LeBron James, Cavs try to take control in Toronto: 5 things to know
Can Cleveland bounce back after its first taste of adversity?
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8 min read
TORONTO -- The moderately interesting Eastern Conference finals could get extremely interesting on Monday. The Toronto Raptors bounced back from two blowout losses with their most impressive win of the playoffs in Game 3, holding the previously red-hot Cleveland Cavaliers to 84 points on 35 percent shooting and dealing them their first loss in more than a month.
Was that just a little slip-up from Cleveland? A monumental effort from a Raptors team trying to save their season? Randomness? It's hard to say, but Toronto will have the league's attention if it can tie the series 2-2 at the Air Canada Centre. Few people think this will happen, but a great, screaming man once said that anything is possible.
Five things to know for Game 4:
1. Expect the Cavaliers' offense to run through LeBron James more. Sounds simple, doesn't it? The best player on the floor should probably be the one making the most plays. This is an actual adjustment that Cleveland can make, though.
On Sunday, coach Tyronn Lue said that he regretted not simply letting James go to work against a Toronto defense that has, like the rest of the league, had trouble containing him. Isolation basketball might be boring, but it is effective with the right personnel.
"I thought we went away from posting LeBron, where they had a double-team, and getting easy shots and easy three-point shots," Lue said. "That's on me. I've got to put them in better situations to be productive."
The Raptors won largely because Kyrie Irving missed 16 of his 19 shots and Kevin Love missed eight of his nine attempts. In general, the Cavs are at their best when the ball is moving and all three of their stars are putting pressure on the defense. When they're not in sync, though, giving James the ball is a nice fallback option.
"I think I should have called more plays to make him dominant," Lue said. "I think we continued to run plays that had been effective and working throughout the course of this series, knowing that Kyrie and Kevin could get going at any time, and I should have put the ball in LeBron's hands a little bit more to let him create and let him draw double teams. So that was more on me."
James has averaged 23.7 points, 8.3 rebounds and 6.7 assists on 63 percent shooting through three games against Toronto, but he not truly dominated. In the playoffs, he has yet to score more than 27 points in a game. He has not had to.
The Raptors do not want James' assist numbers to be high, so they will dare Cleveland to play hero ball. This strategy is dangerous because James is more than capable of being a hero.
"Our biggest key is we just gotta keep the supporting cast limited like we did," Raptors forward DeMarre Carroll said. "LeBron's going to be LeBron. He's going to get calls. He's going to score baskets. He's going to run, bulldoze you over. So we just gotta get the supporting cast on a limitation."
2. The Cavs aren't exactly mourning their undefeated postseason record. Lue, James, Richard Jefferson and Matthew Dellavedova met the media before they went over film and, one by one, they praised Toronto. Many observers picked Cleveland to sweep a third straight series, but that was not necessarily the internal expectation. James called the Raptors a "tough team" and said they were chasing the Cavs in the standings all year for a reason.
"We have a lot of respect for Toronto, so it was never, 'We're going to sweep them,'" Jefferson said. "We didn't go into the Detroit series thinking we were going to sweep them. If anything, once we won our first two games and we were able to go get a third game, then it was like, 'Okay, let's try to close this out so we can get some rest.'"
Of course, the Cavs would love to go back to the way things were in Cleveland, with the Raptors looking like they do not even belong on this stage. Jefferson said that the team was disappointed in some of the mistakes they made in Game 3, pointing the finger at himself for letting Terrence Ross get open for a 3-pointer in the second quarter and at J.R. Smith for biting on DeMar DeRozan's pump fake on the game's first possession. When the Cavs went out for a post-game meal, the mood was different than normal.
"That's the first time in a month the dinner conversation wasn't joyous and excited and having fun," Jefferson said. "It was a night where we were just kind of talking about the things that we needed to do. We were trying to keep our minds off of it, but you could see that everybody was a little off."
Being aware of mistakes is different than dwelling on them, though. James insisted that Cleveland doesn't have to do anything drastically different in the next game, and everybody believes Irving and Love will bounce back.
"I don't think our confidence is shaken at all," James said.
3. Let's talk about physicality and officiating. I promise to keep it brief. This is a "physical" series, but most series end up being branded as "physical" at one point or another. In Game 3, these things happened:
1. Cavs big man Tristan Thompson elbowed James, his teammate, after a skirmish that also involved Cory Joseph and Caroll.
