Anunoby up for LeBron challenge
One on one — favoured Raptors wanna play that game tonight
The Raptors knew they had a keeper in OG Anunoby when he first arrived in Toronto in the wake of last June’s draft.
Considered a steal as the 23rd overall pick, the two-year collegian from Indiana was prized for a six-foot-eight athleticism that suggested sky-high NBA potential. But there was also an attractive unflappability that became quickly apparent in Anunoby’s first post-draft meeting with team personnel. At one point in the conversation, the topic turned to LeBron James.
“That’s the guy I want to play against,” Anunoby said.
There was no awe in Anunoby’s eyes, no fear in his speech. Even before he’d played a single NBA minute, Anunoby clearly saw himself as ready to go head to head against the game’s greatest player. Less than a year later, he’s getting a high-profile chance to prove it.
As Toronto’s starting small forward in the Raptors-Cavaliers second-round series that begins Tuesday night at the ACC, Anunoby will get the first crack at guarding Cleveland’s famed No. 23.
“Me personally, I want to play him,” Anunoby said Monday, speaking of James. “He’s one of the best players to play. We want to beat them.”
The Cavaliers, of course, are the team that eliminated the Raptors from the playoffs the past two springs. But this second-round best-of-seven amounts to a flip-flop of familiar roles. The fourth-seeded Cavaliers, even though they’re the three-time defending Eastern Conference champions and 2016 NBA titlists, are the underdogs. The No. 1-seeded Raptors are the Las Vegas favourites to advance. This is the first time since 2008 that a LeBron Jamesled team has been made an underdog before the NBA final.
Which is not to say he’ll be an easy out. James, though he is surrounded by his weakest supporting cast in recent memory, has already piled up a handful of towering performances in a firstround win over Indiana.
So beyond assigning Anunoby to hound James from the tip, how will the Raptors defend LeBron?
Head coach Dwane Casey said he plans to employ a handful of “different approaches” to keep the 33-year-old all-star off balance. One tack would see them play James single coverage as often as possible. Given his peerless court vision, to do otherwise only opens up other Cavaliers James will inevitably hit with pinpoint passes. And allowing James to set up teammates with easy opportunities has been a road to ruin for many an opponent. In Cleveland’s two wins over the Raptors during the regular season, for instance, Kevin Love shot a combined 8 for 12 from threepoint range. Jose Calderon shot a com- bined 7 for 9 from deep. If those players — or the sharpshooting likes of Kyle Korver and J.R. Smith — are providing that kind of high-efficiency production, the Cavaliers will be difficult to stop.
“He’s shown he’s gonna score his points,” Casey said of James. “Now what you can’t do is let three or four other guys come up and have career nights.”
Anunoby, who is expected to share responsibilities on James with Pascal Siakam among others, figures the Raptors possess the personnel to make the strategy work.
“I think we have the guys to cover him single coverage,” Anunoby said.
It’s not simply who guards James — it’s how they guard him. LeBron, NBA insiders will tell you, likes to be liked by opponents. So the Raptors, even if they don’t have a loose cannon like Pacers forward Lance Stephenson to confront James, will surely be encouraged not to cordially help him up off the floor. Stone-faced indifference to opponents has been Anunoby’s approach this season. That ought to work here.
“Respect everyone, but don’t hold him to a higher pedestal,” Anunoby said.
James, who led the NBA in regular-season minutes and played an incredible 41 minutes a game in the first round, described himself as “burnt” after his 45-point performance in Sunday’s Game 7.
And even if Casey raised a suspicious eye at James’s claim —“I’ll believe it when I see him sitting over on the bench, and I haven’t seen that very much,” the coach said — the Raptors are surely hoping to exacerbate his fatigue in a series in which games go every other night. Picking James up full court, or three-quarter court, could be a strategy meant to demand James zig-zags east-west before he attacks north-south. Denying him possession with a physical edge — “Getting into him before he gets the ball,” as Anunoby put it — would make James exert himself, too. And if the Raptors are going to give James something, they’ll give him contested two-point jump shots. Thundering dunks and three-pointers — they’ll try and limit those.
“(The idea is) to make it hard on him, make him work for his buckets,” Siakam said. Both Anunoby and Siakam said James is most difficult to guard in the post.
“He can pick us apart from the post and pick-and-rolls,” Siakam said.
Which is why containing James, even if it will begin as a one-on-one assignment, isn’t a one-man job.
“It’s a five-man job to slow him down,” Casey said.
Still, Casey said it’s important to make sure James’s status as an all-time great — a status that probably ensures Toronto will be on the wrong end of a certain number of whistles — doesn’t colour their competitive spirit. Resigning yourself to his peerlessness would be a quick road to a elimination.
“You’ve got to go in with a healthy amount of respect and a healthy amount of disrespect (for James),” Casey said. “And he will respect that.”
If rookies need to be taught a lot about the NBA, for Anuno- by that lesson hasn’t been necessary. Asked about his impending matchup, it was pointed out by a reporter that Anunoby usually holds a strength advantage over most opponents. What about James?
“I still feel that way against him. He’s pretty strong. But I feel like I’m strong, too,” Anunoby said.
“I’m pretty confident. I think each time I’ve played him it’s gotten better guarding him, so, I’m confident.”
Don’t read that as a guarantee the rookie will lock his man up. But take it as a given he won’t back down.