CLEVELAND – The athlete’s creed has many chapters, some written, many unwritten, but the foundational beliefs are pretty simple:
Don’t quit and always strive to improve.
There are all kinds of variations, but the theme varies little. As long as the games are being played, nothing can be conceded.
So the day after the Toronto Raptors were drilled by the Cleveland Cavaliers and before they step into the breech again, the Raptors’ messages were straight from the playbook of try harder and play better.
"There’s always a fire if you get your ass kicked like that," said Kyle Lowry following the Raptors’ practice on Wednesday, a day after their 31-point blowout loss at the hands of the Cavaliers. "You gotta want to win. We didn’t just get here to be like ‘OK.’ We want to win games. We want to compete. Our competitive nature as professionals, as NBA players, is going to be at a high level."
The only problem with the athlete’s mantra is it doesn’t really make allowances for circumstances beyond any team or individual’s control, like the presence of LeBron James, for example.
The Raptors were saying all the right things. Thematically they hit all the right notes. Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri, fresh in Cleveland after watching Game 1 from New York City where he observed the draft lottery – the Raptors own the No. 9 pick, a handy asset to have for a team in the Eastern Conference Finals – said he sees a look of resilience in the eyes of his team.
The Dwane Casey-era Raptors have lost Game 1 of all five of their playoff series, but they don’t generally take the disappointment sitting down. The Raptors are 6-0 during the current post-season run after a loss.
"It’s just understanding what it’s like to have our backs against the wall, just coming out with a sense of urgency and understanding what we’ve got to do," said DeMar DeRozan about his club’s knack for responding after a loss. "We’ve learned from our mistakes previously and know what we’ve got to do to correct it."
But what was more telling in the Raptors’ review of Game 1 wasn’t how they assessed their shortcomings, it was in their wide-eyed appraisal of coming chest-to-chest with James as he ramps his game up in pursuit of his goals of a third ring and first championship for Cleveland since 1964.
James isn’t leading the Cavaliers in scoring; he clearly can afford to pick his spots as he’s playing a comfortable 38 minutes per game – a career playoff low, to go along with a career-low 23.6 points a game – as the Cavaliers churn through opponents. But he’s leading the Cavs – undefeated in the playoffs so far – with his example, his play and his focus. He’s not keying on getting to his fifth straight NBA Finals, but winning his third title.
He’s not doing it alone. In the sports themebook it falls under the chapter "leadership." James has bought into the Cavs’ new up-tempo, ball-movement focused approach, everyone is following and Cleveland is benefitting.
The Raptors, like the Pistons and Hawks before them, are struggling with the knowledge that they are the second-best team on the floor, an acknowledgement that runs counter to the athlete’s creed.
Said DeRozan: "You have to give them credit, they’ve been showing it the whole playoffs, the dominant two series that they had and the way they came out on us yesterday. You have to give them credit and now it’s on us to respond in Game 2."
Said Lowry: "Listen they are playing at a championship level right now. LeBron is playing like LeBron. Kyrie [Irving] is playing like Kyrie. Their bench played extremely well. We just have to figure it out and match it. We just got to go out there and do what we do."
That’s where Casey comes in. The Raptors head coach’s routine is pretty consistent after wins or losses. The first few hours of the night are spent going over selected edits of the game tape, looking for what the Cavaliers are doing to counter their sets and then what the Raptors can do to blunt the Cavaliers attack. Then it’s looking ahead, trying to build a game plan that can be grasped in a single light practice and a game day shootaround, and hoping it will work.
For Casey and the Raptors it’s trying to pick the proper dose of poison they can live with as the new-look Cavaliers have reinvented themselves as an Eastern Conference version of the Golden State Warriors, whipping the ball around at speed and drilling wide-open threes at will.
The Raptors did a nice job on that in Game 1 – the Cavaliers made just seven threes compared with the nearly 17 they’d been averaging in the first eight games of the post-season – but all they did was provide another avenue for James and friends to score at a ridiculous level of efficiency. In Game 1 the Raptors allowed 56 points in the paint as the Cavaliers took advantage of wide driving lanes left available as Toronto tried to stay with Cleveland’s three-point shooters. It doesn’t matter if you’re not giving up threes if the other team is shooting 55 per cent from the floor as the Cavs did in Game 1.
So the solution, obviously, is to defend the three-point line just as well while making it more difficult for the Cavaliers to make their way into the paint at will.
The problem when playing James is that no matter what you do, the risk is playing into the Cavaliers hands.
"We don’t predetermine what we’re going to do offensively," said James. "We come into a game saying let’s play our game. We want to move the ball and share the ball and get it moving side to side. We want to attack and get our shooters open.
"They didn’t let our shooters get open too much so we had the lane. [Iman Shumpert] had some attacks it was great for him, [Matthew Dellavedova] was able to get into the lane, Kyrie, myself. We know the game is going to be totally different [Thursday].”
The Raptors plan on it. They made brave pledges Wednesday.
"We will do better," said Casey. "I thought they were clicking on all cylinders after the first quarter and then we didn’t respond in the right way. There are some things we can do differently."
This is the creed. Promise to compete. Plan to improve.
But against James and the Cavaliers right now, it might not matter, and the Raptors – deep down – have to know it.