Things couldn’t have gone much worse in Game 1, but for a few shining moments, it seemed as if the Cleveland Cavaliers may have been in for a test. That didn’t wind up the case, and the unfortunate reality of 31-point blowouts is that there’s far less value on the minutiae at the margins, but the game can’t really just be thrown out, either. The Raptors surely scoured the film last night to try to find shreds of what worked and sift through the veritable buffet of what didn’t.
One thing I think they’ll look to go back to: Attacking Kevin Love.
Early on, the Raptors had a clear edict to put Love in pick-and-roll and pick-and-pop situations. To Love’s credit, the effort level was high and he looked better than may have been expected. Still, he’s a reasonable target to attack, as he’s not the most adept defender even when fully engaged. With Kyrie Irving at the point, defending Kyle Lowry in the starting lineup, attacking 1-4/5 to put Irving and Love into tough defensive positions makes all the sense in the world. The Cavs want to keep LeBron James on DeMarre Carroll unless there’s a fire to put out elsewhere, and with J.R. Smith turning into a decent man-to-man defender over the years (and doing a better job on DeMar DeRozan than Iman Shumpert last night), Irving and Love are the guys to target.
And it worked, at least early on.
The first possession of the game saw the Raptors run a Lowry-Patterson pick-and-pop, which flowed right into a hand-off that essentially functioned as a pick-and-pop with DeRozan. Love is a little late to Patterson initially thanks to a great Bismack Biyombo screen, and then he drops back to protect against a DeRozan drive when Patterson erases Smith (note, too, that James is prepared to help aggressively off of Carroll in the weak corner if DeRozan drives). As Smith tries to recover on DeRozan, Patterson’s left wide open.
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The very next time down the floor, Patterson engages in another pick-and-pop with Lowry, this time with Love hedging hard against the point guard.
Lowry goes the long way around Love but Irving is still a little slow to get back into his lane, and Lowry’s able to pull up in the paint. Patterson drifted to the short corner, which left Love to split the difference, essentially guarding nobody. If he didn’t get the edge on Irving, Lowry could have had Patterson open for a wing three.
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The next time down the floor, Lowry slows things down in transition to await a Patterson drag screen, Love hedges hard on Lowry again, and Patterson misses a clean corner three.
Because Tristan Thompson is the helper tasked with the long recover on to Patterson in the corner, Biyombo’s able to tip in the rebound without much resistance.
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The fourth offensive possession saw the Raptors finally go away from that action (likely to get DeRozan involved some), and DeRozan threw his second quality pass of the quarter, a tough dish to Biyombo for a dunk. And then it was right back to it, with one of the nicest sequences of ball movement in recent memory.
The play starts with DeRozan screening for Lowry, but it’s the threat of Patterson trailing that opens up Lowry’s initial attack (that, and Lowry somehow dribbling his way out of a sideline trap). After DeRozan screens, he immediately receives a screen from Patterson, which puts Irving (Lowry’s initial man) and Love (Patterson’s) into a tough spot.
Nobody ends up helping Smith with Lowry, and so Thompson has to come off of Biyombo to help on the drive. That means James has to crack down to help on the glass (this is an area the Raptors really struggled when Biyombo was a helper last night, by the way), and Lowry kicks it to James’ man, Carroll. When Carroll gets the ball, the Cavs have four defenders in the restricted area, while the Raptors have three above the arc.
A few nice passes as the Cavs scramble, and Carroll gets a wide open three. He just misses it.
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From there the Raptors got away from that strategy some, looking to vary their offense a little more, particularly as DeRozan began heating up. The opportunities were still there, though, and the combination of Cleveland deciding to have Love hedge on Lowry and Irving being an occasionally sleepy defender meant a steady diet of potential open looks for Patterson.
In other words, Patterson picked the wrong time for a poor shooting nights.
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By the end of the first quarter, the Raptors had scored 28 points on 24 possessions, not a bad rate. Had Patterson been able to knock down more than one of his four 3-point attempts, there may not have been the sense that the Raptors were on the ropes, stuck five as they were. Shooters are going to have off nights, and threes are of a high-variance nature, but it’s at least a little concerning that the streaky Patterson is shooting just 28.6 percent from long-range in the postseason. It happens, and he’ll surely come out of it at some point, but the Raptors don’t have a lot of time to wait on regression, and Patterson’s ability to knock down these looks (both as a four and a five, putting Channing Frye in these same kind of positions) will be paramount to Toronto keeping up with the Cavs.
Love and the Cavs deserve some credit, too. They had a clear plan and didn’t deviate from it, and Love did a solid job with the difficult task of hedging on Lowry (and had a nice defensive showing overall). Given the handful of good looks they got early on and the dearth of other options that worked, the Raptors would be smart to attack him in the same way early in Game 2 and see if Love can repeat this performance.
