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Pre-game news & notes: Valanciunas returns to starting lineup

Whom will it be?!

As the Toronto Raptors set to tip off for their second-round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, allow me a word on optimism: It’s good.

In polling readers of this site earlier this week, Raptor fans seem to be pretty high on Toronto’s chances of pulling off an upset here. More than half of respondents picked the Raptors to win, commenters have been rallying up reasons the series could swing that way, and I’ve received a lot of comments personally about people talking themselves into the Cavaliers not making it back to the finals. That’s even extended outside of Toronto some, where, while there aren’t a ton of writers willing to pick the Raptors, most are bracing for what could be a pretty tight series.

Whether or not the Raptors end up winning the series hardly matters with respect to this optimism. Personally, I predicted the Cavaliers will win in six games, using what I felt like was a balance of probabilities. Were I to put a number on the Raptors’ chances of winning, it might be somewhere in the 20-30-percent range, which is pretty significant. We don’t necessarily do well psychologically processing probability, but that’s not a bad rate. The Vegas line falls somewhere in that band in terms of implied probability, too, and ESPN’s BPI measure shows a pretty even spread across different winner-games combinations. There’s nuance there, and the Cavaliers hold the anchor in the form of LeBron James until something changes, but the Raptors own two of the four victories teams have over the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference playoffs since James returned, and the Raptors have gotten significantly better and more well-suited for their measuring-stick opponent.

The Raptors will probably need to take Game 1 for optimism to remain as high as it is. In penciling in a rough potential series outcome, I penciled Monday in as a victory for the Raptors. The Cavaliers have been off for eight days and haven’t yet flipped their defensive switch, and if Toronto’s going to catch them napping at home one game, this is probably their best bet. We could all look silly and dumb if the Cavs come out and stomp the Raptors to open the series like they did a year ago, sure. There’s no sense thinking like that, though. The window is more open than it’s been, and even if it’s not cracked exceptionally wide, the next two weeks will be a lot more enjoyable believing things can break the right way and the Raptors will do the things they need to do, like fire the opening salvo at The Q.

The game tips off a 7 on TNT and TSN on TV and on TSN 1050 on radio. You can check out the full game preview here. Your officials are Monty McCutchen, Eric Lewis, and Derrick Stafford.

Required reading
Here’s what you need ahead of Game 1, assuming you haven’t been keeping up.

Raptors updates
The Raptors are, understandably, keeping their starting lineup quiet for as long as they can. We’ve talked the options to exhaustion over the last three days, and while my personal take appears to be in the majority, everyone seems pretty split on what they’d like to see the Raptors do. On the one hand, that could mean the Raptors have a few good options, and nobody can really get too upset with whatever Dwane Casey decides. On the other, well, of course people are going to get upset, and there is no perfect option. Here are the results of that poll, by the way:

Whatever the rotation looks like, it won’t be something Cleveland has seen from the Raptors. The two sides met just once after the trade deadline, and both DeMar DeRozan and Serge Ibaka sat (along with a handful of Cavs). Despite playing 14 times in the last 18 months, this matchup still has some pretty fresh looks, and the rotation at least on the Raptors side remains one of the bigger Game 1 mysteries.

UPDATE: Valanciunas will return to the starting lineup, as predicted, with Powell moving back to a bench role. There’s no Carroll/Tucker change or change elsewhere. It’s the group that started the first three games against Milwaukee. They’re a better fit here against Cleveland if Valanciunas plays to his potential against Thompson. If not…this may be fluid. Ditto for Carroll.

Nogueira and Caboclo are your inactives, by the way.

G: Kyle Lowry, Cory Joseph, Delon Wright, Fred VanVleet
SG: DeMar DeRozan, Norman Powell
SF: DeMarre Carrol, P.J. Tucker, Bruno Caboclo
PF: Serge Ibaka, Patrick Patterson, Pascal Siakam
C: Jonas Valanciunas, Jakob Poeltl, Lucas Nogueira
TBD: None
ASSIGNED: None
OUT: None

Cavaliers updates
The Cavs are very good. They’re especially good on offense. Their bench unit is pretty good, as well. And so they have a lot of options here in terms of rotation specifics. The drawback? A lot of these combos include multiple shaky defenders, and the LeBron James-and-bench group, in particular, struggles to guard. The Raptors will talk up defensive tactics and strategies all series long, because it’s an absolute necessity against an offensive supernova like the Cavs can be. But if the Raptors play well offensively, that could cut both ways, and some of Cleveland’s more one-sided lineups could render this series a bit of a shootout like they did against Indiana, an inferior offense to Toronto’s.

Everyone’s healthy on both sides, by the way.

PG: Kyrie Irving, Deron Williams, Kay Felder
SG: J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, Dahntay Jones
SF: LeBron James, Kyle Korver, Richard Jefferson
PF: Kevin Love, Derrick Williams, James Jones
C: Tristan Thompson, Channing Frye, Edy Tavares
TBD: None
ASSIGNED: None
OUT: None

Pre-game news and notes

  • Tyronn Lue has made it sound as if keeping the Raptors off of the free-throw line will be a priority. During four regular season meetings, the Raptors got to the line less against the Cavaliers than they did any other team, and Cleveland received far more free-throw attempts. This is a staple of the Cleveland defense, though, and not some conspiracy – only two teams sent opponents to the line less frequently than Lue’s squad. That conservative approach comes with a cost, though, as the Cavaliers struggled to force turnovers and were below-average in opponent effective field-goal percentage and defensive rebounding.
    • Here’s Lue at practice Sunday: “Make them make field goals and not free throws, that’s my biggest thing. Keep them off the line and make them make shots. If we can do that it can work out for us, work out in our favor.”
    • And here’s J.R. Smith on the DeMar DeRozan assignment specifically: “Making him take tough shots, keeping him off the free throw line. Not fouling. If you can get out of the game with probably a foul or two, him shooting five free throws or less, that’s pretty good.”
    • As noted in the shootaround notes, DeRozan does not seem to care how that shakes out so long as the Raptors get a victory.
  • Lue also conceded that the Raptors have “gotten better” defensively, though he maintained Toronto’s offense is mostly the same.
  • This, from Dwane Casey, made me chuckle:

Assorted

  • Remember that weird fracas I was tweeting about (and wrote a bit about) at the end of Raptors 905’s championship victory last week? Chinanu Onuaku received a two-game suspension for it. Fred VanVleet was also ejected in that game but appears to have avoided further punishment, as he should have.
    • I kind of miss my daily 905 up/down updates in this space already.
  • As noted earlier, here are the shirts they’re giving away at the Q. As noted for the last several years, The Land is a dumb thing to call your city, but my glass house in The 6ix prevents me from throwing stones.

  • Jurassic Park is open despite the rainy day.

The line
Game 1: Cavaliers -6.5
Series: Raptors+375 (implied probability of 21.1 percent)

The line has held pretty steady throughout the day after opening at Cavaliers -7 or even -7.5 some places. It’s a pretty reasonable margin given the qualitative gap between the teams, one that will place the teams close to even when the series shifts back to Toronto. FiveThirtyEight gives the Raptors a 41-percent shot at stealing the opener. The over-under has been bouncing around the 208.5 mark, give or take a point, all day.

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