“Win two games.”
That was C.J. Miles at practice on Friday, answering a question tongue-in-cheek about how the Toronto Raptors get back in the series after falling behind 0-2 to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The situation is fairly dire, even if the team continues to say it’s only two games in a best-four-of-seven series. LeBron James has never lost in this situation, home teams dropping the first two games face pretty terrible historical odds, and so on. You’ve heard all of this. The Raptors have heard all of this. They’ve been here, down 0-2 to Cleveland, each of the last two years, although it wasn’t quite as bad because they were heading home. There should be desperation now, because everything they’ve built and built toward is now dangling precariously on the edge of irrelevant.
“We’ve got to play with a sense of urgency we haven’t played with all year, and we’ve been pretty good about playing hard,” Miles continued. “We’ve just got to go out and take it. We knew it wouldn’t be easy. It’s not ideal, this situation right now, but we’ve got to outplay them.”
The Raptors are doing their best to lean on what got them to this point. There’s an instinct to try something drastically new after two tough losses, but while there will be certain adjustments on Saturday, they’re also trying to keep in mind what made them successful over 82 games and in the first round. It’s tough. It hasn’t worked for two games, and Toronto’s been anything but themselves. It’s what they know, though, and they know there is a better version of it than they showed the last two times out.
“Ain’t nothing changed. There’s a reason why we are who we are,” Fred VanVleet said. “There’s a reason why we’re in the position we’re in. We get paid to do this. Obviously it hasn’t been our best showing, down 0-2. But it’s the first to four. All we can worry about is going to Cleveland trying to get one.”
The tone shifted some from Thursday night, which is a slight positive. Dwane Casey’s talk about playing for pride was still present after practice, this time rooted more in the toughness and physicality aspects of the phrasing rather than giving the impression the Raptors just don’t want to get swept. In particular, Casey took small issue with the use of the word “hope” when a question was posed in too defeated a tone.
“Hope? We’re 0-2, we understand that. It’s hope, it’s pride, it’s toughness,” he said. “The toughness part is the part I didn’t think we played with last night. I thought we did in Game 1. We did in parts of last night. But we didn’t do it long enough. So, it’s about grit, toughness. If we’re hoping we win, we shouldn’t be in the NBA. That’s not a good word to use if you’re a professional player. I think grit, pride, playing for your family name as much as anything else, and then your team’s name. So, I wouldn’t want to use the word hope because that’s like you’re wishing for something.”
So that’s a step forward. The Raptors also weren’t willing to bow to the enormity of the specific situation against James versus some other potential opponent. It’s nice to have VanVleet as the voice of the team, because he’s consistently declined to be reverential to James. The odds are long, but they are what they are, in VanVleet’s mind, and there’s not much to do except try to beat them.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about that to be honest. I don’t have time to worry about hypotheticals,” VanVleet said. “We have to lock in and try to get one in Cleveland, no matter who we’re playing. Right now it’s LeBron, so he’s getting all our focus and attention. I’m not sure how that would be different with anybody else.”
It’s been rare for the Raptors to slide for even two games like this. Thy were quick to steer themselves out of any spins throughout the regular season and bounced back well after two losses in Washington. They’ve been as resilient as they claim. The big question, obviously, is whether that can hold up against the one player and team that has consistently broken them in the recent past. The Raptors think it can, because they have no choice but to think that.
“We know it’s tough. It’s not going to be easy. But, yet and still, we have the toughness and grit. We’ve done it all year,” Casey said. “I don’t think we’ve lost three games in a row all year, I’m not sure. But that’s what we’re made out of. And that’s what we have to depend on.”
They also hadn’t lost two in a row at home since the sweep at the hands of Cleveland last postseason, so maybe regular season marks aren’t to be relied on here. still, it’s something, and they sounded far less defeated today than last night.
Notes
- I’ll be posting some updates/quotes/T-shirt news/etc regularly on my Instagram story throughout the playoffs.
- Over at Vice Sports, I wrote about LeBron James.
- The Raptors are down to 75-to-1 to win the NBA Championship, so there’s money to be made if you still believe. They are 12-to-1 to win the Eastern Conference and 11-to-2 to win the series.
- How worried are the Cavaliers? J.R. Smith said he’s going to golf 27 holes today, per Hayden Grove. Amazing.
- Someone inexplicably asked Fred VanVleet about the term “LeBronto” and the general social media treatment right now. Why, I have no idea. VanVleet’s answer was excellent, though: “How do I feel about it? I don’t really give a fuck. I’m not paying attention to it. I don’t thing most guys on the team are really paying to social media right now. We’re locked into the playoffs.”
- C.J. Miles and Dwane Casey also shut down that line of questioning. There were a lot of really bizarre questions asked today.
- The Raptors continually hammered the point of playing with better pace. After playing faster most of the season, they maintained that in the first round. James has gummed that up some in three ways: Slowing things down by posting up, refusing to turn the ball over despite having it all of the time, and, you know, not missing. Somewhat paradoxically, the Raptors are scoring better in the halfcourt than on the run due to a small sample, some poor transition 3-point shooting, and Cleveland’s generally porous pick-and-roll defense, but it would still behoove them to push off of whatever misses and turnovers they can force, making an older and slower Cleveland team work harder.
- There were a lot of questions about Serge Ibaka, and everyone remained supportive of him. “We’re not gonna throw dirt on him,” Casey said.
- Related, we’ll end on Miles’ words of encouragement to Ibaka that also double as helpful life advice: “You’re never as far away as you think.”
Programming note: I’m not going on the road for Games 3 and 4, so there will be no shootaround/practice notes unless something major happens.
