The Cavs send a message, totally dominating the Raptors in Game 1
During the 82-game regular season, just one game separated the Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors. During Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, though, it became very clear that these two teams are separated by a hell of a lot more than that.
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The Cavaliers destroyed the Raptors on Tuesday night, leading by double-figures for the final 34 1/2 minutes in a 115-84 win at Quicken Loans Arena. Cleveland is now a perfect 9-0 in the postseason, and holds a 1-0 lead in its best-of-seven matchup with the second-seeded Raptors. The 31-point margin is the most lopsided victory in Cavaliers postseason history; that, my friends, is a statement.
After eight full days of rest following a second-round sweep of the Atlanta Hawks, and having played only eight games in the last month, you’d be forgiven if you were wondering just a bit about whether the Cavs would enter Tuesday’s tilt rusty from all that rest. It took all of two minutes for Cleveland to knock that rust off, though, responding to a game-opening 7-0 Toronto run by scoring 33 points in the next 10 minutes, making 13 of their next 18 shots as their superstars got untracked.
Having watched the Cavs bury the Hawks beneath a barrage of 3-pointers created by great ball movement that took advantage of aggressive help, Raptors coach Dwane Casey had his club make a concerted effort to stay true on the perimeter, avoid double-teaming and run Cleveland off the arc. The good news: Cleveland went just 7-for-20 from the arc on Tuesday. The bad news: the Raptors just could not credibly check LeBron James or Kyrie Irving one-on-one, as the Cavs’ top two penetrators and facilitators got themselves into the paint and all the way to the rim with precious little opposition all night long.
Irving led the way with 27 points on 11-for-17 shooting to go with five assists, two rebounds, two steals, two blocks and two turnovers in 30 minutes of work. James added 24 points on 11-for-13 shooting — he didn’t miss his first shot until the 8:05 mark of the third quarter — with six rebounds, four assists, two steals and a block in just 28 minutes. Cleveland lived at the basket all night, making 22 of 25 shots inside the restricted area through three quarters (before the game turned into extended garbage-time), outscoring Toronto 56-35 in the paint, and shooting 55.4 percent from the field overall.
On the heels of consecutive seven-game series, with just one off-day between their second-round clinching victory over the Miami Heat and Tuesday’s tip, the Raptors needed to bring their A-game to Ohio to follow in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s footsteps and spring a potentially series-shaking upset. Sadly, that A-game seemed to have been held up at customs.
All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry, the Raptors’ best player in Games 6 and 7 against the Heat, was held in check by an aggressive Cavs defense, mustering just eight points on 4-for-14 shooting and mitigating his five assists with four turnovers in 31 1/2 minutes. DeMar DeRozan was hot early, but had to make a number of tough shots to score his team-high 18 points on 9-for-17 shooting, and received precious little offensive help from a Toronto club that, by the early third quarter, largely looked like it wanted to be anywhere in the world but on the court at the Q.
It’s just one game, of course, and we don’t have to look back too far — hey there, Spurs/Thunder! — to be reminded of the perils of overreacting to Game 1. It’s worth wondering, though, if it really counts as an overreaction if what you’re responding to is the unfolding in real-time of exactly the scenario that just about everybody envisioned heading into this series: the Cavs spreading the Raptors’ defense out and carving it up, dialing up the defensive intensity to make life miserable on bellwether ball-handler Lowry, and applying pressure until Toronto just broke.
The Raptors have better games than this in them; they can play better individual perimeter defense, contain the ball better, move the ball better, and reach a higher level than they managed at any point on Tuesday. The central question of this series, though, is whether they can reach the level at which these Cavs are operating. They didn’t come close in Game 1, and the conference finals’ first 48 minutes didn’t offer much hope for Toronto and its fans that more promising answers would be forthcoming soon.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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