There’s not really any way to sugarcoat it, and the Toronto Raptors weren’t deserving of being handled with kid gloves on Thursday, anyway. LeBron James certainly didn’t take it easy on them, putting up one of the most ludicrous performances of a career full of them. The Raptors had no answer in losing a 128-110 decision to the Cleveland Cavaliers that should have been called a technical knockout long before, and they’ll have no answer from here. Teams trailing 2-0 in a series are 19-278 in NBA history, only five have won while the higher seed, and exactly zero have been able to beat James four times in five games after dropping a pair.
“When you go home up 2-0 with the best player in the world, you like your chances,” Ty Lue said.
James was incredible, scoring 43 points on 19-of-28 shooting and adding eight rebounds and 14 assists. He turned the ball over just once. The Cavaliers were +20 in his 41 minutes. He is the best player in the world, and he spent the entire night displaying that fact while taking up residency in the Raptors’ headspace. He was breaking them with ridiculous jumpers, finding shooters and cutters when they overhelped, and generally carrying himself as if he was out to end the idea that this Raptors core will ever be able to topple him.
“I don’t know, you’d have to ask them,” Lue said when asked if a game like that from James demoralizes an opponent.
If I may answer for him, and for them: Almost definitely yes. If he didn’t on the court, post-game comments from Kevin Love will surely salt the wounds – Love basically said that James called his shot in this one, that he recognized what the Raptors were doing and how he could hurt them, and gave Love the impression that something special was about to happen.
“There’s certain times – seeing ’Bron in shootarounds or seeing him in his preparation — when you know he’s going to have a big night,” Love said. “This morning, you could just sense it. He knew what was at stake. He knew us getting another one at their place was going to be huge for us, and he came out and played that way from the jump tonight. Like I said, you could just sense that he was going to have a special night…When he went over his right shoulder, then he went over his left shoulder, he said when he got the mismatch he was going to do that. So he actually called his shots this morning.”
James didn’t exactly hide this, either.
“For me, just being able to have counters to whatever defense they try to put at me. I gave them a little inside of my mind and I showed ‘em tonight as well,” he said. “I pretty much know the scouting report on me is going to be to dare me to shoot jump shots and keep me out of the paint, not allow me to go to the free-throw line. Over the course of my career, I just try to put a lot of work into other facets of my game to try to neutralize their game plan…They kind of laid off me a lot and I was able to make some shots, some jump shots, and I felt good going into the stretch of the game.”
Demoralizing, indeed.
Playing for pride?
There’s not really much to say here that hasn’t already been said in each of the last two playoff series against Cleveland. Toronto has fallen behind 0-2 in each, and there’s not really any new spin to put on gargantuan odds. Even if they said the “right” things – which is subjective, anyway – there wouldn’t be a great deal of buy-in created from them. Still, it’s a little dispiriting that the talk has already turned to terms like pride and effort as changes for Game 3.
“One thing you have is pride to go into Cleveland and play for pride. I don’t know what the history of down 0-2 is but one thing I do know is tonight wasn’t us, how we normally play for longer periods of time,” Dwane Casey said. “You keep it real. The fact that hey, that’s not us. The way we played tonight is not us…Nobody is gonna feel sorry for us. I’m sure you guys already have it written. Nobody’s gonna feel sorry for us, so the only thing you can do is come out and pray with pride and prove the fact that we’re a better team than we showed tonight.”
Even recognizing the full context of the “play for pride” quote, that’s not great. Even though what he says is true in the grand, objective sense. It’s hard to come away from another loss – an eighth in a row in the playoffs to Cleveland, ahead of two games in a building they’ve never won in during a postseason series – feeling like that matters any longer. James has found his groove, Love has bounced back, and the Raptors once again look like they’re shrinking in a big moment against a team that very much seems to have a psychological edge on them.
