TORONTO — It’s not as hyperbolic as it sounds to say everything the Toronto Raptors have done over the last 12 months, from rethinking their culture, to dramatically upheaving their style of play, to decisions made in the draft room, to brutally honest conversations in the video room, to habits formed on the practice court, to philosophy, to methods, to records, to 59 wins, to a conference championship, to the best regular season the franchise has ever had, has been for this moment. No, it’s not hyperbolic at all.
Right around this time last season, the Cleveland Cavaliers swept the Raptors out of the playoffs in the second round. None of the games were particularly close. The deep sting of that result — and, to a lesser extent, the conference final series a year prior, when Cleveland triumphed in six games — was felt throughout the franchise, and proved the tipping point of Toronto’s new approach to basketball both on the floor and off. It started everything.
“The way we play now is the mistakes of what we had from them series, you know? Going down in them. That’s what made us better,” said DeMar DeRozan, following a late-Sunday practice in preparation for his third playoff clash with the Cavaliers. “That’s what made us at this point where we’re at now — being top of our conference, having the confidence that we have, and the style of play that we go out and play with.
“A lot of us have been through them series that went down and lost, and with that we gained a tremendous amount of experience, of understanding what comes with it, what it takes to be the team at that level. And I think we worked our butts off this past summer, this whole year, to be in this position we’re in now.”
It will be the truest test. The Raptors will play the Cavaliers — led by the greatest player of his generation, one of the best athletes to ever play basketball in human history, LeBron James — at least four times over the next two weeks, and as many as seven. They will try to win four times, and prevent James from reaching an eighth-consecutive conference and NBA Finals. They will try to prove, on a microcosmic level, that the sweeping modifications made over the last 12 months were worthwhile and effective, and, on a macrocosmic level, that they are truly among the NBA’s elite teams.
“When you’re in the moment, you don’t feel like it — but you look at the history of the league and there has always been a team that you had to leapfrog over. And that has not changed,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “There’s always going to be a great team you have to go through. And, through our process, we’ve worked hard to get to where we are and we just have to continue to go.”
The Raptors played the Cavaliers three times this season, winning once, losing twice. In the victory, back in January, before Cleveland flipped more than a third of its roster at the trade deadline, the Raptors starched the Cavaliers by more than 30 points in Toronto. Seven Raptors scored double-figures. Seven Cavaliers finished minus-17 or worse. It was a demolition so thorough that no starter from either team saw the floor in the fourth quarter.
Then, the teams met a second time on a late March night in Cleveland. Again, the Raptors were all over the Cavaliers, scoring 79 points in the first half alone. But Toronto’s defence fell apart after halftime, and the Cavaliers shot 60.5 per cent in the latter half, hitting nine of 15 threes, as they charged back for a three-point victory.
Two weeks later, the teams reconvened in Cleveland, and the Raptors defence struggled anew, as Jose Calderon (Jose Calderon!) started in place of George Hill and went off for 19 points and a plus-27, while the Cavaliers shot 49.4 per cent, and 43.3 per cent from beyond the arc. In the fourth quarter, Toronto’s starters combined to score only four points. Cleveland won by six. If not for a 14-6 Raptors garbage-time run, they would have won by a lot more.
Those are three very different data points from which the Raptors can evaluate heading into this series. The first game is probably moot — the Cavaliers aren’t that team any more. The second was absurd — The Raptors can’t expect to score at such an insane first-half clip, and the Cavaliers can’t expect to shoot higher than 60 per cent.
The third was perhaps most telling, but it’s worth noting Kyle Lowry was 2-of-11 and had one of his worst nights of the season offensively and defensively (that was the day after the famous trip to San Antonio to watch his alma mater Villanova triumph in the NCAA Tournament), the Cavaliers were without their starting point guard, and Cleveland — much like in the second meeting — had unsustainable success from range, hitting 13 of 30 threes.
Surely, the Raptors will take some granular things away from the those contests. But the results probably don’t tell us an awful lot. Sunday, it sounded like that’s the tact Casey is taking, as he deflected a series of questions about what he’s learned from playing Cleveland (“Nothing.”), what the best way is to approach playing a player as dominant as James (“We’ve just got to do what we do.”), and what his team has done best against the Cavaliers this season (“Not very much.”).
