Sometimes, the implications of the phrase “pick your poison” get lost in the idiom’s over-usage. Yes, it means deciding on one course of action and accepting the associated fallout. It’s a suggestion that all things can’t be accomplished at once, and so there are necessary risks, sacrifices, and threats with any strategy. In the most literal sense, though, no matter which path is chosen, you’re still drinking poison.
That might be the situation the Toronto Raptors find themselves in when it comes to defending against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Entering the series, it seemed Cleveland posed a tough strategic challenge for the Raptors. What Cleveland does well, and had been doing obscenely well so far in the postseason, was exactly what the Raptors’ defensive scheme dares opponents to succeed at.
When head coach Dwane Casey and staff overhauled their defensive scheme this offseason, the idea was to protect the paint at all costs, sealing off the rim by sending help on the pick-and-roll and zoning up the weakside, trusting defenders to close out on shooters afterward. The scheme change was mostly successful, as Toronto jumped from 24th to 11th in defensive efficiency. More specifically, Toronto was able to slow the pace of the game down, keep opponents out of the teeth of their defense, and defend well when they got there. Raptors’ opponents took shots in the restricted area at a below-average rate (even controlling for their glacial pace), they scored on those shots at a bottom-five rate, and few teams were as stingy around the rim as Toronto. The trickle-down was that Toronto allowed the second-highest opponent 3-point percentage in the league, a major flaw but one that wasn’t quite as concerning as that ranking would suggest – opponents shot just an average rate of threes against Toronto, mitigating the impact some by volume, and generally teams don’t exert as much control over 3-point percentage as they do volume.
Playing this way, Cleveland would represent an intriguing clash of styles. Despite employing two terrific attackers in LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, the Cavaliers were relying on their ability to create for others off the attack more than their ability to score at the rim. As the Cavaliers’ offense soared in the first two rounds of the playoffs, they shot just 53.5 percent at the rim, taking just 27.7 percent of their attempts there, instead opting to rain napalm from outside, shooting 42.7 percent of their shots from beyond the arc and hitting at a ludicrous clip thanks to a buffet of open, assisted looks.
If Toronto was going to seal off the paint first, as they’re accustomed, Cleveland was going to push the limits of Toronto’s ability to close out and rotate on a string.
Instead, the Raptors went away from their primary strategy, opting instead to stay closer to home on shooters. Snuffing out the 3-point shot was the priority, and the Raptors did well in holding Cleveland to a very reasonable 7-of-20 mark from outside. The cost of doing so was 56 points in the paint, James and Irving combining for 51 points on just 30 field-goal attempts, and the Cavs as a whole shooting 25-of-30 in the restricted area. Twenty-five of thirty. I’d be hard-pressed to shoot 25-of-30 in the restricted area shooting around by myself in an empty gym.
The Raptors picked their poison, and then they took that poison and beer-bonged a sixer of it.
“That is the main challenge,” Dwane Casey said of striking a balance between guarding the three and surrendering the rim. “They were shooting the three at a high level. There are some things we’ve gotta do better, that we’ll hopefully correct tomorrow.”
It’s clear what the Raptors can do a better job of, but any changes are going to come at a cost.
For one, the Raptors opted to guard James straight-up, tasking DeMarre Carroll and James Johnson with slowing James without help. That makes sense in theory, and Carroll’s one of the best options in the NBA if a team is going to go that route, but leaving anyone on an island against one of the best players of all time is asking a lot. The Raptors sent no weak-side or baseline help – didn’t even stunt, really – on James post-ups, and because James handled Carroll so easily posting or facing up, there was little time for helpers to get in position, anyway. James enjoyed a steady diet of layups, and while he also shot 8-of-9 on contested shots, he wasn’t exactly challenged on most of those attempts.
“That was really the gameplan,” Carroll said. “Get ’em off the three, play one-on-one defense, nobody help, everybody stay at home. They beat us with it, so I guess we gotta go back to the drawing board and see what else we can do.”
The issue with loading up on James is that he’s flanked by shooters and playmakers, and his laser-precision passing keeps his teammates in clean looks if help comes. The Raptors more or less have to give James more attention at this point (there was even an apparent externality of the no-help philosophy, with helpers hesitating to get over on an array of back-door cuts), but James is a smart enough player to adjust to the defense and hurt you another way.
