How the Raptors melted down against the Cavaliers AGAIN

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors’ Game 1 on Tuesday was a case study in bad-but-riveting basketball. Cleveland won 113-112 in overtime, and for anyone who stayed long enough to watch it happen, it was because the game was a train wreck that you couldn’t look away from.

Toronto led the entire game — literally, the Cavaliers didn’t take their first lead until the opening possession of overtime. You can guess that the Raptors’ postseason history will come into play here, where the team has frequently underperformed and struggled even after great regular season performances.

And, you know ... they should have won. At one point halfway through the overtime period, Toronto had missed fifteen of their last sixteen shots. The offense was bogged down, shooters looked hesitant, and all the playoff fears that Toronto had came roaring back.

Let’s just run through all the highlights.

By the rulebook, this is a foul. You can’t undercut a shooter when he’s coming down from a shot.

It made people mad, as you can see from the tweet’s caption. It was pretty unlucky, too. But it was a foul, and Ibaka made all three free throws to push the lead to 105-101 with less than two minutes to play. For a second, it looked like that might be enough for Toronto to hold onto their very perilous lead down the stretch.

The first was a layup, and the second was this absurd fadeaway.

James is still the very good basketball man.

I have no words. This is Toronto, Toronto-ing.

This probably would have been a game-winner if one of these shots had fallen, but none did. (The Cavaliers would have had at least one chance with about a second or two left, but still.)

We all thought this was going down.

It seemed like the referees should have added time back onto the clock, and didn’t. If James knew he had a full second to get this shot off, not just 0.6, then I bet he drains it. He had to rush the jumper, and I’m fairly certain that’s why it clanked off iron.

After going up early in the overtime period with great ball movement and a couple huge three-pointers from Kyle Korver and J.R. Smith, the Cavaliers completely blew their chance to ice the game. With 16 seconds remaining, James misses a step-through two-pointer, one that he had to force up over terrific defense with the shot clock expiring. His pick-and-roll with Korver started too late and didn’t generate any great offensive action, and Toronto lucked out by the play resulting in a shot clock violation.

Toronto often closed games with VanVleet during the regular season, and he was an enormous part of their league-best bench mob. But this was an open, makable shot, one that VanVleet just rimmed out.

It was a ridiculous game, one filled with questionable decisions and calls. Somehow, James and the Cavaliers walked away with a win. This series is totally going to seven games, isn’t it? It won’t be good, but we’ll love every second of it.