Some of them, at least, are talking as if there’s still a chance. Two years ago, the Raptors bounced back from 0-2 to force a Game 6, though they had Games 3 and 4 at home and were summarily dispatched in Games 5 and 6. Last year, Kyle Lowry fell injured and the team only mustered a hard-fought Game 4 loss at home. They’re certainly capable of winning in Cleveland, but you’d forgive anyone for thinking this series might not come back to Toronto. DeMar DeRozan, at least, is not thinking that way.
“It’s the only option, how we look at it, we don’t look at it no other way. Just what it is. We’re down two, okay. It’s the first one to win four. It’s not over. Taking it one game at a time and go from there,” DeRozan said. “We thrive off adversity, every single guy on this team, we thrive off adversity.”
The individual players on the team may thrive off of adversity in their own personal journeys, and it’s true that the Raptors’ overall story is one of fighting against disbelief and continually pulling themselves up when their backs were against the wall.
Injury Updates
- Raptors fans everywhere are questionable. Just, in general right now.
Lineup Notes
- The Raptors starters were -4 in 10 minutes, which is basically +50 comparatively. The all-bench unit was even in seven minutes, too.
- Everything else was a disaster, playing to -14 in 31 minutes. The Raptors tried 18 different lineup combinations and only one – three point guards with OG Anunoby and Jonas Valanciunas – was better than +2 outside of garbage time. No lineup was better than +4.
- C.J. Miles in place of Serge Ibaka with the starters, Miles in place of Anunoby with the starters, and the two stars with three bench players went a combined -18 in six minutes. Those mix-and-match groups struggled all year, and Miles was never going to fix the defensive issues, but that’s extreme for any three lineups that don’t include, like, me.
- The Cavaliers starters were +9 in 21 minutes. Ty Lue was right to stick with that group and bet on the math working their way eventually, as discussed pre-game. Some of that is colored by an all-time terrible game from Ibaka, but it was pretty clear why Cleveland had trust in a LeBron James-Kevin Love frontcourt figuring it out.
- The starters with Jeff Green in Kyle Korver’s place once Korver got in foul trouble were +8 in five. Green having a really good first two games coming off of a shaky season and a tough first round has been irritating. As has the Raptors’ eternal penchant for giving role players new life.
- The starters with Tristan Thompson in Korver’s place were also +6 in four minutes, just in case you were hoping Cleveland might change things up and accidentally give Toronto an edge.
Assorted
- Even if you’re in the camp that Dwane Casey has done nothing wrong in this series, he is still at fault here for something he did back in 2011 with the Dallas Mavericks. Here’s LeBron James, explaining: “I wasn’t that good of a player in that series.I wasn’t a complete basketball player. Dwane Casey drew up a game plan to take away things I was good at & make me do things I wasn’t very good at. He’s part of the reason why I am who I am today.”
- Kevin Love feasted on a lot of mismatches in this one, and Ty Lue pointed to film that showed how much the Raptors were willing to switch with him as a reason they targeted Love in the post more often. He also credited Love playing as well as he did for helping get LeBron James going as well as he did, as the floor opened up and the defensive attention was stretched out. He also noted how Indiana and Thad Young defended Love and made things more difficult, and man, was this a bad series for Serge Ibaka to be missing in action.
- The Cavaliers only had three turnovers. George Hill’s return has been so big for their ability to not waste possessions, and James turning it over just twice in two high-usage games is incredible. This has gone a long way toward slowing Toronto’s transition attack, especially for the bench. Toronto scored fine, of course, but they need to force turnovers to match up in a shootout.
- To the people already in my mentions and sure to be commenting asking for a blow-it-up column/obituary: We will be covering the series until it’s over. Offseason stuff will come in the offseason. Obviously, you’re welcome to comment as you please, but this is the answer to why you’re not seeing us (or me, at least) write about what now comes in the summer yet. The series is very likely over, based on precedent and all of the evidence from the first two games. Until it’s actually over, though, we’ve still got a series to focus on.