2. Biyombo committed a flagrant foul against James in the fourth quarter.
3. Cleveland benchwarmer Dahntay Jones hit Biyombo below the belt during garbage time, and he was suspended for Game 4.
4. Raptors coach Dwane Casey ripped the officials, which resulted in a $25,000 fine.
The second that anyone commits a hard foul, it's going to be a thing and it's going to be annoying. On Sunday, Biyombo said he would not complain about anything and James said that he didn't want to focus on what the referees were doing.
"It's the playoffs, so stuff like that happens every game," Dellavedova said bluntly. "I don't think it's a big deal really."
Thank you, Delly.
4. DeRozan used to hate Biyombo. When the big man played for Charlotte, DeRozan did not look forward to seeing him at the rim, blocking shots and fouling people.
"I told him myself," DeRozan said. "I told Bismack, 'I hated you.' Now by far he's one of my favorite teammates of all-time."
"He really hated me until he got to know me as a person, and then he turned out to love me," Biyombo said. "I'm sure there was a lot of feeling out there, but until you really get to know the real side of me, then you know who I am. But on the floor I don't have friends."
Biyombo has become a finger-wagging playoff hero in Toronto. It wasn't just his 26-rebound, four-block performance against the Cavs. In Game 7 against the Miami Heat, Biyombo had 17 points, 16 rebounds and two blocks. In Game 5 against the Indiana Pacers, he had 10 points and 16 rebounds. He has helped save the Raptors' season three times now, and he has thrived as a starting center in Jonas Valanciunas' absence for two weeks in the postseason, plus a quarter of the regular season.
DeRozan said that, back in November, there was no way he would have passed the ball to Biyombo twice in crunch time, as he did on Saturday. (Biyombo scored on both plays.) Biyombo has always had trouble catching passes, but he has improved over the course of the season. He will likely be paid like a starter this summer.
"I give him credit all the time. He's so dominant when it comes to whatever needs to be done. He never asks for the ball. He just wants to do all the dirty work for us, set the screens, getting rebounds, blocking shots. When he gets going, he gets to point in the air doing the finger thing, that kind of gets us going. That kind of fuels us to keep playing hard. The spirit he has out there is amazing."
Toronto forward Luis Scola was amused by the news that DeRozan used to hate Biyombo. Scola seemed to think that hating someone like him was unfathomable.
"I can't get mad at him," Scola said. "My kids love him. They call him get-the-heck-out-of-here Biz."
5. All players say they have confidence, but the Raptors have earned some. They're the only team to beat Cleveland in the playoffs, and now they'll try to build on that. Saturday was a massive moment for the franchise, which is in the conference finals for the first time in its 21-year history. It was also meaningful for the players, who are all aware that the Cavaliers are the overwhelming favorites.
"We just showed we can win," DeRozan said. "Anybody can be beat at the end of the day. It's not like we're playing against a Dream Team of players."
"Before [Saturday's] game, we were in a position like, 'Let's make them look human. Let's make them look like a team that could be beaten,'" Scola said. "Because they looked, like, unbeatable up until that point. Nobody really put them in that situation. So that was what [Game 3] was all about."
Throughout the regular season, Cleveland was not known as a particularly cohesive team. That completely changed in the playoffs. In all likelihood, its 10 postseason wins were much more telling than this one loss. Toronto, though, has to hope that it can rattle the Cavs and make them doubt themselves a little bit.
"We talked about it after Game 2," Scola said. "We gotta get them out of their comfort zone. And that's what we did. When that happened, it's almost like magic. They start missing shots that were wide open. They start missing layups that were wide open. They start not getting a couple calls here and there. Momentum shifts, the energy shifts."
The Raptors are here despite playing poorly for much of the postseason. They are here despite four-fifths of their starting lineup dealing with injuries and their two All-Stars slumping at what seemed like the worst possible time. DeRozan said that these tough times have revealed the character of the team, and they've grown from their seven-game slugfests against the Heat and Pacers. Toronto does not have many advantages against Cleveland, but it does have more recent experience persevering when things have fallen apart.
"When adversity hits, you see your true colors," Carroll said. "So tomorrow we're going to come out and play he same way we did. We're going to do it with effort. And we're going to make them see what they do when adversity hits them."
