Since walking off the Air Canada Centre floor after a Game 6 defeat in May of last year, the Toronto Raptors have been waiting for this opportunity. After giving the Cleveland Cavaliers a push, albeit not a dangerous one, in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Raptors went about fortifying their roster with the aim of eventually being able to knock the top team in the conference off. All roads go through Cleveland, they’re the champions ’till they ain’t the champions no more, and while the Raptors wanted to get better for the sake of getting better, the moves they made were best looked at through the lens of this matchup.
“Golden State and Cleveland have been the prohibitive favorites the entire year I think,” head coach Dwane Casey said Saturday at practice. “They’re who you have to go through to get to where you want to go.”
And the Raptors are in a better position to take a swing at the favorite this time around. No matter how much they’ve improved, though, the Eastern Conference yard belongs to LeBron James until proven otherwise.
LeBron James is very good
“No. Nobody. No.”
That was P.J. Tucker’s response when asked if there’s anybody quite like James in the NBA. And there’s not – there’s no player that blends all of the talent, intellect, and physical challenges James poses, and while DeMar DeRozan wouldn’t concede that James was the best he’s played against without including Kobe Bryant, there was agreement that James is among the greatest players – and problems – of all time.
“He can do everything,” Tucker said. “That’s the good thing about him, his IQ, he picks and chooses his times to attack, when wants to be a passer, when it’s time for him to attack the rim and go score. He’s a really smart player, that’s the key is figuring it out on the go. You can prep for it but once you’re in the action and it’s happening, it’s a whole different ball game.”
The talk at practice Saturday revealed little about how the Raptors plan to attack the James matchup, but it stands to reason that we’ve already seen a reasonable facsimile of the game plan. In the past, the Raptors have sent help on James post-ups and zoned up around it, they’ve thrown multiple defenders at him to mix up his looks, and they’ve really tried to prioritize transition defense to keep James from finding shooters on the move. To be honest, though, the gameplan for defending James has to devolve into cliche, because he’s that impossible. Head coach Dwane Casey continually mentioned the need for “multiple bodies and multiple efforts,” and the message to the team is quite clearly to be ready to go all-out and take no split-seconds off.
“Three-point shooting after his penetration, his post-ups, his isos,” Casey said. “It’s three point shooting and rebounding is the third thing. They’re kind of all clumped together because one creates the other and it’s a chain reaction. We have to make sure the progression is there of how we stop each phase of it.”
So how, specifically, do you stop him? You don’t. You just try a bunch of different things and work like hell.
“He’s one of the greatest players in the world right now. You’re not gonna stop a guy like that,” Casey said. “You take away some certain things he likes to do and not let him get to where he wants to go as easily. That’s multiple bodies, multiple people, there’s diferent things you can do to slow him down but again, I haven’t seen one way yet to get that done.”
Again, the Raptors are in a better position than a year ago thanks to some improved defense and the acquisitions of Tucker and Serge Ibaka. They also have the benefit of some useful experience against James, though that hasn’t seemed to help anyone in the NBA the last decade.
Lessons from last series, last year
“I don’t remember what happened in Game 6.”
Once again, that was Tucker, who normally isn’t a tweet-worthy quote but had some deadpan, matter-of-fact gold in this session. While Tucker jokes about Game 6, he also provided some nice perspective as to what a game and series like that can do for the team. He hasn’t been here the last few years and has the benefit of knowing how outsiders view the Raptors, and to him, yet another tough battle can only be a good thing.
“I liked the fight we had to go through with Milwaukee,” he said. “I think that prepared us for this series for sure. That was a different kind of series where we had to get out of our comfort zone to beat them. We had to go out and really fight and get our hands dirty which in the past hasn’t been one of the things you would say about the Raptors.”
The Raptors may have experienced some other useful growth in that series, particularly on the defensive end. Giannis Antetokounmpo is not James, but he poses a lot of the same matchup problems as a singularly dominant and unique force who represents the alpha and the omega for the defensive gameplan. The Raptors, then, just had a six-game tune-up against maybe the closest thing there is to James around the league.
“Antetokounmpo is similar. He’s not LeBron yet but he’s similar as far as his size, his ability to go where he wants to go with the basketball,” Casey explained. “LeBron can shoot the three versus right now Antetokounmpo is getting there. So they’re similar. Both are big and strong for their size, they see over the defense. Antetokounmpo is quietly an excellent passer, too. He makes those zing passes out of his ISOs, as does LeBron. Believe me, Antetokounmpo hasn’t got to James’ level yet, but that’s something that’s similar, the problems that same position presents.”
And of course, the Raptors have the experience of playing the Cavaliers 14 times over the last two seasons, including last year’s six-game war. That doesn’t make anything easier, but there’s very little that’s going to catch them by surprise like may have happened with the Bucks.
“Nothing new. What’s the old saying? They are who we think they are,” Casey said. “There’s a couple of extra issues that they’ve presented with the personnel changes but the core, the heart of their team is the same.”
The challenge ahead of them that begins Monday is the same as a year ago, too.
Notes
- The Raptors recalled Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, and Bruno Caboclo from Raptors 905 of the D-League. And that’s it, it’s done. This is the last D-League up/down update of the season. They’re back, they’re champions, and they’ll stick with the Raptors from here until Summer League. Neither player figures to be a factor against the Cavaliers – one of VanVleet or Siakam will dress depending on what position Casey wants extra depth at – but the experience of being around the team in playoff mode, prepare for games, and maybe get some garbage time should be valuable. It’s been a heck of a couple weeks for those three.
- The NBA’s Last Two Minute Report was released for Game 6. The Bucks got away with a pair of shooting fouls down the stretch, both on Jason Terry, while Patrick Patterson got away with one for the Raptors. For the series, only two games were within five points at the two-minute mark, and the total count was four botched calls in favor of Milwaukee, one in favor of Toronto. Please, I beg you, do not @ me during Raptors-Cavaliers about officiating. You’ll get the same response every time: Refereeing is difficult, our own biases sometimes make us see the balance of calls differently than the reality, and both sides are always mad and think the whistle went against them. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t annoy me, too, sometimes, I just dislike talking about it because it is what it is. You can complain all you want, just don’t @ me. I’ll provide L2M reports in these notes posts, obviously.
- I’ve been posting some pics and quotes and other things to my Instagram story. Follow along there.
- One last one: I asked Casey if he’ll return to the team’s previous starting lineup or stick with what they were using at the end of the Milwaukee series. I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer, but I asked, for you. “We’ll see,” Casey said. He even winked, a not-so-subtle acknowledgment that he knows I had to ask but could have answered for myself.
