BUZZER BEATEN
Raptors go down fighting in Game 3 loss to Cleveland
The Raptors fought hard, but they were no match for LeBron James’s last-second heroics as they lost 105-103 in Game 3 against the Cavaliers on Saturday. They’re down 3-0 going into Monday’s game in Cleveland.
CLEVELAND— Maybe it didn’t matter if LeBron James was in their heads. Really, what did it matter? LeBron James is the greatest player in basketball, and every day he adds to the argument that he is the greatest basketball player ever created. It gets harder and harder to argue.
But when it came down to it, the Toronto Raptors didn’t have enough. They finally played LeBron with the requisite disrespect they had talked about at the start of the series. OG Anunoby bumped him, Pascal Siakam flicked at him, DeMar DeRozan even blocked his shot, and did it again. LeBron didn’t break them, not really. He was great. They still fought.
And still, he broke the Raptors. They cut the lead to five to start the third, backed by defence; LeBron simply pushed back, and suddenly the Raptors were leaving shooters alone again. But they did not quit, and the Cavs missed free throws, and with eight seconds left Anunoby caught a ball, pump faked and swished a three to tie it. The rookie was not scared.
And then LeBron James caught the ball, ran the length of the court, and hit an impossible running bank shot from the left side, fading, off one foot. It was so easy, so casual, like he was out there on a Sunday morning, fooling around. I mean, what do you do? What can you do? The Raptors didn’t blitz him; he was open. Maybe blitzing him would have mattered. He had 38 points. The king.
But Toronto lost Game 3 to the Cleveland Cavaliers 105-103, and their season can end in Game 4 on Monday. They never quit. Give them that. But with DeRozan vanishing in a haze, and Kyle Lowry not creating enough until it was too late, the Raptors couldn’t get there. And LeBron could.
Fred VanVleet has been such a calming presence all year that he was placed in the starting lineup in place of what is left of Serge Ibaka. It didn’t matter. Nothing they tried mattered. In Game 1 they blew lead after lead, and couldn’t close. In Game 2 their defence was as comfortable to inhabit as a silk robe. In Game 3 they tried to be physical, and played hard.
But they couldn’t do it all. They missed nine of their first 11 shots, and it looked like they weren’t sure they wanted to take them in the first place. After nearly eight minutes it was 16-4 Cleveland, and everything the Raptors were doing on offence was indecisive. It was like everyone was waiting for someone else to do it first.
And whenever they showed something it came from the defensive end, with the brand of defence the Raptors needed to be playing the entire series. Cleveland is going to score, but you have to at least make it uncomfortable. At times, they made LeBron uncomfortable.
But they just couldn’t score enough. With five minutes left in the half, it was 39-38, Cavaliers, and then it fell apart. In the last five minutes, was mostly Lowry and DeRozan unable to carry the offence. It was a 16-2 Cavaliers run. At halftime coach Dwane Casey and team president Masai Ujiri were berating the officials over a changed call on an Ibaka dunk that led to a sixpoint swing, and the Raptors were down 15.
But give them credit, because this was a game ready-made for an execution. The same building where the Cavaliers came back to beat the Raptors in March despite Toronto’s 79-point first half, and where they beat them again in April, and where they have simply destroyed Toronto in the playoffs, again and again.
And after LeBron had killed the Raptors in Game 2 with mid-range jumpers — that analytically objectionable shot that Toronto had tried to wipe from the record, and the shot the Raptors wanted LeBron to take — you had to wonder if he had broken their will, too. It’s what he was going for.
“Two points ain’t two points,” said LeBron before Game 3, when asked the difference between those jumpers and a dunk.
“That’s a lie. Two points is not two points. I’ll explain it to you later. But I get coaches have said that for years, but two points is not two points.”
He was trying to break them with their own discarded weapon, with their own scouting report. The Raptors won 59 games and said they weren’t scared, and he wanted them to be scared.
“They’re not in my head,” said Casey. “That’s disappointing to hear ... you know, you guys talk about it. It reminds me of back in the day, having to get over the hurdle of Jordan. At some point you gotta get over that hurdle, you gotta knock it down, you gotta knock the wall down. It’s a similar situation we are with Cleveland. And I always go back to, how many years has LeBron gone to the finals? Eight? So there’s a lot of other teams that have gone through this gauntlet, and we’ve got to go through it. That’s what we’re trying to do, or going to do.”
It is seven straight finals, of course. This year would make it eight. Casey said, “I don’t subscribe to ghosts. They’re a good team. A lot of teams have struggled here.”
All series, the same story: The Raptors gave LeBron a chance to kill them. And he did.