CAVALIERS STAY HOT IN CLEVELAND
Raps headed back to Toronto down 2-0 after second straight lopsided loss
The Toronto Raptors might need to get creative if they are going to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers. Zone defence. Roll of quarters in the fist. Sack of doorknobs.
For the second straight game at Quicken Loans Arena, the Cavs calmly dismissed the Raptors, this time by a 108-89 score keyed by another all-world performance from LeBron James.
It was another game in which the fourth quarter was mostly an afterthought, in which Cleveland dominated the paint and in which Kyle Lowry lost his shot. Oh, and James had 23 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists, sending the series back to Toronto with the Raptors having lost back-to-back games for the first time this post-season. The Cavs are now a gaudy 10-0. In the time that had elapsed since the Cavs pantsed them in Game 1, the Raptors had taken some confidence from the fact that they had survived first-game losses — at home no less — in two straight series.
“Other than getting spanked by 30, we’ve been here before,” Toronto coach Dwane Casey said before Game 2.
“Nobody’s ready to jump off a building or anything like that.”
But while it is certainly true that none of the Raptors need to be on suicide watch, it’s only partly accurate that Toronto had been here before. They lost Game 1s to Indiana and Miami — and Game 4s and 6s, for that matter — but in every instance there was a sense that the Raptors had let themselves down. They shot poorly, or they shot really poorly, or their stars were off or the bench didn’t give them anything.
The loss to Cleveland was a different type of loss: they were blasted by a team that looked like it was playing at a completely different level.
Here’s Casey again: “This is a totally different level.” See? Told you.
The Raptors had defended the three-ball well, but as a result allowed James and Kyrie Irving to waltz repeatedly to the basket. Cleveland’s 56 points in the paint on Tuesday were the most the team had scored in that area in a decade.
It exposed the key problem of facing James, a 31-year-old in his 13th season, and at the peak of his basketball mind even if he has lost a half-step: he knows many ways to beat you.
“He is a computer,” said Casey. “You show him one thing one time, and he’s going to pick you apart.”
The Toronto coach has said all year that he thinks he’s still the best player in the NBA, despite the fact that Steph Curry is a person who exists.
On Thursday night, it took almost no time for James to underline Casey’s point, even if the Toronto coach would have rather not seen it on full display. He stole a DeMar DeRozan pass, and drew a foul from Kyle Lowry for free throws.
Moments later, he drove to the basket and when the defence collapsed he kicked a pass to J.R. Smith, standing open in the corner for a smooth three-pointer. James scored or assisted on all of the Cavs’ first 16 points.
Toronto used a 9-0 run with James on the bench to grab a lead, but unfortunately for the Raptors he didn’t stay there for long.
A 30-28 lead for the Cavs after one quarter was quickly stretched, and James was at the centre of it: making steals, dunking on breakaways, finding open teammates for uncontested shots.
The Raptors were playing game basketball: they were making Cleveland work for points and they were finding good shots of their own.
But with LeBron scoring 17 points, with eight assists and six rebounds, in just 17 first-half minutes, the problem for the Raptors was just that bleak: even the decent efforts were getting them killed.
On the other end, Lowry, who had awoken from a shooting slump to carry his team to a Game 7 win over Miami, was now back in the throes of a funk: 1-for6 in the first half, and 0-for-4 from three-point range, running to 0-for-11 his streak from distance against the Cavs. His poor half was enough to offset 16 firsthalf points from DeRozan.
Despite all the adjustments that Casey has made game to game — on Thursday he swapped Luis Scola back into the starting lineup and put Patrick Patterson into his more comfortable bench role — it remains that this Raptors team will go nowhere without Lowry. With the Cavs doing their buzz saw thing, Toronto simply doesn’t have a margin of error that allows for Lowry clanking open threes. (He also had five turnovers in the first half, a career playoff high for a half. Yikes.) But his importance to the team can’t be understated: when Lowry sat for the final 2:30 of the half, a five-point deficit turned into 14.
The old saw is that a series doesn’t truly start until a team loses at home, and that’s about the sum total of the good news for the Raptors after two games. They played the Cavs better in Game 2, and if Toronto could find any sort of shooting touch, especially from distance, they could at least make things interesting.
Casey said before the game that he talked to his charges after the Miami series about the importance of avoiding complacency.
“Don’t be satisfied,” he says he stressed.
After these two games, that should not be a problem.