CLEVELAND — The Toronto Raptors didn’t watch film Sunday. Typically, when they gather for an afternoon practice the day after a tough loss, they do. They go over the mistakes, the hesitations, the lapses in judgment, the poor execution, the things that broke right and wrong, the granular moments throughout a game that all came together to produce an undesired result.
Throughout Saturday’s 105-103 defeat to the Cleveland Cavaliers, there were plenty of them. It’s only natural to focus on the ludicrous bucket LeBron James sunk at the buzzer — the one-legged, one-handed, on-the-run bank shot that had Toronto players all over the floor beside themselves. But the Raptors know there were a hundred little things they could have done better prior to that moment — things that could have changed everything.
And maybe that’s why, after Raptors head coach Dwane Casey and his staff watched the game back Sunday morning, they chose not to show it to their players. They already know.
“We know what the issues are, what they were,” Casey said. “From a team standpoint, 17 turnovers broke our back, some of our schematic things that we didn’t cover properly broke our back.
“We worked on some of the things today in practice. And tomorrow, we’ll watch them and show them. Cleveland, they didn’t do anything differently as far as plays, sets, positioning. we just have to do a better job in covering them.”
That’s the cruel position the Raptors have found themselves in. Down three games to none in the series, needing to win four consecutively to keep their season alive, something that has not once been accomplished by the 129 NBA teams to attempt it. And knowing that if they do one or two things better, if one of those tip-ins at the rim drops in Game 1, if James doesn’t hit that ridiculous floater, they could be in a much different situation.
The Raptors haven’t played well enough. Full stop. But they haven’t been run off the court. Cleveland won by a point in Game 1, two in Game 3. Game 2 was an embarrassment. But the others were coin flips. The Raptors side just didn’t come up.
Which is why they’re all soul searching now. They’re all regretting things, looking back on minute decisions that didn’t work out, wondering what could have been. Even the coaches.
“As a coach, you always think, what could I have done differently? What decision could I make? What play could I have drawn up differently?” Casey said. “What could you do? What play could we have run?
“You beat yourself up. Could you have run something differently out of a timeout, from a coaching standpoint? You take certain plays and certain situations — every coach does, I don’t care who it is — you wonder what you could have done differently to help your team get that extra point, that extra basket, that extra possession defensively.”
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Saturday, Toronto just didn’t have enough. Kyle Lowry had a tremendous night. OG Anunoby, too. But no one else registered. DeMar DeRozan played one of his worst games of the season and was benched in the fourth quarter. Fred VanVleet, Toronto’s best three-point shooter during the regular season, was 1-of-7 from deep. Jonas Valanciunas, such a force in the first two games of the series, couldn’t get anything going in the paint.
If James is going to be James, and his supporting cast is going to chip in what it can — Kevin Love and Kyle Korver were quietly productive throughout Game 3 — the Raptors need everyone. They need Serge Ibaka to be a presence. They need multiple shooters drilling three-pointers. And they need role players taking away Cleveland’s secondary scorers, like Love and Korver, who didn’t receive the kind of aggressively physical guarding the Raptors threw at James Saturday.
That’s what Indiana did to some success in its first-round series with Cleveland. The Pacers bodied James’ teammates and lived with the production the greatest player on the planet is bound to put up. But against the Raptors, the Cavaliers ancillary pieces have just had too much easy success.
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In Game 1, J.R. Smith scored 20, and Korver had 19. In Game 2, it was Love with a 31-point night while Smith quietly added 15. In Game 3, it was Love again, with 21, and Korver with 18.
“That hurts,” Casey said. “Some of the switching we did in Game 2 hurt us, and we got caught a couple of times last night in some switches we didn’t like. So, staying away from those, being disciplined in those situations, are paramount in not letting those guys get going. Because all of a sudden you get in rotation, and you get a three-point shot by Korver, the three ball comes into effect. And that’s what you want to stay out of — what we’re trying to stay out of.”
Do the Raptors have enough will and enough fight left to do that? You’d hope. Is there a way for the Raptors to at least make a dent in this series and not get swept? It’s certainly possible. Is there historical precedent of a team in Toronto’s current position overcoming the odds? No, there is not.
So, what do you do?
“Just rumble. Rumble, no matter what. You’ve got to just rumble,” Lowry said. “You’ve got to fight. You’ve got to go out there and play hard and fight for everything you want. Rumble. Rumble. Rumble, young man, rumble.”
