CLEVELAND – What a feeling it must be, playing against the Cleveland Cavaliers right now.
Running into a hurricane comes to mind, or swimming against a tidal wave.
The NBA’s Eastern Conference might be the junior varsity and who knows, maybe Cleveland will be exposed by whoever emerges between the Golden State Warriors and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But for the moment the Cavaliers are looking in the force-of-nature category of unstoppable.
Look out Toronto, hosting Games 3 and 4 of the Raptors’ first-ever Eastern Conference Finals this weekend, something heavy is coming.
Kyle Lowry is feeling it, that’s clear. He’s the Raptors’ most important player and is having his game turned inside out by Cleveland, looking a like a shadow of the player who got the Raptors here, having connected on just 1-of-15 three-point attempts at Quicken Loans Arena.
He has to be deeply fatigued having played 10 games in 19 days, but he’s not conceding anything, even after the Cavaliers romped again, burying the Raptors 108-89 to take a 2-0 lead in the series.
"I’m super confident," said Lowry, who is shooting 8-of-28 for the series and finished with 10 points and five turnovers in Game 2. "I missed countless threes that I thought were good and that I made last series. That’s why I’m not down on myself. I’m not like down – I’m really like, listen, we’ve got a game on Saturday, and I know I’m going to be much more effective on Saturday. Simple as that."
The problem is the Raptors will be playing the Cavaliers again, and again on Monday. At the moment it’s hard to see beyond that. The Raptors are the first team in NBA history to lose their first two games of a conference final by 19 or more points.
"The first game was ugly, tonight was not pretty, but still, we’re not quitting. I don’t sense any quit in that locker room," said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey, who tinkered with his starting lineup, inserting Luis Scola for Patrick Patterson, but earned minimal return. "Everybody can bury us and put us under, but we’re not quitting, so I’m concerned about what we can correct, what we can do once we go back home, and once you approach it that way and be positive, you know, nobody thought we’d be this far, so again, be positive, keep working."
Sure, but the task is beyond daunting. The rested and primed Cavaliers are riding a 10-game post-season winning streak and hungry for more, driven in their mission by LeBron James, who is doing a very convincing impression of the best basketball player in the world at the moment.
"I don’t think it feels like a streak," said James, who notched his 15th career triple-double with 23 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists to go along with three steals. "I think it feels like we won one game. We won the next game and how do we prepare to be better the following game? We’ve taken it one step at a time. We haven’t overlooked any steps along this process thus far and I think that’s part of the reason we’re in this position today. We have to be much better, obviously in Game 3, going into a very hostile environment."
James is trying to advance to the NBA Finals for the sixth straight year and seventh time in his career, and he clearly recognizes that every loss means another game to play, another day’s less rest, another chance for an injury to a key player.
He’s not tolerating any deviation from the plan.
How good are the Cavaliers right now? When the Warriors went 24-0 to start the regular season they averaged 113.7 points per 100 possessions and had an effective field goal percentage of 56.8 (shooting percentage when three-point shooting is factored in).
Heading into Game 2 the Cavaliers were averaging 117.4 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs with an eFG% of 56.4.
Game 2 didn’t hurt their cause and it’s looking more and more like the Raptors won’t be the team that knocks them off the rail they’re riding. They made more headway in Game 2 than they did in Game 1, the 31-point blowout that served notice that the Raptors might be in over their heads.
But the result on Thursday was more of the same and in some ways more damning: The Raptors played better, and even played quite well in some stretches, but were unable to get within 10 points of Cleveland after the later stages of the second quarter, and were down by 20 early in the fourth and never made a hint at a comeback.
For the second game in a row Toronto did a reasonable job limiting the Cavs’ three-pointers (7-of-21), employing a zone defence at times to do so, but once again the Cavaliers were able to get to the rim too easily. They outscored Toronto in the paint and got 37 free throws to 16 for Toronto. Meanwhile the Raptors were 9-of-33 from three and are 14-of-57 in the series, not a good sign given hot-shooting from deep is usually the best friend of an upset-minded team.
The Raptors started out with some vigour. Scola, getting his first start since Game 4 of the first round, hit a three, DeMar DeRozan (22 points on 18 shots) – who didn’t get to the free throw line in Game 1 – drove to the rim and got fouled.
In all, the Raptors were playing with more force, more will. When Lowry stepped in to take the charge on James coming down the floor at full speed early in the first quarter, it was about as clear a sign of commitment to the cause that is possible. Lowry was called for the blocking foul, but lived, which is more important.
The temperature was turned up. After Kyrie Irving rammed Bismack Biyombo while playing through a couple of his rock-hard screens, the big centre put a forearm to Irving’s chest and scrum ensued, with both players drawing technicals.
And after the Raptors’ role players didn’t deliver much in Game 1, there were early contributions throughout the lineup. Patterson took well to the second unit, responding with a couple of early threes and Terrence Ross came off the bench looking aggressive and decisive – so not much like himself – and had 10 points in eight first-half minutes.
But James continued to present problems that seem unsolvable. After getting burned by leaving him in 1-on-1 coverage in Game 1 the Raptors decided to send a help defender when he posted up DeMarre Carroll early on and he responded by finding J.R. Smith and Kevin Love for wide-open threes and Irving for a layup. He had scored or assisted on 20 of the Cavaliers’ first 22 points as Cleveland led 30-28 after 12 minutes.
"Look, you know, he’s a great player, I don’t know how many adjectives I can give him," said Casey. "He’s a great player, he’s playing great."
Still it was 46-46 with 4:05 left in the half. The Raptors looked more like the team that had won the season series against the Cavs, even if Cleveland didn’t look much like the team that had lost it.
The duct tape and wire fixes were holding. And then the seams started getting torn and twisted by the Cavs, who finished the half on a 16-2 run, with much of the damage coming at the free throw line as Cleveland forced the issues and the Raptors couldn’t defend without fouling.
And James? He is looking more than ever like the NBA’s most unstoppable force.
He proved it on the half’s final possession as he roared to the basket almost casually, shedding 260-pound James Johnson on the way, converting the three-point play, finishing the game’s defining sequence and shredding it wide open.
Lowry was nowhere to be seen at this point, having been subbed out for rest. Rather than watch things come apart from the bench he headed to the visitors locker room "just to kind of decompress, get back there, kind of relax my body and relax my mind," he said. "I wanted to get myself going and get my teammates going and get the team going. It was nothing more than just kind of to decompress, breathe, get back out."
He probably could have stayed there, for all the impact he’s been able to have trying hold his ground against the ‘Cavalanche.’
For LeBron it’s too easy right now, and for the Toronto Raptors it’s too hard.