Knocking Cavs out of comfort zone works, but it’s hard to repeat

Towards the end of Game 3 of the Eastern Conference final Cleveland’s Dahntay Jones, a bit player of no consequence, wheeled and smacked Toronto’s Bismack Biyombo in what the big man called a very private area. Earlier James Jones, a gentle soul off the court, smacked Patrick Patterson in the face. At least twice, LeBron James had already flopped.

The Cavaliers didn’t have to resort to that kind of basketball in the first two games. But in Game 3, things changed.

“Before yesterday’s game, we were in a position like, let’s make them look human,” says Raptors forward Luis Scola, the day after a 99-84 win that followed two blowout losses in Cleveland. “Let’s make them look like a team that can be beaten, because they looked unbeatable up until that point.”

They really did. In the first two games LeBron dunked at will, Kyrie Irving bent physics with his dribble, Kevin Love piled on, Cleveland’s bench was a whirring machine, Kyle Lowry’s most talkedabout moment involved going to the locker room, and the Raptors were laughingstocks in certain circles. You wouldn’t have any idea that in the regular season Toronto won 56 games, and Cleveland won 57.

And then the Raptors got the Cavaliers to revert to some of the habits they had in the regular season, before they became a move-the-ball-and-share-everything juggernaut. Irving dribbled and missed, J.R. Smith started launching heat-check threes, LeBron actually took jump shots, and Love fell into a third- to fourth-wheel funk. Maybe it won’t happen again, but the Raptors, with energy and aggressiveness and shotmaking, made it happen once.

“They been playing like that the whole year, but not in the playoffs, they been moving the ball,” says DeMarre Carroll.

“That’s what you want. You want them thinking about things.”

The Cavaliers had won 17 straight playoff games against Eastern Conference opponents, and though they played some close games in the first two rounds, there was a sense that not a single shot carried with it the consequences of actual failure. Sure, Cleveland forward Richard Jefferson noted that they needed an Irving three and a crazy Smith turnaround three to win a game against Detroit.

But in Game 3 Toronto led from the jump, and Cleveland could never come too close. The Cavaliers, under pressure, became closer to that 57-win team that struggled enough to make LeBron subtweet his teammates with all kinds of inspirational, scolding thoughts.

Whether it will remain their basketball self . . . well, that’s another question.

“I think the first two games gave us a good idea of how not to play, how we shouldn’t be playing,” says Scola. “It confirmed what we all knew — if we play in a certain way, we were going to get our ass kicked.

“I think in a month and a half of playoffs, nobody put them in a negative situation. Nobody made them question what they were doing, nobody put them against the ropes, nobody even beat them. So those things we need to explore. We have to put them in that situation. That does not mean they cannot react, and play a great game next time, and accept the challenge and come out well.

“But we have to put them in that situation if we want to have a chance, we have to see how they react. We’re going to see how they react to a bad game, to a team that outplayed them, to a team that played with more effort and more energy. Let’s see how they react. Maybe they react pretty well; maybe they get in trouble. Maybe we resurface all the bad problems they had and they were hiding. Maybe, who knows? But this is the only chance we have to win the series right now.”

The Raptors probably needed that game, too, to actually believe in possibility.

They liked their matchups with Cleveland all year, but it’s better to see it happen.

“It’s not like we’re playing against a Dream Team of players,” says DeMar DeRozan, who had one of the finest games of his career. “Anybody is capable of being beaten. We showed it all year.”

“LeBron gonna be LeBron, best player in the world, but if you knock out some of the supporting cast . . . ” says Carroll.

“We had to get them out of a comfort zone, and when that happened it’s almost like magic,” says Scola. “They miss shots that are wide open, they miss layups that are wide open.

“These are players who are capable (of playing) this way. It’s just more about how can we put them in a non-comfort zone? They’ve been in a great confidence place. We take them out of that, and how do they react to that? How can we make them not feel good about how they play? We have to make them ask themselves questions, which they haven’t done yet. It doesn’t guarantee anything, obviously.”

No, of course not. Toronto has to win Game 4 to make this matter, and Cleveland seems confident they’ll be fine.

“When adversity hits, you see true colours,” says Carroll, limping a little on a slightly sprained ankle. “Tomorrow we’re going to come out the same way we did, we’re going to do it with effort, we’re going to make them see what they do when adversity hits them.”