If you were to draw up the worst-case scenario for the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 — that didn’t involve injuries — it’d look pretty similar to what we saw. The Cavs couldn’t keep control of the ball, had awful games from their star backcourt, missed clean looks, and weren’t putting up good contests on three-point shots.
This all came to a head in the fourth quarter when the Toronto Raptors ran them off the floor. They outscored Cleveland 43-23 in the final frame to cruise to a lopsided 126-104
victory to trim their deficit in the series to 2-1.
Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson has consistently talked about wanting to win the possession battle. To do that, you need to take care of the basketball. The Cavs simply didn’t do that.
Cleveland turned it over 20 times, which accounted for 22.9% of their possessions (2nd percentile). This led to 23 points for Toronto.
James Harden was the worst offender. He coughed it up eight times, which included six in the second half when the game was getting away.
The Cavs have gone as Harden has offensively. He’s been at the center of their resurgence on that end to close the season. And when things go wrong — as they did on Thursday — he deserves the blame.
The Raptors made cutting off lanes to the basket a priority — especially when Harden drove. They completely sucked into the paint to close avenues for Harden to score or pass inside. Given how switchable and how much length Toronto has at the wing, this led to turnovers.
Just look at how crowded the lane is on some of these drives.
Atkinson mentioned that the spacing wasn’t great, which led to some of the miscues. Part of that is due to the clunkiness of playing two non-shooting bigs. Part of that is due to not having a good offensive process.
A situation like the one below, where everyone is below the free-throw line, and four are either in the paint or one step removed, is only going to end one way.
Collapsing this hard made it difficult for the guards to score inside.
None of Harden’s 13 shots came in the restricted area, while only three were in the paint. Meanwhile, Donovan Mitchell took just three of his 16 shots at the rim and only seven in the paint in total. That all led to no free-throw attempts for Mitchell and six for Harden.
It’s difficult to keep Cleveland’s guards from getting to the basket, even when you’re making a concerted effort to do so. The Raptors deserve a ton of credit for this. All five defenders were competing hard, communicating, and executing the game plan at a high level. This included Scottie Barnes, who was hands down the best player on both sides of the ball.
Additionally, the Raptors did a good job of making Harden and Mitchell work when they didn’t have the ball. They weren’t allowing easy catches above the arc, and denied them the ball whenever they could.
At the same time, playing this way is incredibly risky. Toronto’s entire game plan was predicated on the hope that the Cavs, particularly their guards, would miss wide-open threes, and that’s exactly what they did.
Mitchell went 1-7 for deep. Many of those were clean looks that he got through pull-ups or from spotting up.
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Harden went 3-10, and it was much the same story. Toronto went under on screens to cut off the drives to the hoop that were so effective in the first two games of the series.
Collapsing the paint this aggressively lends itself to open catch-and-shoot threes as well. Some made the most of those opportunities, like Max Strus (4-8) and Jaylon Tyson (3-6). Others couldn’t, such as Dean Wade (1-4) and Evan Mobley (0-4).
As a team, the Cavs went 14-45 from three (31.1%). Those looks accounted for 50% of their shots (94th percentile).
While it’s easy to say the Cavs should’ve gone inside more, they’re a good three-point shooting team. If you’re going to get that many open looks for your best players, you simply need to knock them down.
It’s a make-or-miss league, and the Cavs missed.
The Raptors were the opposite.
They didn’t generate many threes, but they knocked down the ones they took. They also hit 14 triples, but needed 21 fewer attempts to hit that number as they converted 61% of their looks. This included RJ Barrett going 6-8 and Jamison Battle connecting all four of his looks.
One of Toronto’s biggest disadvantages is the fact that their offense comes from much less efficient places on the floor. The three best spots to score from are at the rim, the free-throw line, and from three.
The Raptors were an efficient offense in Game 3, but in a somewhat roundabout way.
Toronto converted just 50% of their looks at the rim (5th percentile), had a free-throw rate in the 17th percentile, and took less than a quarter of their shots from three (2nd percentile). However, that didn’t matter because of how well they shot from three, and the fact that they connected on 62.5% of their midrange shots (96th percentile).
Once again, the Cavs kept the Raptors from really hurting them in transition, despite how many turnovers they committed. Toronto was in the second percentile for points added in transition and had just nine fast-break points. That’s impressive given how much the Raptors emphasize playing fast.
The Cavs’ defense wasn’t perfect. The looks they gave up from deep were clean, and they overall didn’t play with the sense of urgency you’d like to see. At the same time, the Raptors executed a very difficult game plan to absolute perfection.
Cleveland’s rotations should be shrunk.
The minutes distribution feels off. Tyson played well and provided exactly what the Cavs needed physically in this matchup, but was limited to less than 16 minutes. There’s no excuse for that happening, especially given how this hasn’t been a favorable matchup for either Dennis Schroder or Keon Ellis.
It’s time for Atkinson to go away from the 10-man rotation.
The Cavs’ lack of fight in the fourth quarter was a problem.
Letting go of the rope while up 2-0 in the first road game of a series isn’t exactly something new. Teams that we consider good and mentally tough can do so. We even saw the Indiana Pacers — a team that never let go of the rope last season — do so at home when they had a 2-0 lead on the Cavs last spring.
At the same time, the Cavs haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt. They’ve consistently shown a lack of fight when things get difficult in the playoffs. That cropped up again as they completely folded in the fourth quarter after continually battling back through the first three quarters to make it a two-point game heading into the final frame.
That said, there isn’t a reason to panic for the Cavs, at least not yet.
Any playoff loss is a cause for concern to some degree. The Cavs have been upset too many times in the Mitchell era to take anything for granted. But there’s not a lot from this game that feels repeatable from Toronto’s perspective.
The margin for error is considerably smaller for a team that plays the way Toronto does. Where they get their offense from puts them at a disadvantage. If they can’t get out in transition — like the Cavs have kept them from doing — they need to rely on hitting inefficient midrange shots and canning a good portion of the limited threes they take.
As an example, Toronto scored 18 more points from three than they would have if they shot their season-long average from three. That was more than the margin of victory (which speaks to how poorly things went in the fourth quarter), but also shows how much of an outlier this performance was. Can you reasonably rely on making that many jumpers in three of the next four games?
On the other end, Toronto had the right game plan defensively. You can’t let the Cavs have their cake and eat it too. Preventing Mitchell and Harden from wreaking havoc inside is a win, and it speaks to how well Toronto’s defense was.
That said, you can’t take everything away. The Cavs missed so many open three-point looks and turned it over an uncharacteristic amount. It feels like at least one of those things would need to continue if the Raptors are going to steal this.
Anything can happen in a short series. Trends that wouldn’t last over 82 games can produce unexpected results in a seven-game sample. So yes, maybe this is a formula that Toronto can use to win three of the next four games. But I’ll need to see it work out again before putting my faith in it.
