You can tell the Toronto Raptors are trying not to put too much stock into Friday’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
It’s standard practice for professional sports teams to try to quell the hype for any one game, particularly in the regular season. Collectively, the sports world has deemed it best for everyone to agree to collectively downplay individual meetings, no matter how exciting.
“If you go and lay and egg it proves something. If you just go and lose the game, whatever. Or if you go out and win the game, it’s one out of 82,” head coach Dwane Casey said at shootaround Friday.
It makes sense, from a business and a psychological standpoint. For the business side, propping up one game as bigger than others, by contrast, makes the others seem less important. The Raptors’ marketing machine will still push Cleveland’s visit as a big deal, because it is, and because it will make the Air Canada Centre tougher to play in and pop a good TV rating. The team paying lip-service to Just Another Game ensures that when, say, Utah visits next week, they can sell that game as just as important. Psychologically, it’s a good way to maintain level heads. A win won’t get the team too high, and if the team says it’s not that important, a loss won’t take them too low.
At least, that’s the company line.
“You get into this up and down, new gunslinger coming to town – here comes OKC, here comes this team, that team – you’re be on an emotional and physical roller coaster,” Casey said. “You need to be consistent.”
Except nobody actually thinks that way, despite saying it repeatedly this week. Casey is downplaying it. Kyle Lowry is downplaying it. Luis Scola isn’t, but is trying to rally the team to focus on a larger picture.
The Raptors are acutely aware of what Friday is. They are the second-best team in the Eastern Conference, but the perceived gap between Nos. 1 and 2 is much larger than the same gap between Nos. 2 and 3, 4, 5, and so on. They have won 17 of 20, but they’ve done so against a friendly schedule. That stretch was preceded by losses to Cleveland and Chicago and includes a loss to Chicago, and the only marquee win during the stretch is a home victory against a…let’s call it “tired” Clippers outfit.
Lowry scoffed at the term “measuring stick” at practice on Thursday, and perhaps that’s not an accurate term. Neither is litmus test. What Friday may represent, though, is a chance to recalibrate or, in the more forthcoming words of DeMar DeRozan, get a renewed handle on how close the Raptors are to being where they want – and let’s face it, need – to be.
“We’re playing a tem that’s No. 1 in our conference that we’re right behind,” DeRozan said Friday. “Last time we played them it was a loss that definitely got to us, so it’s definitely a measuring stick for us to see how far we came and how far we need to go.”
Not that Friday will determine whether the Raptors are ready to hang in a seven-game series with the Eastern Conference favorites. It’s Just Another Game for the Cavs, too, and it stands to reason that David gets up for the battle a little more than Goliath does. There’s also the matter of DeMarre Carroll missing Friday’s game, the second consecutive meeting the would-be LeBron James defender has sat. In the first meeting between the teams, Jonas Valanciunas and Kyrie Irving were absent.
Still, the Raptors got rolled in Cleveland, and there are lessons they can take, good or bad, from Friday’s outing. Neither coach is likely to show their full hand in a regular season meeting, just in case, but the Raptors will get a look at how Channing Frye will factor in, they’ll get to try some things against Kevin Love pick-and-pops to see how the Cavs respond, and James Johnson will get another opportunity to prove himself a matchup factor even once Carroll returns.
Perhaps most notably from a strategic standpoint, Casey seems likely to give Patrick Patterson a lot of defensive responsibility. Casey’s talked about getting Patterson more time guarding larger threes, and James would qualify. With Patterson flashing the ability to switch onto guards this season – it really can’t be overstated just how much he’s improved defensively – how Patterson responds to Love and James could have a big impact on the defensive strategy in a playoff series. If Patterson can switch on a guard, stick with a stretch four, and bang with a large three, he’d be a major factor in how the Raptors would defend Irving-James-Love pick-and-roll iterations, allowing the Raptors the freedom to switch more freely when Carroll is back.
That’s looking ahead to a playoff series, of course, and that won’t happen until the conference finals, if ever. The Raptors have a lot of season left, and that’s where the focus should return.
After Friday, that is. Because again, it’s OK for guys to get up a little extra for games like this. They are humans, after all, and for a team that fancies itself a championship contender – “They never mentioned us before so it’s no thing,” DeRozan says of not being included in that conversation – it’s entirely understandable that they’d want to make a statement in this game. Even if they don’t admit it.
And for what it’s worth, Friday matters if the Raptors are looking ahead to the playoffs and getting championship-run ready. With a win, the Raptors would be just two games back of the Cavs for the top seed in the East and would own the tiebreaker. Catch up two games, and home court through to the finals is yours. When James is dapping up the quality of your home crowd and you’ve won nine in a row on your own floor, that’s not nothing.
Lose, though, and the Raptors are essentially five games back (four, without the tiebreaker). Not only would that end any realistic chase of the top seed, it could leave them in a weird limbo the rest of the way, insulated by five games on either side of them in the standings. There’s no shortage of things to work on over the next six weeks, but goals are generally best-served being specific, measurable, and reachable (shout out to SMART). Even if catching the Cavs isn’t all that important or even realistic (it is the latter, to be sure), having something to push for could help keep the Raptors on edge through the dog days and at their best heading into the playoffs.
DeRozan wasn’t quite as willing to bite on that line of thinking.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re chasing a team,” he said. “We’re more so trying to get every single game we can get and get better every time we step on that court. If that comes with us surpassing them or whatever it may be, then that’s what it will be, but we’re not looking at nobody like we’re chasing them.
“We’re not going in there saying we’re whatever games behind Cleveland, we gotta catch ‘em. Our main focus is us. As long as we worry about us and not nobody else, we’ll be perfectly fine.”
That’s a good attitude to have, and the Raptors have a few things within themselves to iron out down the stretch, anyway. Some of those might be on display against Cleveland, and if that’s the case, the Raptors will have been served a reminder they still have a ways left to go.
Failing that, well, the next six weeks stand to be pretty interesting. The chance to take the season series from the top team in the conference and trail them by only two games? Friday’s at least a little more than just one out of 82.
