It seems fitting that the Raptors return to Toronto for Game 3 in the Cleveland series to a deluge. The Don River is swelling, the valley itself may soon turn into a Floridian style swamp, the Parkway might close and the rain, going on 2 days straight, isn’t stopping. There was talk yesterday of evacuating residents of the Toronto Island who were out at their doorsteps, the beach, filling up sandbag after sandbag to brace against the encroaching waters of Lake Ontario. But they are staying put, they are stubborn, they’re all saying they’ve seen worse. One guy brought his canoe out, set it in the expanding pond sucking up his front lawn and tethered it to his porch. The message is explicit, we all might be underwater soon but fuck it, we’re here.
The soggy spirits of Raptors fans should take note. Not because you have to, no, it feels perfectly acceptable at this point in the extended season to throw in the towel, nobody would blame you and you’d be in extensive company. But, why?
Being a fan goes both ways. Even with a franchise that seems to have had nothing but open looks at getting to the next round in recent years yet remains fallible in all the frustratingly familiar ways, ways that seem so plainly fixable, fight-through-able. The déjà vu is enough to make anyone with even a saint’s penchant for patience call it quits. And look, I’ve been watching the same games. I basically took basketball off since Game 2 to mope and revel in the gloom of another season down the drain. But it dawned on me, begrudgingly, that no matter the outcome of tonight’s game, or the next, it’s time to dig in.
There’s been a lot of talk of fear—the Raptors having it, the Cavaliers not—but that’s not anything specific to the Raptors. Who are the Cavs afraid of? This year or last, give it a thought. They certainly weren’t afraid of the Warriors in the last playoffs, and the Pacers series wasn’t close this year because the Cavs were quaking, it was close because the Cavs didn’t consider Indiana as anything other than a series of games they knew how to get through. By playing the game they always play no matter who it is they’re up against.
When Lebron is feeling himself it means more trouble for whoever they’re playing, but the plays don’t change, he just makes way more of them. Irving, Love, Korver, Lebron, JR, they drain threes. They do other stuff (Kyle Korver moonlights as a Tom Cruise imposter, I’m sure) but those threes are the Raptors main problem right now, and as long as Ibaka, Patterson, Lowry, DeRozan, Carroll and Powell can’t convert the same open looks into the threes to match, making it up in the paint won’t matter.
The Raptors aren’t shook. You can’t be shook if there’s nothing there to shake. What worries me most is not that the team can’t bail themselves out of this, the Raptors have shown time and again that they’re capable of pulling off the impossible when they’ve been written off. No, the problem is plain in their faces. Both games so far, it’s like looking at them through a fogged up mirror, they just aren’t all there. And it wasn’t as if that bummer blanket settled only across the team. When it was clear we’d be moving into Round 2 against Cleveland the collective response was a shrug. Even on this very website! It wasn’t ‘How Can the Raptors Upset Cleveland’ it was ‘How Can the Raptors Upset Cleveland?’ It was unanimous, we had 5, maybe 6 games. And I get it, the King takes what he wants and sorry to the serf who gets in his way, and optimism in sports only goes so far when the stats are against you, but we shut down, closed up. And you can’t go into a series like that.
Don’t you get it? We’re all stuck in the bog now, we’re all brought low, and we’re all basically swamp things, as far as the rest of the league is concerned. It’s not over until whatever happens in the next 48, or 96, or 144, or (phew) 192 minutes does but note to self, to Kyle and co., to the dude Dunkenstein always posted up in the comments here, to everyone—you gotta show up, you gotta stay open.
Jam up Tristan Thompson on his shaky shots, shut down Channing Frye, run the pick and roll until it’s broken, make room for Kyle and DeMar if it’s clear they’re gonna go ISO anyway. Swing the ball around like it’s that mad meatball meteorite from last year’s playoff shirts.
Bother the hell out of Lebron, hell, kick it out when the defense collapses like an exploding star, outpace Kevin Love who is already well on his way to becoming a slob, anyway. Light a fire under our guy’s asses so they remember what it means to move again and repeat after me: “Put the ball in the paint, put the ball in the paint, PUT THE BALL IN THE PAINT”.
The losses suck but there’s a privilege in being part of the ride, so savour it. Especially when nobody can rightly say what’s going to happen to this team in the long stretch from now to next season. Savour it ’cause fuck it, we’re still here.
