guys laid it all on the line,” he said.
The coach also said he would leave questions about the future of his roster up to management. “Those decisions will be up to Masai,” he said. “Right now is not the time to even think about those things.”
But he did allow that he thinks this group can compete, can possibly contend, particularly since the roster was rarely at full health after the late-season trades for Ibaka and Tucker. “I think this group can jell and continue to grow,” he said.
Does he think they could have hung with the Cavs if they had their full roster for more than a handful of games at the end of the year?
“Ifs and buts and candy and nuts,” Casey said with a slight smile. Maybe they could have punched with LeBron and Co. if they had more time to get used to one another. Maybe they could have made a series out of this if they didn’t see Lowry, the heart of the team, go down with a bum leg.
But for the front office, a bunch of what-ifs and maybes are not the most comfortable way to build a roster.
DeMar DeRozan hit on the key statement in his post-game comments on the future: “It’s hard to break down a team that won 50-plus games two years in a row,” he said.
More to point, you don’t blow up a 50-win team unless you are very certain that you can turn it into a 60-win contender some years from now.
For a while, Game 4 looked as though it might actually end up in a Toronto win, but it would not last. An early 11-point lead was whittled to a tie by the time the first quarter was over, and a tight second quarter was blown open by a confluence of events. DeRozan took an (unintentional) boot to the unmentionables, causing him to head to the locker-room for treatment and possibly to throw up. The Cavs opened a five-point lead in the two-plus minutes he missed. It was eight minutes of clock time, but the series in microcosm: The Cavaliers absolutely torching the Raptors from long distance, and Toronto unable to respond with three-point shots of their own. And also the Raptors were hoofed in the nuggets.
To their great credit, the Raptors did not respond to a 12-point halftime deficit by laying down and letting the off-season come. They kept fighting, shaving the difference to five at the end of the third quarter and taking their first lead of the second half at 93-92 with six-plus minutes left the fourth. But as they have done seemingly at will in this series, the Cavs went on a run. When James hit a step-back threepointer to make it 106-95 with less than three minutes to go, the would-be comeback was dead.
How hard is it to beat Cleveland right now? James is scoring 35 points a game and having fun doing it, while every night various other Cavs make key contributions. Kyrie Irving, Kyle Korver, Channing Frye — it was as though every time Toronto slowed down one part of the Cavs’ offence, two other people stepped in to score. The Raptors were playing whack-a-mole and the Cavs had way too many moles.
“I think we picked a team to go against that was a buzz saw,” Casey said.
The Cavs were that. And if Ujiri can figure out what the Raptors were, he can decide what he wants to do with them next.
It was eight minutes of clock time, but the series in microcosm: The Cavaliers absolutely torching the Raptors from long distance, and Toronto unable to respond with three-point shots of their own.