Raptors 112, Cavaliers 116 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Reaction Podcast
DeMar DeRozan ran toward the Patrick Patterson screen, curled down the right wing, corralled an inbound pass from DeMarre Carroll, and let fly with a 3-point attempt over the outstretched arm of Kevin Love. It was a quick, surprising, and effective play-call out of a timeout, with DeRozan finding the bottom of the net and sending the Air Canada Centre into a frenzy, the lead trimmed to two in the game’s dying seconds, victory within reach.
Except that it didn’t count.
As officials reviewed the play to make sure DeRozan’s foot wasn’t on the 3-point line, an unnecessary check in this instance but a common one on key plays in any game, they noticed DeRozan’s heel come down on the out-of-bounds line. It’s a frustrating way to have a high-leverage bucket – and a triple from DeRozan, no less – erased, and it was made all the more frustrating by the five-and-a-half minutes that preceded it.
The Toronto Raptors had trimmed the Cleveland Cavaliers’ lead from 15 at the 5:55 mark of the fourth quarter down to five. To that point, it felt more like one of those late pushes that are more annoying than threatening when you’re on the other side of it, yet another statement that the Raptors will never lay down, will never go quietly. Unlikely though it was, a DeRozan bucket in the paint preceded DeRozan drawing a charge call on Kyrie Irving while pressuring in the backcourt, and had DeRozan’s triple counted, this would have been a one-possession game with 12 seconds remaining, enough time to reasonably steal the game from the balance of variance and fortune.
But it didn’t count. As the Raptors have learned far too well and far too often over the last two seasons, breaks like these need to go there way in order for them to upset the Cavaliers, unless they’re going to come out and play a perfect game. The talent gap when both teams are firing remains present, and the Cavs continue to keep the Raptors at arm’s length despite Toronto’s standing as the clear No. 2 in the Eastern Conference pecking order. That’s not a terrible place to be, and is in fact far preferable to nearly any other place a team not playing in Cleveland or Golden State might find itself, but the seemingly asymptotic pursuit of the Cavs is a challenging status quo to exist within.
It’s not that the Raptors are not a very good team. That much is obvious, and the Raptors have spent the bulk of the season and especially the last two weeks quite emphatically stating as much. But the Raptors’ goal is not to continue to be very good, it is to catch up to the Cavs. And while a 14-7 start with terrific scoring margins is encouraging, an 0-3 mark against the Cavaliers is surely disappointing to those within the locker room, even if they’ll mostly call the meetings just one of 82. The Cavaliers are the scale, and its the only one on which the Raptors continue to be found wanting.
“They won a championship last year. So for us, a team that’s chasing the best team in the NBA last year, our margin for error is small,” Kyle Lowry said after the game. “They beat us three times so far this year and they have our number right now, but we have a long way to go and a lot more regular season games to go and continue to play. We’ll take this game as a lesson, a loss, broke our streak, but now we have a chance to start a new one.”
Lowry is correct that the Raptors’ margin for error is small. Head coach Dwane Casey estimated that the Raptors have to play a “95 percent, 94 percent” perfect game to top the Cavaliers, an estimate that depends some on how the opponent plays but one that feels mostly accurate given that the Raptors are now 2-7 in their last nine meetings. The margin for error being small was a popular talking point, and considering that the Raptors turned in a pretty great first half (they trailed 62-61 at the break), got terrific performances from both of their stars (a combined 55 points on 37 field-goal attempts, with seven rebounds, 14 assists, and four steals), and won the battle of the bench units and still came up on the short end, it’s more or less self-evident.
On this night, there were several areas the Raptors could have gotten just a little bit more from to push their bolder closer to their mountaintop. A Kevin Love airball that landed in the hands of LeBron James, a well-defended possession that ended with Richard Jefferson canning a bail-out triple as the shot clock expired, or Kyrie Irving sticking a three after the Raptors had actually managed to guard James well after an offensive rebound all could have broken a little differently for the home side. They could have taken just a little better care of their own glass, where the Cavs turned 13 offensive rebounds into 19 extra points. Channing Frye could have completed the dunk he attempted and made us all realize we’re actually existing in a parallel universe and the outcome of this game was far from our biggest concern. Jonas Valanciunas could have been something even slightly better than unplayable. The list goes on.
More than any one play or common thread, though, the Raptors could have avoided two stretches of shaky play that let the Cavs pull away. Midway through the third quarter, the Cavs stretched their lead from three to 13 in just over two minutes. The Raptors managed to trim a few of those points off when James took his rest to end the quarter, and they continued to whittle away with their vaunted Lowry-and-bench group even once James returned. The lead quickly ballooned back from five to 15, though, and while the Raptors deserve credit for clawing back, they really can’t let stretches like that happen against the league’s elite.
“You can’t afford those against a team like that,” DeRozan explained. “They understand when they need to turn it up on both ends. With that, you can’t put yourself in a hole deeper than what you’re already in. They’re champs.”
There are positives to be taken from the loss, of course. Every game is an opportunity to learn, and matchups with the Cavs have the additional benefit of illuminating important information about what might work and what definitely does not in advance of a potential May rematch. And hey, maybe the 400th time will be the charm for Valanciunas trying to guard Channing Frye and Kevin Love or keeping Tristan Thompson off the glass. And there’s the hope that the Raptors’ youth means they are likelier to improve between now and April more than most other teams at this level. Things are never all bad, and losing to the defending champs by four points is, in a vacuum, just fine.
But the Raptors have grown beyond finding the moral victories in losses like this. They’ll take the lessons and learn them and use this to improve for the future. It will still sting, though, knowing that they had another opportunity to prove – to detractors, to the Cavs, or to themselves – that the gap between the two sides is different now than it was when Cleveland ended Toronto’s season last spring. There is evidence extraneous to the specific matchup, the Raptors just need to somehow show that progress against the Cavaliers, now or if they can make it to the point of a rematch down the line. The measuring stick hasn’t changed.
“Cleveland’s still a very good team, and No. 23 is still No. 23. And that’s about it,” Casey said somewhat presciently before the game.
And the Raptors are still the Raptors. A great place to be, but still a few changes at the margins from where they eventually want to get.
