LEBRON MAKES RAPTORS PAY FOR FAILING TO FINISH
CAVALIERS 113, RAPTORS 112 (OT)
In their last six playoff games against the Cleveland Cavaliers before Tuesday, the Toronto Raptors were a cool 0-6. They did not lead once at halftime. One of the losses was by 38 points and on average, they were beaten by a smidge under 21 points.
This, then, was better. It probably just feels worse.
In a game in which Toronto had the lead for 47 minutes and 30 seconds until LeBron James tied it with a fadeaway jumper — and in which the Raptors had several attempts at a tip-in around the rim in the dying seconds of regulation — the Cavaliers finally took their first lead in overtime. They would not relinquish it, dealing the Raptors a 113-112 loss that allows the team’s fans to consider which is worse: the blowout or the narrow late collapse?
The night saw Toronto roar out of the gate and it was basically the ideal quarter for the home side, the kind fans of their team have imagined them playing against James and Cavaliers in the playoffs for about a year now. The Raptors spread the ball around and everyone was hitting shots, largely because most of the early shots came from inches away from the basket.
The Raptors showed off their young legs and the Cavs huffed and puffed and tried to catch up. James was his usual terror, but the non-LeBron Cavs couldn’t hit the ocean from a boat and Toronto finished the opening frame with a 14-point lead.
It couldn’t be that easy, though, and it turns out it was not. Cleveland trimmed the halftime deficit to three, Toronto bumped it back up to five by the end of the third, and then the Raptors and Cavs played a postseason fourth quarter that mattered for the first time in forever.
Toronto missed a bunch of opportunities to open up the lead again late, particularly when Jonas Valanciunas couldn’t finish multiple attempts around the rim, but Cleveland matched the misses on their end. With the Air Canada Centre on its feet in the dying minutes, the Raptors could not do what they set out 12 months ago to do. They could not close out the Cavs. It was close, but when they needed a basket at the end of overtime, they couldn’t get it. DeMar DeRozan even made a pass, but Fred VanVleet missed the potential game-winner.
The Raptors, understandably, were both tired of the LeBron James storylines by the time the series began and were aware that it was going to be the only thing anyone talked about. James has ruled the Eastern Conference for a decade, his Cavs had knocked Toronto out of the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, and he had just finished a series against the Indiana Pacers where he scored more than a third of Cleveland’s points over the combined seven games.
“It’s not just LeBron James,” Toronto coach Dwane Casey said before Game 1.
Well, yes, it kind of is.
It is true it hasn’t just been James who has killed the Raptors in the past two postseasons, true that Toronto was also pummelled by the array of three-point shooters he has variously had at his disposal. But this version of the Cavs, despite Casey’s protestations — “They’ve got other good players around him,” he said on Tuesday before the game — lacks the firepower of his recent Cleveland teams.
James scored 26 and added 11 rebounds and 13 assists for one of his seemingly effortless triple-doubles. It seems weird to say the Raptors would take that from LeBron every day, but one suspects they would.
The Raptors needed more than anything to play a game that showed they could trade punches with James and the Cavs, needed to prove to themselves that all the change that has taken place for the Raptors since last season, the roster remodelling and the reinvention of the offence, would at least give them a fighting chance against the King of the East. They didn’t.
The desperate times start now.