Casey likely one to take the fall
CLEVELAND— So let’s get this straight. Toronto’s game plan, in their third annual clash with King James and the Cavaliers, went something like this.
Play LeBron James single coverage as much as possible. Double team him only in rare circumstances. And the result of this bit of tactical genius would limit the damage done from James’s supporting cast, which had came into the series looking faded and inadequate. Make James beat you singlehandedly: A similar philosophy almost worked for the Indiana Pacers in the first round, when the Pacers pushed Cleveland to seven games by ensuring just one Cavalier not named LeBron finished with a series scoring average in double figures.
But as the buzzer sounded on Toronto’s season Monday night — the Cavaliers putting an exclamation point on a four-game sweep with a 128-93 throttling that counted as the biggest margin of defeat for a No. 1 seed at the hands of a lower seed in an elimination game in NBA history — you could only consider its strategic choices to be abysmal failures. They tried to take away James’s teammates; they took away almost nothing. No less than five of James’s teammates averaged double figures in points for the series.
They hoped single coverage would make James a volume shooter. James ended up scoring at will while also picking apart Toronto’s coverages to the tune of 11 assists a game.
What’s a basketball brain trust to do when it watches a game plan fail so epically? Let’s just say it’ll be a surprise if Dwane Casey is Toronto’s head coach when the 2018-19 season begins. That’s three straight years Casey and the Raptors have been bounced from the post-season against LeBron James and the Cavaliers. Toronto’s win-loss record over that span is an ugly 2-12. And given this was considered Toronto’s best chance yet to beat their nemesis — the Raptors came into the series as the Las Vegas chalk to advance, and were seven-point favourites in Games 1 and 2 — it’s hard to imagine there won’t be an organizational push for considerable change. Business as usual — the same faces, the same stale dynamics — simply can’t cut it for a franchise that sees itself as something better than just another also-ran in the age of LeBron.
In one way, it would seem rash to cut ties with Casey. He’s been the best coach in franchise history, no contest. He’s among the favourites to win the NBA coach of the year award, which will be announced June 25. Fresh off guiding the team to a franchise-best 59 wins, he and his staff transformed Toronto’s style of offence to thrive in an NBA that favours teams that share the ball and shoot threepointers in quantity. Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue, asked about the possibility Casey could be coaching his last game on Monday, scoffed at the idea his counterpart would be on the hot seat. And surely Casey, if he parted ways with the Raptors after seven seasons and an impressive 51 playoff games, would be a favourite to immediately land one of the coaching vacancies in the NBA.
“I mean, that’s absurd. That’s crazy. I mean, to change a team who they said played iso basketball, to being top (five), I guess, in offence and defence this year, the second best record in the NBA — like, I don’t believe that one bit,” Lue said. “I mean, it would be absurd to make a move like that.”
In some ways, that’s true. Can you blame a coach for residing in the wrong conference at this moment of James’s dominance? This was James’s 23rd straight series victory against an Eastern playoff opponent. Over that span his teams have beat the Raptors three straight times, sure. They’ve also eliminated Indiana five times, Boston four times, Chicago three times, Atlanta twice. The Raptors began this season with hopes of something special. But in the end, they’re just another team on James’s list of victims.
In some ways, this sweep was closer than it appeared. Toronto should have won Game 1 in a walk. And it’s hard to blame a coach when his players essentially give away such a crucial, tone-setting game with careless turnovers and a myriad of clanked layups and open jumpers. But the Raptors were trounced in Games 2 and 4. Casey and his staff were made the butt of sports-talk jokes after Game 3 for failing to induce James to make a pass before he banked in the buzzer-beater that won Game 3. As the series evolved, the Raptors too often unravelled. The team’s adjustments — Fred VanVleet in the starting lineup for Game 3, Serge Ibaka starting at centre in Game 4 — didn’t make significant impact. And by Monday, Toronto’s will looked sapped.
Cleveland shot a ridiculous 65 per cent in Game 4’s first quarter, when nine of their 12 field goals were either layups or dunks. Still, the Raptors were down a mere four points late in the first half, when Casey made the quizzical choice to sub in Lucas Nogueira, the offence-challenged Brazilian sevenfooter who was making his first appearance of the series. In Nogueira’s two minutes on court, wherein he committed a foul and a turnover and allowed the Cavaliers defence the pleasure of ignoring him, the Raptors were outscored by 10 points. They never cut it to single digits again.
There were those who pointed to Casey’s Game 3 benching of DeMar DeRozan as a knock against the coach’s chances of remaining in his gig. If anything, it was a move that any clear-thinking member of management would have wholly supported. If anything, Casey’s chronic kid-gloves treatment of DeRozan’s deficiencies — his oft-meandering offensive approach and his lifetime of shoddy defensive habits — have hurt the franchise. Maybe a fresh voice could demand more from DeRozan. Maybe a fresh voice would be change for change’s sake. However you see it, it’s hard to imagine change isn’t coming to Raptorland.