CLEVELAND, Ohio – He almost got his wish.
Before his team took the floor against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday Darko Rajakovic only had one expectation above others: Play with urgency.
The Raptors arrived on the shores of Lake Erie in good form having won three of their previous four games, two straight, and all with the kind of offensive panache that can cause a team to begin to feel themselves a little bit.
There was a team dinner on Saturday night, a chance to sleep in on a chilly, rainy morning when the team’s morning shootaround was made optional. The vibes were good.
But that only lasts as long as winning does, and Cleveland – even as they’ve been struggling to find their rhythm so far this season due to injuries – represented a stiff test.
“We need a lot of urgency,” said Rajakovic. “We won the last two games, we played well against Chicago [in a blowout win Friday], and we cannot get satisfied with that. You know, we came over here we want to stay hungry and at the same time, stay humble. We’ve got to go out there and really be the team that wants it more.”
It’s not clear which team wanted it more – it was a competitive, hard-played game to the final horn in what ended up a 105-102 win by Cleveland that was decided in crunch time by some impressive late-game offensive execution by the Cavs and some superior bench production – or lack thereof from the Raptors – prior to that.
Toronto hung tough. After trailing by as many as eight midway through the fourth quarter, a triple by Dennis Schroder on a nice pass by OG Anunoby pulled the Raptors to within a point with 15 seconds left before the Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell hit a pair of free throws with 9.6 seconds left to put Cleveland back up by three. A well-defended three-point attempt by Gary Trent Jr. – he was trapped in the corner with seven-foot Jarrett Allen draped all over him – ended with him stepping out of bounds and that was that.
The Cavs got lay-ups or dunks on four straight scores in the final three minutes including an almost indefensible alley-oop from Allen to fellow seven-footer Evan Mobley and a buzzer-beating drive by Darius Garland that put Cleveland up by four with 21 seconds to play.
But the Raptors felt the game slipped away before that.
“It felt we were in control of the game but there were some hustle plays in the third and fourth quarter that went their way that really shouldn’t happen to us,” said Raptors centre Jakob Poeltl, who finished with season highs of 18 points and 13 rebounds in a season-high 35 minutes. “And that’s how you lose a close game.”
Going 20-of-29 from the free throw line doesn’t help either. The Raptors are 28th in the NBA in free throw percentage at 72.7 per cent.
“We have to step on the line and make shots,” said Rajakovic. “Guys are trying and putting work in, I believe we’ll be able to get it where we want to get it.”
The loss dropped Toronto to 8-9 as they head to Brooklyn on Tuesday while Cleveland improved to 9-8. The Raptors had six players with at least 11 points and none with more than Poeltl’s 18. Pascal Siakam had 18 but was 7-of-17 from the floor with four turnovers as he seemed bothered by the Cavaliers’ length in the paint. Scottie Barnes had one of his more understated games of the season as he finished with 15 points and eight rebounds but was 5-of-15 from the floor and -20 for the game, a reflection of the minutes he spent playing with the Raptors bench unit to little effect.
In general, Toronto struggled to score, wasting a good defensive effort of their own. Cavs star Donovan Mitchell was bothered into a 4-of-17 shooting night thanks to the efforts mainly of OG Anunoby, but Cleveland got 24 points and eight assists from their other all-star guard, Garland, while Max Strus – signed as a free agent to shore up the Cavs shooting, exploded for all 20 of his points in the third quarter.
The Raptors’ urgency – not to mention their attention to detail – began waning in the second half and in the early part of the fourth quarter especially as Cleveland began to wrest control away from Toronto. As good an indication as any were a pair of offensive rebounds by little-used Cavaliers veteran Tristan Thompson who – having already out-muscled Pascal Siakam for a putback score late in the third – won a loose ball battle with Barnes to set up a triple by Caris LeVert that put Cleveland up by seven with 11 minutes to play and brought the crowd at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse to its feet in appreciation for the ‘old’ man hustle. Thompson scored again on another offensive rebound he won over Jakob Poeltl. It was an inspiring seven minutes by the 32-year-old who was almost out of basketball last season.
“He’s done this for a long time and he’s a good offensive rebounder,” Poeltl said. “We were aware of that, but we just got to put a body on him in those situations … the fact of the matter is he got a few offensive rebounds that really put life into their game.”
By the time Thompson went back to the bench, the Cavs were up by seven. The Raptors could only wish they could get that kind of bench production as most of their swoons – a lull to start the second quarter and especially midway through the third and crossing over the fourth – coincided with Rajakovic trying to cobble together bench-heavy lineups, a task even more difficult when point guard Dennis Schroder had to sit a long stretch after picking up a fourth foul.
It was all part of a second-half turnaround as Cleveland had overcome a 10-point Raptors lead thanks largely to Strus.
“We did a good job on him in the first half,” said Rajakovic. “Everything started on a baseline out-of-bounds, we lost him, and he got a three there and he got going after that.”
The Raptors were missing anyone who seemed ready to respond and the by-committee approach that had worked well in the first half began to flounder. Toronto couldn’t find their rhythm offensively from anywhere as they shot 41.6 per cent from the floor, 8-of-32 from the three-point line and – in what has become a disturbing pattern – a miserable 20-of-29 from the foul line.
Cleveland shot 46.4 per cent and 10-of-31 from three after going just 3-of-16 in the first half.
The Raptors’ offence has thrived recently against some of the weaker defensive teams in the league and while Cleveland ranked 15th coming into Sunday, they were the top defensive team in the league a season ago as they won 51 games and earned the fourth seed in the East before being upset in the first round of the playoffs by the New York Knicks.
But against the Cavs, the ball movement magic ran cold. Toronto finished with just 17 assists, breaking a franchise-record streak of 12 games with at least 25 assists.
The Raptors certainly did their part in the first half to play with the kind of energy that has helped fuel their recent play, and in so doing, met the pre-game expectations of their coach.
Toronto led 28-25 after the first quarter after an opening 12 minutes that was borderline textbook stuff: Six different players scored, none with more than six points and Toronto had eight assists on 13 made field goals.
Toronto made another push in the second quarter after Garland capped a 13-0 Cleveland run with a pair of triples that put Cleveland up by six. But Toronto got threes from Barnes, Anunoby, and Trent Jr. as part of an 18-0 run in response that put Toronto up by 12 on the way to a 52-42 lead at the half.
But their first-half urgency could only take them so far and the good vibes the Raptors arrived with in Cleveland will have to be re-established the hard way – on the floor – as they head to Brooklyn.
But their first-half urgency could only take them so far.
