CLEVELAND — White dress shirt, white sports jacket, white bowtie, white three-quarter-length dress shorts, white socks, and a pair of his own signature basketball shoes. Whether or not they were the same pair James Harden wore 45 minutes earlier during the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 126-113 Game 1 win over the Toronto Raptors is unknown.
What we do know is that it takes a certain kind of superstar to have the confidence to make an outfit like this work on an overcast and rainy Cleveland spring day. And
Harden is exactly that kind of star. The kind that the Cavs have needed in their last few postseason runs.
Being able to dictate the terms of a series doesn’t mean that you’ll win it. It does, however, force the other team to beat you at your own game.
The Cavs were able to do that in Game 1. They kept the Raptors from running in the open court and forced them to outscore them in the half-court. And you have to be well oiled machine in the half-court if you’re going to beat a Harden-led team that way. The Raptors are not.
Harden made the difference here.
There are All-Star caliber players, and then there’s ones who’s precense cause the entire defense to shift. Every time Harden had the ball, the defense needed to adjust to account for what he could do. Whether it was sending players his way in the pick-and-roll or simply shading over to hopefully cut off his pathways to the hoop, the Raptors were aware of where he was on the court at all times.
“It’s the thing that makes everything click,” head coach Kenny Atkinson said about Harden. “He gets us clicking. It’s like a quarterback that’s super accurate. He’s just kind of picking them apart with short passes.”
That opened everything up for his teammates. Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley didn’t have the gaudiest scoring totals, but they were incredibly efficient. Six of the duo’s 11 combined field goals were assisted by Harden.
The Raptors don’t have an easy way of stopping the Harden pick-and-roll.
Jakob Poeltl is more of a drop big in the pick-and-roll. Like most centers, he doesn’t have the footspeed to be at the level of the screen. Because of this, Cleveland decided to start these actions much higher than the top of the arc, just a few paces inside half court. This forced the defense to guard more space, and that meant there was more room for the offense to attack.
When the defense shifted over to contain the Harden drive, he was able to dump it off to one of the bigs.
And if they gave Harden an alley, he was able to float it in for a basket over the top.
Toronto’s best counter was to send extra help into the paint and force the ball to swing outside. But that invites a whole different problem with the Cavs’ shooters.
The extra attention Harden demands also created driving lanes for Donovan Mitchell.
Mitchell’s ability to get downhill is what makes him a star. In the past, we’ve seen teams load up inside to make it difficult for him to finish in the paint. This strategy doesn’t completely stop Mitchell, but it can begin to wear him down, as we saw late in the Game 2 loss to the Indiana Pacers last season.
The Raptors tried to make Mitchell finish through bodies inside, but that task is much more difficult to do when your attention is split elsewhere. Mitchell finished with 32 points, which included going 7-13 on shots in the paint and having seven attempts at the free-throw line. It was the ninth straight time Mitchell has opened a series with 30 or more points in Game 1.
“It’s his job,” Harden said. “That’s what he gets paid the big bucks for.”
Mitchell has changed his offensive philosophy for the regular season. Instead of trying to get to the basket as much as he can, he’s opted instead for floaters in the lane to save his body for the postseason. But getting to the rim like this was always the plan for the playoffs.
“[I’m just trying] to continue to put pressure on teams,” Mitchell said. “That’s where I feel like I thrive, and making the defense have to react to that.”
The pairing between Mitchell and Harden feels comfortable in the playoffs. It was only one game — and not a particularly close one at that — but the duo did a good job of playing off of each other. That’s made possible because of the willingness each has to cede control to the other.
“We understand that,” Harden said when asked about Mitchell’s scoring. “So our job is to just go out there and fulfill the roles and do other things to impact the game. If he got it going, he’s going to give you 40, 50 (points). I think for us it’s just finding other ways.”
Max Strus changed the game with his scoring. He helped cap off a first-quarter run that saw the Cavs turn a five-point deficit into a four-point advantage by scoring five points in the final 25 seconds. He then poured in eight points at the start of the third quarter to help the Cavs turn a seven-point advantage into a 22-point one.
Strus is a streaky shooter. He had it going on Saturday afternoon as he poured in 24 points on 8-10 shooting, which included going 4-6 from three.
As good as the shooting was, Strus brings much more than that. If he makes shots, it’s a “bonus” according to Harden. The leadership that Strus provides and his ability to do the little things that impact winning are what make him invaluable. And it wasn’t always a guarantee that he’d be able to provide it, given the injuries he was dealing with throughout the season.
“One thing I learned is to never doubt that man,” Mitchell said. “He’s put the time and put the work in. … There was no doubt he was going to come back and make an impact.”
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The transition defense was excellent.
The Cavs spent the lead-up to the series talking about how they need to match the Raptors’ speed. Toronto came into this game taking the third-most shots in transition in the league. You wouldn’t have known that if you just watched them here.
The Cavs were able to do this by hustling back in transition, stopping the ball in the open court, occasionally attacking the offensive glass, limiting turnovers, and generating clean offense. This all led to Toronto finishing with just three fast-break points. That’s nearly 16 points less than their season-long average.
The Raptors don’t have the firepower or the shot profile to easily hang with the Cavs.
Before the game, Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković talked about wanting to have his team continue to stick to their identity going up against a group that shoots as well as the Cavs. “We cannot be changing, and we don’t want to be changing at this stage.”
That’s fair, and could be the correct game plan, but the Raptors don’t have the offensive weapons to stay in a game the Cavs are taking and making threes like this. That’s true even when the Raptors hit 48.1% of their own threes. The Raptors just aren’t taking enough looks from the outside.
The most efficient places to score on the court are the rim, free-throw line, and from beyond the arc. The Cavs did those things incredibly well. Cleveland took 42% of their shots at the rim (89th percentile) and 36% of their shots from three (36th percentile). Meanwhile, the Raptors split their shots evenly between the rim, midrange, and beyond the arc. That includes taking 13% of their shots between 14 feet and the three-point line (91st percentile).
The Cavs were hitting their threes — and that’s worth acknowledging — but it’s difficult to keep up with your opponent in most circumstances when the shots you’re forced into taking are simply much harder.
The pathway forward for the Raptors is more difficult than simply making more shots. They have to either change where they’re taking them or keep the Cavs from getting to their spots.
Despite how lopsided this game felt, the series isn’t over yet.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Harden said. “Our job is to stay in the moment and take one game at a time. … Things happen fast. Our job is to focus on what we can do better, watch film tomorrow, and then come out in Game 2 and be ready to go.”
