Let’s start things off with a great quote from P.J. Tucker who, in his first ever NBA postseason, has been the most consistent beacon of perspective within the Toronto Raptors locker room.
“Gotta get on your horse. Show your body, get on your horse, get out and run them off the line and then get ready to back into another rotation,” Tucker said. “It’s hard work, it’s not easy, if it was easy everybody would do it.”
Tucker was talking about how the Raptors can better close out on Cleveland’s 3-point shooters, but the last part of the quote is a nice call-back to last year’s postseason, when head coach Dwane Casey was fond of repeating the mantra “hard things are hard,” a saying that sat on a plaque on President Barack Obama’s desk. This is the playoffs, and things are supposed to be difficult. The Cleveland Cavaliers are the defending champions and the favorites in the Eastern Conference, and the Raptors have to expect and embrace the difficulty of the challenge in front of them, and then rise to it.
That doesn’t make a Game 1 loss easier to take, though, and Tucker conceded some frustration in falling in an 0-1 hole once again.
“A little bit,” he said. “But it’s kind of part of it when you’re playing a team like this…The more and more we play and the way our team is set up, once we see it, watch film on it and come back to it, we do better. Just watching it (film), there was so many opportunities that we had, we didn’t get to spots, guys normally getting in those spots, and making shots. We still got a lot of wide open shots, we got a lot of good shots that we didn’t make that we normally make.”
Tucker was about the only one talking up the positives at Quicken Loans Arena, possibly because the questions, quite naturally, focused on the negatives or on what’s to come.
No comments on lineup changes
The big talking point out of Game 1 was what the Raptors could do differently from a lineup or rotation perspective, since they can’t do a great deal differently in schematic terms beyond “execute better.” Seriously, they’re not going to surrender the paint to stay at home on shooters and they’re not going to do anything they haven’t already shown to break traps at the other end, so the focus shifts to finding the right mix of players to embrace those challenges.
“I’ve seen a lot” DeMar DeRozan said at practice Tuesday. “We just gotta be more on point in our rotations, be a lot quicker, understand the loads in transition, especially when LeBron has the ball and when Kyrie is in his isos, trying to keep him forced to one side. You know, little things that we could have did a lot better job of making things difficult.”
The Raptors, of course, weren’t divulging any potential shifts, as is their prerogative.
“The only change that needs to happen, for us as a team as whole, is to come out and play extremely hard,” DeRozan said. “No matter who is out there, man, honestly.”
They, uhh, didn’t really want to talk about all that much, unsurprisingly.
“Ask coach,” Kyle Lowry said. “My job is to go out here and play and give it my all and do what I can do to help our team with the game. That’s my job. Coach’s job is to make decisions and make the necessary substitution or whatever changes that they need to make.”
Coach, quite obviously, declined to share, and he shifted his post-game note of the need for quickness to the need for “anticipation.” He also offered a bit of insight into how the Raptors are looking at Jonas Valanciunas’ role and matchups, though it’s nothing we didn’t already hear Casey say, really.
“That’s pretty obvious, I think,” he said. “I don’t think JV’s going to handle the pick and rolls and that type of thing. They still have Tristan Thompson down there to deal with, they still have Love, who’s one of the best offensive rebounders in the league, to deal with. So matching those is not only defensively but keeping them off the boards. I think Tristan had 14 last night so there’s a place for the big man to do his job.”
That doesn’t suggest one way or the other what change might be coming if one does, and the beat reporters in attendance sounded split on their gut feelings following the session. We’ve talked about this a bunch already and probably figure to tomorrow, as well. And for the entirety of the series, because why not, right?
I’m only happy when it rains
The Raptors were understandably not in the cheeriest of moods after taking a bit of a beat-down on Monday. That meant that nobody was really in the spirit of talking up the positives that can be taken away from Game 1. That goes especially for Lowry, who turned in a strong performance in the loss. Considering that’s one of the more important storylines of the series, it’s cause for optimism, but Lowry wasn’t having it.
“We lost. I’m never happy when we lose,” Lowry said. “I’m barely happy when we win.”
Same, Kyle.
In any case, it’s a positive that Lowry looked great whether or not he wants to say as much. It’s also a positive that the talk of Lowry’s stiff back seems to have died out completely following the three-day break between series.
All I see is Fake Love, smiles, and overbites
I know that our dear friend Woz didn’t mean to send me into a spiral with the wording of this tweet from practice, but he did.
Pascal Siakam gets the fake LeBron role at practice. Poeltl is fake Tristan, Bebe fake Love. pic.twitter.com/A2wsCFaQSW
— Ryan Wolstat (@WolstatSun) May 2, 2017
First of all, I love the idea of the Raptors’ scout team trying to emulate these guys. But man, “Fake Love” definitely has to be Lucas Nogueira’s nickname now, right? I know there’s Long Weeknd, Lob Weeknd, Bebe, High Level, etc, but Fake Love is just too hilarious and has too good a Raptors tie-in (the Drake song, obviously, although the A$AP reference would be a better one were one not the global ambassador).
Notes
- I’m not on the road, so a continue thank you to the beat writers providing notes/quotes/updates.
- J.R. Smith said after Monday’s game that his right thumb will be fine. Tyronn Lue had originally said Smith re-injured the thumb and underwent an X-ray, but no X-ray took place. Smith was even able to play nine minutes after. Here’s Smith after the game, to Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com: “I’m not sure if I hit it on the floor or somebody hacked down on it. It didn’t really feel right at first. Had the trainers look at it and nothing structurally wrong or anything like that. It should be fine Game 2.”
- Smith was really, really good last night.
- Here’s P.J. Tucker explaining the difference between traps from the Cavs versus those from the Bucks: “It’s more a corral than a trap, they kind of just want to contain it, throw two bodies and make them give the ball up. It’s more to make them give the ball up than an actual trap.”
- How’s this for a heat check? After saying his team needed to take the game more seriously, up 20 in Game 1, Tyronn Lue trimmed the Cavaliers’ practice today to just a video session and the usual individual work. This isn’t all that uncommon during the season, but with only one practice day between playoff games – coming off of eight days off, no less – it’s pretty uncommon.
- The Raptors still aren’t biting on any talk of Cavaliers disrespect. Here’s DeRozan: “That’s them, man. You know, every team that LeBron has been on, they did some type of whatever. We can’t get caught up in that or making that part of the game. We gotta understand they we can go out there and control what we control and that’s for us to get a win”
- Damian Lillard was named the recipient of the PBWA Magic Johnson Award today, an honor DeMar DeRozan was a finalist. The award is given annually to the player who “best combines excellence on the basketball court with cooperation and dignity in dealing with the media and the public.”
- Anthony Bennett was let go from his Turkish team today.
