Columnist image

TSN Raptors Reporter

| Archive

TORONTO – The Toronto Raptors have been beaten by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers so many times it’s hard to keep count, but Tuesday’s series-opening loss was different.

Going into it, their previous eight postseason defeats to the Cavs came by an average of 21.6 points. Only two of them were decided by fewer than 10 points. Five came by 20 points or more, including a couple of 30-plus point blowouts.

Those losses weren’t easy to stomach, but they were easy to explain: the Raptors were simply outplayed, bested by a superior team and the greatest player of his generation, one of the greatest of all-time. The sting would last for a day or so, but in the end, it was what it was.

However, Tuesday’s was a game Raptors fans won’t soon forget. Given the stakes, the expectations and how things ultimately came apart, it was arguably the worst loss in franchise history.

This time they weren’t outplayed, they weren’t bested. They beat themselves, and that’s a lot harder to live with.

The game was being served up to Toronto on a silver platter. Cleveland looked like a team coming off a long, seven-game series, having had just one day to prepare for Round 2. Its two best players – James and Kevin Love – combined to shoot 15-for-43, including 2-for-12 from long range.

Then there were the missed opportunities, of which several immediately come to mind: multiple layups that Jonas Valanciunas and Jakob Poeltl couldn’t get to fall, the rebound Serge Ibaka couldn’t hold onto, the two wide-open threes Fred VanVleet couldn’t knock down – both of them good looks set up by perfectly thrown passes from DeMar DeRozan – and one of the strangest late-game possessions you’ll ever see.

Tied up with eight seconds left in regulation, the Raptors got not one, not two, not three, but four great chances to win the game. After VanVleet’s missed three – the first of two, with the other coming at the end of overtime – DeRozan failed to convert a tip-in from the middle of the paint. The rebound came to C.J. Miles, who couldn’t volley it in, before Valanciunas missed a two-foot putt.

“You ever see the movie 6th Man?,” DeRozan asked, rhetorically, the following afternoon. “It was like somebody was sitting on the rim, Antoine was sitting on the rim knocking them out. It sucked. But we had a lot of great looks.”

The outcome was regrettable: a one-point OT loss in a game they should have had and desperately needed, if for no other reason than to remove the LeBron-shaped cloud that’s been hanging above their heads and finally prove that they are in fact a changed team.

Well, they are different, as difficult as that might be to accept after another demoralizing defeat, and it’s not just because they lost by one instead of 20. Their crunch time offence was a hot mess, as it was in the Game 4 collapse to Washington and at various points throughout the regular season, but this time it wasn’t because they reverted back to hold habits.

You get a sense of déjà vu in that Washington loss 10 days ago. The ball stopped moving and the supporting cast shrunk in the moment, deferring to DeRozan, who took eight of the team’s final 13 shots.

On Tuesday, the Raptors missed the last 11 shots they took over the final four minutes of regulation. While there were a few disjointed possessions that led to turnovers sprinkled in between, all 11 of those shots were defensible. Eight of them came in the restricted area and two of them were wide-open threes. DeRozan only took one shot during that span, the missed tip, but made some great passes, including the one that set up VanVleet for the potential winner.

If you had an issue with that play it shouldn’t have been with the pass (DeRozan made the correct read with the defence converging on him in the lane) or the shot (VanVleet was a team-best 41 per cent three-point shooter during the regular season). Perhaps VanVleet shouldn’t have been out there in that situation – he was sitting for almost eight minutes of game time after appearing to re-injure his right shoulder early in the fourth – but it’s not hard to see why he was.

The precocious sophomore point guard is fearless. He led the Raptors in fourth-quarter minutes this year and hit multiple late-game shots, including an overtime winner in Detroit, where he was shooting 1-for-9 before knocking down the dagger. For better or for worse, he’s not afraid of the moment, and that’s the mentality the entire team needs to have right now.

“I’m going to take those shots every time,” the 24-year-old VanVleet said on Wednesday. “If you don’t want me to take them, don’t put me out there, don’t pass it to me, because it’s going up if I get it and it’s the right shot. When you make it, you’re the hero. When you don’t, you suck. That’s what makes making them that great.”

“I thought all of those plays we made the right play. I thought DeMar did an excellent job of drawing the defence in. He commands so much respect from the other team. The other guys on the court have to be ready to make those shots. Mine didn’t go in. It’s over with. That was yesterday. If the same situation comes, I’ll step right in and shoot them again.”

There was an obvious sense of frustration around the team on Wednesday, understandably so after letting a very winnable one slip away, but they haven’t lost their cool, at least not publicly.

“I detect the guys are very confident,” coach Dwane Casey said. “There’s no dejection or defeated attitude where there’s been at times in past playoffs. But I don’t detect that at all. I sense that our guys feel like there’s situations we can clean up, plays we can make, plays we can take away.”

“We should have had that game, and it was more like, damn, we gotta wait to redeem ourselves, to get this feeling off of us,” said DeRozan. “That was more the feeling. The confidence hasn’t [gone] anywhere. If we had the opportunity to come back and play tonight, we would have played today, just how amped we are and excited we are to get out there and play.”

They’re saying the right things: it was just one game, there’s still a ton of basketball left to play in this series. They’re not wrong, and assuming they can all take a page out of VanVleet’s book and have short memories going into Thursday’s Game 2 – which will be the biggest game many of these guys have ever played – there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to get back on track.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. We’re not going to forget Tuesday’s loss, and neither will they, so how do you move past it? They’re up against more than the Cavs now, more than James. There’s a mental hurdle they’ll have to overcome. That was always going to be the case entering this series, with so many of their playoff demons staring them in the face, and now they’ve got yet another to try and escape. It’ll haunt them if they let it. They can’t let it.

There’s plenty they can take from Game 1 – both positive and negative. For starters, they’ll have to do a better job of fighting the temptation to over-help on James – something that freed up the likes of Kyle Korver and JR Smith. They’ll have to limit their turnovers and keep Tristan Thompson off the offensive glass. But what they can’t do is allow Tuesday’s result to deter from the style of play that’s worked for them all season, and should have worked in the series opener. It’s not that they didn’t play the right way, it’s that they need to be better.

“We played our game,” Kyle Lowry said. “We executed the plays down the stretch. Gotta roll with it. That’s the things about this league, it’s a make or miss league.”

“For us [Thursday’s is] a really, really important game, a really big game for us as a team. We have the confidence to go out there and win anywhere, especially on our home floor. So I think that’s what we take into the game. We learn from our mistakes, we learn from the things that we did. I’m sure they’re happy. They didn’t play their best game, but they still won. I’m sure they’re happy and they’re going to come out differently. But we’re going to come out and be us, be a better us.”