Cavaliers 94, Raptors 91| Box Score | Quick Reaction | Reaction Podcast
For as much as both sides downplayed the rematch aspect, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ visit to the Air Canada Centre on Friday sure felt like a redux, in spirit if not in style. The champions are the champions until they aren’t the champions, and the Eastern Conference runs through LeBron James until he decides otherwise.
The Toronto Raptors, meanwhile, remain Cleveland’s most persistent and challenging foe on the league’s secondary circuit. That’s a lofty perch for the franchise to sit upon given their history, to be sure, and there’s a lot to be said for standing as the biggest threat to a seemingly unassailable team, in the event they prove, well, assailable. The Raptors continue to show that they have the talent, defense, and fortitude to hang with the Cavaliers, especially on their own court, where a raucous crowd brought back memories of the Game 6 atmosphere that coaxed James into an outpouring of respect. There is a drive and a mental and physical toughness that the Raptors have exhibited over the last year that seems to come to the forefront when punching up against the wine-and-gold benchmark, and it’s a testament to, and reminder of, why this team is as good as they are.
Still, the gap between the two sides remains significant, rendering Friday’s 94-91 loss an exercise in continued motivation and moral victories. It’s not as if it’s disparaging to point out that chasm, and there’s honor in narrowing it meeting by meeting. There’s also a sense that the Raptors didn’t turn in their best effort, a claim that’s offered somewhat limply when the Cavaliers can say the same, but something rewatching the tape will certainly bear out. Kyle Lowry’s shot was awry once again, Jonas Valanciunas missed a handful of tip-ins around the bucket, and Patrick Patterson’s 1-of-5 night from outside was symptomatic of the entire team’s cold start to the year from beyond the arc. The Raptors did themselves few favors early on, too.
“There’s no consolation. They beat us,” head coach Dwane Casey said after the game. “We’ve got to continue to believe in our offensive shots. Those are the same shots we’re going to make but we have to take care of the ball. We can’t have 18 turnovers, because it’s a jailbreak against that team.”
The Raptors managed to cut down on the miscues in the second half, leveraging another big third quarter from DeMar DeRozan to narrow Cleveland’s lead. The Cavaliers continued to try to pull away, pushing the lead back up to near double-digits on multiple occasions, only for the Raptors to claw it right back down to a single possession. That’s the Raptors’ modus operandi, and a fitting descriptor of their chase of the Cavs in general, never falling too far behind but never quite catching all the way up.
Even as the Raptors erased the lead entirely with under four minutes to go, then taking one of their own on a late Lowry trip to the line, James intervened. Looking like the infamous “chill mode” James that Tobias Harris once awoke earlier, James shifted into bully form, driving a very game DeMarre Carroll down onto the block and whipping impossible skip passes to the opposite corner or driving through his smaller defender for a trip to the free-throw line. This was the best Carroll’s looked against James since becoming a Raptor, and Patterson did a great job on him in support, and still James wound up with a “quiet” 21-8-7.
As the clock ticked to under a minute, Lowry was in position to give the team a crucial lead and control of the end-game chess board. Driving to the rim, he couldn’t quite finish through three bodies, and J.R. Smith undercut Valanciunas on the offensive rebound attempt, a dangerous possession-changer that went uncalled (you know how I feel about hanging a game on one call, though). The Cavs hit the dagger from there, with James finding Kyrie Irving for three of his team-high 26.
“LeBron made a great play, drove, we all collapsed, he kicked out to Kyrie, and he hit a great shot,” Lowry said, putting the blame on himself. “I don’t know what happened with the other end. I was on the ground. But personally, I’ve got to play better.”
With an opportunity to tie still at hand, Lowry found Patterson for a pretty clean look, but a shot that felt good out of the hands rattled out. Patterson and Lowry successfully trapped Irving on the ensuing play but left themselves just 0.3 seconds for a final attempt to tie, and time was against them at that point.
“I thought it was in,” Patterson said. “Honestly, out of the five threes I took tonight, that was the only one that felt good.”
And so the Raptors fell short against the Cavs again, left to wonder how a better-executed game could have played out. Even if the Raptors had played a more perfect game, James’ career brings with it a specter of inevitability, the sense that for every error the Raptors erased, James’ force of will could have just grown in kind. There are exceptions, of course, like Lowry’s enormous game-winning buzzer-beater last year, or the Raptors’ two home victories against the Cavs in the postseason, but James’ singular dominance creates an air that even perfection might come short, or at the very least be fleeting.
There’s merit in measuring oneself against an ideal, and in that sense the Raptors received an early indication that here at the beginning of the season, they remain firmly where they finished the last: A very good team, but one that needs a break, or a significant breakout, to take the next step. And again, that’s a terrific place to be, given the alternatives.
From that measurement, it’s instructive to look forward. In that sense, Friday’s game would have struggled to be more encouraging, with a pair of rookies thrust into duty far earlier than expected more than holding their own against the league’s elite. Pascal Siakam once again drew the start at power forward, fighting off some early foul trouble to assert himself as a smart, pestering defensive presence in the second half, one with the potential to unlock new ways of trying to suffocate the Cleveland juggernaut. Jakob Poeltl, meanwhile, received an opportunity to flash some of the defensive versatility that could make him a fit against stretchier frontcourts, while also hitting the offensive glass and looking more comfortable around the rim than in his debut a few days prior.
The team also turned in about as strong a defensive performance as they could hope for this early in the year, holding the Cavaliers to 96.2 points per-100 possessions, a terrific mark. Cleveland shot just 41.8 percent from the floor and nearly matched Toronto with 17 turnovers of their own, with the primary difference being the Cavs’ effectiveness from long-range, which came in large part because of the attention James commands posting up or driving, even when the Raptors zoned the Cavs up.
The Raptors made things about as tough as possible on the Cavs, showing some really important signs for the future of this matchup. That’s more or less the expectation for these games at this point, even if the team’s leader isn’t moved too much from it in either direction.
“I don’t think it matters,” Lowry said. “It’s a loss in our books, our first loss, and we’ve got to bounce back from it. We learn from it, take it, not dwell on it too much, learn from it and understand what we’ve got to do better.”
What they continue to learn at this point is that the scales are rigged as long James is still James.
