Sunday Shootaround

TORONTO — The word floating around the North has been dominate, as in the Cavaliers dominated the Raptors in the first two games of their Eastern Conference semifinal series. The Raps didn’t like that word, naturally. The Cavs wanted no part of it, frankly. But then, what word would suffice in this situation?

Cleveland won the first two games of the series by a total of 33 points and it didn’t even feel that close. Toronto coach Dwane Casey took a different tact heading into Game 3, comparing what his team needed to do to a boxer in a prizefight.

“You work all year to go against the champ in a boxing match,” Casey said. “You train, you hit the heavy bag, and you come out and go to the rope-a-dope instead of throwing a punch. To beat the champ, you have to throw punches. Whether they’re haymakers, undercuts, whatever, maybe a couple below the belt, but you’ve got to box. You’ve got to fight, you’ve got to compete.”

Let the record show that the Raps competed. They didn’t make a three until late in the third quarter when Norm Powell finally drained one from the corner, but they sure as hell competed.

DeMar DeRozan shook off one of the worst games of his career with one of his best. The Raptors hit the boards, limited their turnovers, and went toe-to-toe with the champs for 36 minutes. They did all that without Kyle Lowry, who was out with an ankle injury, and played as if their season was on the line, which it was.

And then it all fell apart in the fourth quarter. Kyle Korver came off the bench and bombed a couple of threes, the Cavs turned up their defense, and a close game became a rout. LeBron James made not one, not two, but three left-handed floaters in between torturing various Raptors.

“We didn’t know if it was going to take 36 minutes or 40 minutes,” James said. “But we knew that if we played our game and paid attention to our details we’d have an opportunity to win the game.”

So, what now?

“It’s about pride,” Casey said, his voice strained and raspy. “Sunday’s game is about pride. You don’t want to get swept.”

Damn.

There will be plenty of time to dissect the Raptors after this series wraps up, but this series was never really about them. It’s about the Cavs and how we try to view them through a normal lens when they are anything but typical.

Even after winning seven straight playoff games, we want to see them challenged in a way that brings out their best. What if this is their best and there’s no one in the East who can match it?

It was, what, three weeks ago when we were wondering if the Cavs could be had in the playoffs. And if anyone was going to do it, the loaded-up Raptors might be the team to do it. At the very least, the Raps looked like the kind of team on paper who might be able to give the Cavs a competitive series. They had wing depth and versatility. They had All-Stars and shooters. They really did! No one was making that up.

The Cavs have taken that paper and wadded it up like so many spitballs to fling back at their detractors. They’ve torn up the Raptors offensively and made them one-dimensional defensively. And now we’re looking at a sweep on Sunday.

“The only thing that’s important is we go out and play our game,” James cautioned. “We don’t need to be thinking about sweep or getting rest. We need to be thinking about doing what we need to do to execute defensively and offensively on Sunday.”

It’s easy to say now with the benefit of hindsight that any all concerns about the Cavs should have been dismissed out of hand, but it also shouldn’t be this obvious. LeBron tilts that calculus more than any other player, but still, it’s not really supposed to be possible to flip the switch and become a juggernaut overnight.

Sure, there are a handful of examples throughout history, but only a handful. The reason those examples stand out is precisely because they are so rare. The Shaq/Kobe Lakers certainly qualify. The 2010 Celtics did all the way to Game 7 of the Finals. They happened to be the last team to eliminate LeBron in the Eastern Conference playoffs and that was seven years ago.

LeBron’s teams haven’t always locked down the top seed, but there has rarely been this level of doubt coming into the playoffs. True contenders may coast through chunks of the regular season, but they generally tend to plug into their chargers well in advance of the postseason and use that boost to sustain them through to the parade. So, how have the Cavs done it?

“I don’t know,” Cleveland coach Ty Lue said. “Just happy to be here.”

Lue’s being too modest, of course. Cleveland has outscored Toronto by 84 points behind the arc and by 26 at the free throw line. Transition isn’t happening and neither are second-chance points. That’s left the mid-range, and while DeRozan thrives in that space, it’s extremely hard to beat anyone when you’re trading contested twos for open threes.

DeRozan was great in Game 3, especially without Lowry on the court, but the Cavs adjusted their defense and threw different looks at him. Lue rolled out a lineup with LeBron, Tristan Thompson, and three reserves that hadn’t played a minute together this season. Thompson’s ability to switch and hang with DeRozan alleviated the need for traps and helped throw DeRozan off his rhythm. Not a bad adjustment, that.

Thompson’s presence also helped unlock Korver, offensively. The Raps were reluctant to switch pindown actions for Korver when it was Thompson setting the screens and that left Korver open for shots. If anything is different about this year’s Cavs it’s the addition of Korver, who adds a Ray Allen-like element to their offensive structure.

“They don’t want to leave him.” Lue said. “That lets LeBron get downhill, get in the paint, and get 15, 16 free throws. That lets Kyrie (Irving) get into the paint. With him on the floor, that adds a different dynamic to our team.”

There are no questions left about Cleveland’s offensive potential. With Korver, Deron Williams, and Channing Frye coming off the bench, the Cavs have shooters everywhere around LeBron, and James takes particular delight in picking apart defenses to set them up for open shots. If you’re going to beat the Cavs, you’re going to have to not only weather those offensive storms, but match them with shotmaking of your own.

It’s on defense where the questions lingered, but this series in particular has helped answer many of them. Lue noted on Saturday that they worked on different coverages and tactics throughout the regular season, but he also chose to keep them in his back pocket for the postseason. Veteran teams get bored. It happens.

“Even when we weren’t defending,” Lue said, “I thought we could win a championship.”

This is what having LeBron on your team does for everyone around them. That includes his opponents who have entered series after series believing this time could really be different. No one understands that better than Korver, who had suffered three separate playoff defeats against LeBron teams.

“I was in Utah, we lost to the Lakers every year,” Korver said. “Eastern Conference — Chicago, Atlanta — we lost to LeBron every year, whether it was Miami or here. So it’s nice to be on the other side.”