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“For us, our game plan is never dictated. We want to push the tempo, we want to move the ball from side-to-side, and we want to attack,” James said. “Myself and Ky, we love to live in the paint, we love to attack. And then when the defense collapse, we’re going to spray out to our shooters. Tonight, they wanted us to be in the paint, and we just tried to take advantage of that.”
The Raptors will be walking a tight rope if they help Carroll and Johnson too much, and it’s on those two, particularly Carroll (Johnson did a decent job and helped well when not on James), to do a better job. Carroll had one of his lesser nights, which was disappointing after he looked better and better as the postseason chugged along. His footwork was curious on James post-ups, seemingly welcoming him to the middle, and he was blown by a few times on the perimeter. That’s unlike him, and while he’s still not fully back to form, he should be better. He kind of has to be.
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Step One for Game 2, then, is simply for the Raptors to defend better individually. Because when extra help comes, James’ passing creates chaos.
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James wasn’t the only problem, either. Irving broke down the Raptors’ defense all night, with Cory Joseph turning in a shaky outing, Lowry lacking his usual defensive spark to a degree, and the Cavaliers using Irving in smart ways to get him advantages. Cleveland used Irving as a screener in actions with Love at times, and at others, got him matched on to DeRozan, as the Raptors were willing to switch the 1-2 pick-and-roll. A lot of the time, though, it was just Irving forcing his will, or the sheer difficulty of basic Irving-Love pick-and-pops proving too much.
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“We were just taking what the defense gave us, simple as that,” Irving said.
It really did seem as simple as that, because the defense was escorting them to the rim for the most part.
“Very demoralizing,” Casey said of the straight-line drives. “You want to take away one thing but you don’t want to open up a whole can of worms to give them layups. That’s what we’ve gotta be disciplined with…You take away the three, but if you’re not careful, you’re giving up layups. And that’s where we’ve got to get that balance, and I think that’s the key for this whole series.”
There are a few things the Raptors may try doing in Game 2 to at least keep the Cavaliers out of rhythm. Again, nothing’s going to work perfectly, but after getting bludgeoned in Game 1, the Raptors will probably throw some new things at the wall to see if anything can stick, even for a few minutes at a time.
They could be more aggressive switching James-Love actions with Carroll and Patterson. Patterson wasn’t called on to check James a ton, and he’ll be needed in that role at some point.
Whatever the James action, the Raptors can probably drop back a little more than they did. This goes for other non-shooters like Matthew Dellavedova, too – the Raptors really didn’t ask Cleveland to shoot many mid-range jumpers, and they were getting beaten so badly on the dribble despite crowding, anyway, that it makes sense to try.
They could also put Biyombo on James for small stretches. This one seems risky, but it may be the best way to leverage Biyombo when James is at the four. The Cavs are pulling Biyombo away from the rim and rendering him moot as a rim-protector, anyway (part of that is guys getting beaten too quickly for help to arrive), Biyombo would stand a chance if James opted to face him up, and that could help keep shooters at bay. (Whenever Biyombo’s away from the rim, whether in help or in the pick-and-pop, someone has to be picking him up on the defensive glass.)
The other option with Biyombo is to have him play free safety of sorts, guarding Iman Shumpert so that he can help aggressively and be in strong rebounding position, similar to how Golden State had Draymond Green guard Andre Roberson the other night. That’s hard to do when Cleveland plays big, but in those cases, Biyombo should be on Thompson rather than Love to keep him closer to the rim.
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None of the options are perfect, because James is impossible, and the players around him are playing too well. There has to be a way of slowing them down, though, as 125 points per-100 possessions isn’t sustainable even for this offense (…maybe). However imperfect the options are, there have to be better ways after a team shoots 55.4 percent from the floor and quite literally enjoys a layup line.
The Raptors’ strategy all season long didn’t set up well to guard how the Cavs are playing right now, but they executed an adjusted scheme quite poorly. Maybe there’s something to be said for the Raptors getting back to what they’ve done moderately well for most of the year and hoping their 3-point defense can be better of its own volition.
“We did a better job guarding the three, just now we’ve gotta go back to how we can handle the other stuff,” Biyombo said. “The idea was to live with the two and take away the three, and we opened up the back. Now it’s just a matter of getting back to what we do.”
There are different poisons to pick from, all of them poison. Perhaps there’s value in variety.