DeRozan was somewhat more expansive when asked about prior meetings with the Cavaliers. He characterized playing James as a game of chess rather than the checkers contest that is playing the rest of the league.
“You can’t leave room for error,” he said. “You can’t have too many mistakes.”
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Not coincidentally, that’s what DeRozan says he takes away from his experience with Cleveland this season. Asked what he liked about his team’s play in those three games, he chose to highlight the many elementary areas they could have been better.
“The amount of mistakes that we made in the two games that we lost,” he said. “Especially late in the game, not being ourselves, getting away from a lot of things that helped us win games.”
If the early, small-sample returns of these playoffs tell us anything, it’s that DeRozan is right — the Raptors should be able to beat the Cavaliers if they play to their abilities.
In their first-round series with the Indiana Pacers, the Cavaliers had only two players average more than 10 points per game — James and Kevin Love. The Raptors had four — DeRozan, Lowry, Jonas Valanciunas, and Delon Wright. The Cavaliers had only three players finish with a positive net rating and plus/minus. The Raptors had eight. Of the seven lineups Cleveland used for 10 minutes or more, only two had a positive net rating. Of the five Toronto used, four did.
Toronto simply played like itself, while the Cavaliers had perhaps the worst first round of any team that advanced to the second. The Pacers outscored the Cavaliers by 44 points over the course of the series, winning 17 quarters to Cleveland’s 11. The Cavaliers’ 43.4 per cent field-goal rate was the third-worst of the 16 playoff teams. Their 32.2 per cent rate from beyond the arc was second-worst. Their 94.9 points per game was dead last.
Cleveland was a bottom-three first-round team in assist rate (51.7 per cent), assist-to-turnover ratio (1.19), effective field-goal percentage (50.3), and pace, as the Cavaliers and Pacers played the slowest first-round series, with only 92.92 possessions per 48 minutes. Much was made of how turnover-prone the Raptors were against the Washington Wizards, as they struggled to a 14.3 per cent turnover rate. The Cavaliers? Their first-round turnover rate was 15.7.
The only thing the Cavaliers did particularly well was find ways to win. All four of their wins were by four points or fewer, and one was thanks to a borderline iconic James three-pointer in Game 5 that splashed through the rim as time expired. James had to score 44 points or more in three of the four victories, and put up 32 in the other.
And that’s the X-factor the Raptors cannot account for — the transcendence of James. He’ll be the best player in the series, and although his supporting cast is uninspiring, he’s liable to win games on his own. He just did on Sunday.
The hope for the Raptors is that maybe he’s tired. Since he entered the league 13 years ago, no NBA player has logged more regular-season games or minutes than James. The same goes for playoff games and minutes. No one even comes close. This year, at 33, having played more basketball at the highest level over the last decade-plus than anyone, James led the NBA in regular-season minutes, and led the first round, too. At some point, the kilometres have to add up.
Meanwhile, the Cavaliers enter the series having played an intense Game 7 against the Pacers Sunday, while the Raptors have been in Toronto waiting for an opponent since finishing the Wizards Friday night. Fatigue could be a factor — not only for James, but for his teammates, too.
“You would hope. You would hope, right?” said Fred VanVleet, Toronto’s backup point guard and second-unit anchor. “I hope he’s tired, I hope they’re all tired. But you can’t depend on that. We’re going in preparing as we would any other game.
“Lebron’s been one of the best players in the league for a long time. Obviously, I respect the guy a lot — the type of player he is, the person he is. But for me, the most respect I can give him is to not give him any respect in terms of going out there and trying to challenge him and take him down. That’s our job. And that’s what we need to do this week.”
Tuesday, the series begins. The Raptors have the distinction of being the favourites. The Raptors have home-court advantage. The Raptors have rest on their side. The Raptors have depth and experience and health. The Raptors have everything. Now, at the end of a year spent building to this point, it’s time to find out if everything is enough.
“We’ve been great all year,” DeRozan said. “Why does it need to stop now?”
