CLEVELAND – There’s no substitute for experience, as the Toronto Raptors just learned the hard way.
You can watch playoff basketball, and some of them even had a brief taste of it earlier in their careers. You can hear stories and get advice from veterans at the back end of the bench. You can spend a week preparing for it and simulating it in practice. But until you’ve lived it together, until you’ve had to block out the noise, withstand the pressure, meet the physicality, and rise to the occasion, there’s no telling how a team is going to react.
“We’ll be ready,” head coach Darko Rajakovic said in the lead-up to his team’s opening-round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Toronto’s first playoff game in four years. “We’ll be starting to throw punches from the start and compete. This is what we prepare for, not just last week but the whole season and our whole lives.”
The Raptors threw some early punches, as promised, but after an encouraging start, they were mostly punchless. They hung around – down just four points after one quarter and within seven points at halftime – in large part because of hot shooting from unexpected places.
With their best high-volume shooter, Immanuel Quickley, out nursing a hamstring injury and their most efficient shooter, Ja’Kobe Walter, coming off the bench, it was Scottie Barnes (a 30 per cent three-point shooter) and Jamal Shead (32 per cent) who splashed eight threes. A nice surprise, sure, and the Raptors (who hit 35 per cent of their threes during the season, 21st-best) shot 48 per cent from deep overall. But that’s not how they’re going to make their mark on this series.
They finished the season as the league’s fifth-ranked defensive team. They want to pressure the ball, turn you over, and get out and run. The biggest indictment of their Game 1 performance, a 126-113 loss that looked a lot worse than the final score indicated, is that they lost themselves in the process.
For most of the afternoon, they were held to one fast-break point (they scored another two in garbage time) after averaging nearly 19 per game and leading the league in that category over the regular season. They were bludgeoned in the paint, outscored 52-36, and committed 18 turnovers, many of them uncharacteristic.
James Harden and Donovan Mitchell, who came in with nearly four times as much playoff experience as the entire Raptors rotation (236 games and 19 series wins compared to 65 games and four series wins), combined for 54 points and 14 assists. Playing the role that Gradey Dick (who didn’t get in until garbage time) was supposed to fill for the Raptors this season, Max Strus came off the bench to hit four threes and score 24 points on 10 shots.
Jarrett Allen had Jakob Poeltl’s number around the rim, while the reigning Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley – and the officials – got under Barnes’ skin. Brandon Ingram, the lone Raptors player who could get anything going in the half-court, attempted only nine shots, including just one in the second half.
They were never able to impose their will or play their brand of basketball. The Cavs controlled the pace, and once the Raptors got hit, they could never recover, looking frustrated and, at times, even dejected.
While the Raptors’ half-court offence was much improved this season, thanks in large part to Ingram, their bread and butter remained turning defence into scoring opportunities in transition. That they struggled to execute late in close games against good teams, when the physicality went up and the pace slowed down, never seemed to bode well for the playoffs.
“This is a really, really good team,” Collin Murray-Boyles said after the game on Saturday. “They have great pieces all around. And, obviously, the head of the snake… I don’t even know who the head of the snake is for this team sometimes. But I think we kinda got away from our brand of basketball, and we couldn’t really get it back in time.”
The good news is it’s best-of-seven, and there’s still plenty of basketball left to be played. They just got a tutorial in postseason hoops, now the question is how quickly they can learn and grow from it. And so, it’s back to the drawing board for Monday’s Game 2.
“I’m not satisfied,” Rajakovic said. “We’ve got to do a better job of executing, freeing [Ingram] up, and playing to our standard of ball movement… We did not do a good enough job of running our stuff with pace. We did not do a good enough job of involving Brandon. Some of that is on me. We, as a group, we’ve got to do a better job.”
How can they free up Ingram? Will they get Quickley back (he’s improving, per Rajakovic, but has been limited to light individual workouts in practice this past week)? How about lineup changes or defensive adjustments?
“Every scenario is on the table,” Rajakovic said post-game.
After being limited by a back ailment for much of the season, Poeltl came into the playoffs feeling healthy, but was a step slow all afternoon. He and RJ Barrett started the game on Allen and Harden, respectively, and were regular victims of their pick-and-roll actions. Poeltl was held to four points and six rebounds in 21 minutes and was pulled for rookie Murray-Boyles – who scored 14 minutes and didn’t look out of place in his playoff debut – early in the third quarter.
Meanwhile, Barnes started the game on Mobley – a player he’s familiar with and spent most of the season series guarding. It wasn’t until the game was out of reach in the fourth quarter that he switched onto Harden. Even at the advanced age of 36, Harden is as crafty with the ball as ever. There’s no stopping him, but if there’s anybody on this Raptors roster that’s able to slow him down, it’s their all-NBA defender.
With Harden’s (and Mitchell’s) knack for drawing and selling contact, putting Barnes on Mobley should keep him out of foul trouble and on the floor – in theory. But after getting called for a push-off foul on his first drive of the game, he picked up two quick ones anyway. Now is not the time to play it safe. Barnes is an elite defender. Let him show it on the big stage and utilize his game-changing ability optimally against one of the greatest scorers of all-time.
That matchup change, and starting Murray-Boyles over Poeltl, would allow the Raptors to switch those Harden and Allen pick-and-roll actions that burned them badly on Saturday.
To make drastic changes like that after one game might seem excessive – with his size, physicality and screening, Poeltl could still be a big factor in this series. By not doing it, you run the risk of being too reactive and waiting until the series is out of reach before making your move.
“Everything takes a step up – physicality, attention to detail,” Murray-Boyles said after his first career playoff game. “Literally everything has to be elevated just to stay on the floor. So, it was definitely not a regular game. We have a lot to learn from, for sure.”
The Raptors got hit first. It happens. What’s their counterpunch?
Welcome to the playoffs.
