Being prepared for the challenge posed by the Cavaliers is one thing. Stopping them, as the Raps found out Monday night, is quite another.
Raps drop ninth Game 1 in a row, but all’s not lost
CLEVELAND— The exasperation level was high, the frustration level significant as the Raptors digested yet another opening-game loss in an NBA playoff series.
It wasn’t that they were caught unawares or unprepared for what was coming. They were neither physically tired nor mentally drained. They just made enough mistakes, of both commission and omission, that they walked out of Quicken Loans Arena wondering: “How do we always do this to ourselves?”
Well prepared for what greeted them though they were, the Raptors were “off” just enough in so many facets of the game that they never gave themselves a chance in a116-105 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers to open the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal on Monday night.
And so they find themselves in an eerily familiar spot, now having lost Game 1 of a playoff series for the ninth straight time.
“We’ve already got that foot in the hole,” DeMar DeRozan said. “And that’s when we kick in and understand we fight well under adversity. We did it all year; that’s been our mantra. So it’s something that we’re going to have to exploit next game.”
But this team is a conundrum, a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and if there’s one thing anyone who’s been paying attention since November should realize, it’s that what happened on Monday won’t necessarily happen when Game 2 unfolds here Wednesday night.
The Raptors have a way of righting themselves that is as admirable as it is frustrating to have to do; the Cavaliers are uniquely skilled and better than any team Toronto’s had to fight back against, but to think they won’t try something is to not know them.
“There are some different things we can do, and we have to do,” said coach Dwane Casey. “Know where the rotations are coming from and where the double-teams are coming from.
“It wasn’t a surprise, but we can do a better job of attacking to get better looks. Defensively, we can do better, reacting quicker. There are a lot of things we can do better that we didn’t do (Monday).”
There were three areas that the Raptors had to control to have a chance to win, and they didn’t. They didn’t protect the paint particularly well. They did not close out to threepoint shooters at all well, and they coughed up12 turnovers that led to18 Cleveland points.
One they might have gotten away with. Two would have been hard to overcome, but a miracle might have occurred. Blowing all three facets made it impossible to win.
The shots they missed are shots they could just as easily make the next time out.
The other stuff, the defence, takes some more work.
“We got some great looks tonight that didn’t fall that we encourage all our guys to keep shooting, but defensively we let them get out. We let them get going,” Kyle Lowry said. “Once you let them see the basket- ball go in, it’s kind of contagious for them.”
It wasn’t so much that the Raptors were “ambushed” by the Cavaliers out of the gate. It was that they couldn’t help themselves when the opportunity presented itself. They did trail 10-3 in the first 21⁄
1 minutes but got back into a 12-12 tie, killing the narrative that they weren’t somehow ready to play. But their own anemic offence — 7-for-21 in the first quarter alone, with Patrick Patterson and Ibaka a combined 1-for-8 — and a spate of turnovers let the Cavs take control.
“We’ve got to switch gears and go from the Milwaukee series to this series, but I thought they were the quicker team tonight and we have to match that,” Casey said.
Ibaka did redeem himself by making four straight shots after his horrible start, but Patterson missed all five of his first-half attempts.
Those shots were part of a19-3 Raptors run that got them back to within two with about six minutes left in the first half, before the Cavaliers ripped off another run of their own to go up 62-48 at the break.
“That’s what the playoffs is about: spurts and making runs,” Cavs coach Tyronn Lue said.
LeBron James racked up his 88th career playoff game with more than 30 points, leading the Cavaliers with 35 to go along with 10 rebounds. Kyrie Irving added 24 points and 10 assists, while Kevin Love made three three-pointers and finished with 16 points.
Kyle Lowry had 20 points for Toronto, DeMar DeRozan 19 and Serge Ibaka 15.
Cleveland was 14-for-34 from three-point range. The Raptors were 10-for-26.
The Raptors have now lost four playoff games in Cleveland by an average margin of nearly 25 points and have, at times, looked inept. They weren’t atrocious here Monday night, but if there is not significant improvement at both ends all that might be different in Wednesday’s Game 2 is the final score, not the winner and loser.
The Raptors know they need to better or this series won’t be nearly as close as many expected.
“We’ve got to put defence in the game for 48 minutes,” DeRozan said. “For some reason when they play at home, when they see that ball go in it becomes very contagious for them.
“We’ve got to buckle down and understand that we’ve got to leave it all out there, especially on the defensive end, and let that carry us overall offensively, like we did in that spurt during the first half of the game.”