TORONTO – Here’s a scary thought for fans of the Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Raptors themselves: what if the NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers are getting better?
What if LeBron James isn’t slowing down at age 31, but in a near perfect state where his physical tools remain second to none, while his basketball acumen only continues to grow and evolve?
What if in the not too distant future the Raptors and the rest of the Eastern Conference end up having to bend their brains to try and game plan for an NBA MVP not named James but Kyrie Irving, their 24-year-old point guard who hit the winner in Game 7 of his first NBA Finals?
The Raptors like to think of themselves as a team ascending and did their best to push to prove it as they hosted the most anticipated second game of their regular season in franchise history.
After years of never being on U.S. network television, ESPN was in the house before Halloween.
Toronto put on a show even if it lost 94-91, a game that went down to the wire when it didn’t look like it would. After trailing by as many as 12 points in the first half they pulled within four to start the fourth quarter and had it tied 88-88 with three minutes left on a twisting, turning DeMar DeRozan lay-up – one more in a collection of them as he added 32 points to his opening night 40, becoming the first Raptor in history to score 30 or more points in consecutive games to start the season.
The Raptors had a couple of weapons at their disposal they didn’t have last year as they battled the Cavs in the playoffs. One was a healthy DeMarre Carroll, who was the point man on a team defensive approach that held James to a fairly modest (for him) 21 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. The other was Jonas Valanciunas, who missed the Eastern Conference Finals with an ankle injury and bulled his way to 10 points and 17 rebounds in 31 minutes.
And DeRozan is rolling. He tied it at 91-91 with just over a minute left with a thundering dunk over Tristan Thompson. But the attempt at league-wide message sending stalled there, and guess who made sure?
The Cavaliers still have James. And now they have Irving. It was James who fought his way into the paint before pitching back to Irving for his fifth triple that gave Cleveland a 94-91 lead with 44 seconds left.
“I was trying to make a move for myself and get into the seams, but once I saw the defence collapse I know where my guy was going to be,” said James. “I know he’s a big time player, it’s a big time moment and he knocked it down.”
The Raptors had a couple of chances but Kyle Lowry (17 points on 16 shots, with four assists) couldn’t finish a tough lay-up and Pat Patterson missed a good look from three that could have tied it with less than five seconds left.
Still, considering the last two times these two teams met the Cavaliers won by 38 and 26 to end their season, it was progress.
But one result doesn’t obscure the larger point. The Raptors still have a considerable obstacle in their path if they hope to improve on what they achieved a year ago.
For six consecutive years James’ teams have been the rock the rest of the Eastern Conference is collectively trying to push up the hill in search of post-season glory. Every year the rock rolls down on top of them and James is the last man standing.
The second game of the regular season is too early for anyone to be measuring themselves against anything. But as Eastern Conference finalists from a year ago, the Raptors’ obvious short-term goal is to become an NBA finalist and with the Cavaliers in town it’s an obvious place for the discussion to go.
The problem is the natural tendency is to look at the Cavaliers, look at their rings and figure they’ve peaked, that they’re sitting still waiting for the world to catch up to them. The problem is the Cavaliers have no intention of slowing down.
When you’ve played 199 playoff games, been to seven NBA Finals and won three championships in 13 years, you get good at seeing the big picture. As far as James is concerned a regular season game against the Raptors in October is a very small part of the big picture.
“It’s another game for us in the sense of how we continue to get better,” said James. “We’ve got to continue to work on habits. We’ve only had one game so far as well as the Raps. It’s a good test in this environment, not to see where we are — it’s too early in the season, one game, two games into the season. Just to continue to work on habits and work the process that we’re going through.”
Worth remembering: for the past two years since James returned to Cleveland the Cavaliers have been one of the most tumultuous teams in the league. The first season James teamed with Irving and Kevin Love there were questions about roles, coaching and lots of injuries. The second season there was more of that and the firing of David Blatt mid-season in what may or may not have been a James-driven coup to install friend and confidante Tyronn Lue on the bench.
They got through it all last spring, roaring through the East before authoring their improbable comeback from down 3-1 against the Golden State Warriors.
With a big gaudy ring on their finger the Cavaliers can now simply focus on repeating the formula that worked a year ago, only this time they have the benefit of knowing it works and a full training camp and 82 regular season games under Lue to hone it.
Could the Cavaliers be getting better?
“We’re not standing still. We’re growing,” said James. “We have veterans, we have young guys we have great coaching staff that puts us in position to be successful. We know the Raptors are going to be a very good team, they brought their nucleus back to their team, but for us we want to continue to push forward. This is year three for us and we want to continue to build.”
The Raptors have improved every year under head coach Dwane Casey. Riding their all-star backcourt of Lowry and DeRozan, they have made a place for themselves among the NBA’s better franchises. A return trip to the Eastern Conference Finals is there for the taking.
The only problem with LeBron James and the Cavaliers likely waiting for them if they get there is where to go next.
