TORONTO — Two teams trying to get to the same place but relying on very different means to get there met at Scotiabank Arena as what promises to be an intensely competitive and compelling NBA regular season got underway in earnest on Wednesday night.
There are probably eight teams in the East that think they are good enough to advance to the conference finals.
The Toronto Raptors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who squared off Wednesday, are two of those teams
The Raptors, in their quest to contend, doubled down on their strong finish from a year ago, and ran their roster back, with a few tweaks.
The visiting Cavs surrendered control of five of their future draft picks, their own first pick from this year and two rotation players for Donovan Mitchell, hoping that adding one more star to their promising core will lift them into contention.
As might be expected on the first of 82, the results could only be inconclusive.
But a hard-nosed 108-105 win over a team that promises to be battling the Raptors for playoff positioning all year?
You have to be happy with that.
And the Raptors especially have to be pleased with how the fourth quarter turned out. Down by eight to start, the Raptors turned to their tried-and-true rotation with their five starters playing almost the entire period, the exception being Pascal Siakam who was burdened with foul trouble. He split his minutes with Precious Achiuwa, another returnee who figured in several of head coach Nick Nurse’s best defensive lineups last season.
The familiarity seemed to pay off, as the Raptors won the decisive quarter 32-21, scoring nine points off five Cleveland turnovers and holding the Cavs to 0-of-6 from deep.
“It feels good to not be teaching on the fly,” said Raptors guard Fred VanVleet, who finished with 15 points — the lowest scoring total among the Raptors starters in a well-rounded attack — and five assists. “We definitely had our share of mistakes. But it was definitely more normal, doing what we wanted to do. Having been in those situations last year, I think there’s some carryover there. Definitely can be better and will need to be better going forward, but we’ll take it. I thought we fought hard, brought great energy. It’s a good start.”
It’s what the Raptors were looking for after staying the course in the off-season: cohesion, familiarity, and a quick start.
“Yeah, it didn’t feel anything like last year just around here in general,” said Nurse, whose club lost its season opener and started 14-17 last year before a roaring finish. “It was, like… people were flying up and down the hallways, everything’s happening and, like, ‘what’s going on?’ You know, they didn’t feel any of that, they were ready. I thought just in general, just their body language and the communication they were having, they were really locked in in the morning prep and as well tonight.”
But the Cavaliers have to be pleased with their early returns on the Mitchell deal. With starting point guard Darius Garland out for the second half after getting poked in the eye, Mitchell had the ball in his hands as much as he wanted it, and Toronto had a hard time keeping him out of the lane. He went off for 31 points and nine assists in his Cleveland debut.
Similarly, Toronto has to be encouraged that one of the trends it bet on carrying over seems like it will.
Siakam’s performance in the second half of last season was the prime mover in the Raptors’ late surge and — having pledged to prove himself as a top-five player — he got off to a strong start against Cleveland. He carried the offence in the second quarter when the Raptors were lagging and were it not for some foul trouble (he eventually was disqualified in the final minute), some iffy free-throw shooting (4-of-8) and shaky finishing by his teammates, his 23-point, 11-rebound and four-steal — he only had one assist — line would have been even more impressive.
“It kind of a little bit like it felt like he could just go get us a bucket [whenever we needed],” said Nurse. “And that was good. It gave us some confidence.”
The Raptors will likely need all they can get from Siakam as they struggled to score most of the game from their half-court offence — an issue for much of last season. According to cleaningtheglass.com, their halfcourt offence generated just 0.857 points per play, which is in the 39th per centile league-wide. They also shot just 11-of-24 at the rim.
They can score in transition though — that hasn’t changed. After the Raptors knocked down four quick threes to start the fourth quarter to pull back from an eight-point deficit to finish the third, it was a gorgeous assist from Siakam to O.G. Anunoby (18 points) that gave the Raptors their first lead of the second half.
Another drive from Anunoby in transition kept things rolling. But a triple from Gary Trent Jr. (19 points) in the corner and a floater from Siakam — both against set defences — put the Raptors up by six with 1:33 to play. It got pretty tense from that point as the Cavs worked their way to the line enough to cut Toronto’s lead to one with 4.5 seconds to play, but Scottie Barnes found a streaking Achiuwa for a dunk to break the Cavs press and put the game on ice.
The Raptors shot 41.9 per cent from the floor and 43.3 per cent from deep as all five starters finished with double figures in scoring. The Cavaliers shot 48.7 per cent from the floor and made 10 threes to Toronto’s 13, which was the difference.
So an encouraging start, which should bode well, and might be considered necessary, given the Raptors face a tough slate of games to open the season and put a lot of off-season emphasis on leveraging their continuity to hit the ground running.
The first step was — in theory — a doozy. Unlike the stand-pat Raptors the Cavaliers went for it this past off-season when mortgaging their future to acquire 26-year-old, three-time all-star Mitchell, teaming him with Garland to give Cleveland an all-star backcourt to go along with their twin tower front court of star sophomore forward Evan Mobley and all-star centre Jarrett Allen.
The Raptors now go to Brooklyn to face the Nets. Then come two on the road in Miami, two at home against the 76ers and the new-look Atlanta Hawks. Not a softie in the bunch.
It wasn’t an elegant season-opening win. But it was a win. They’re going to be hard to come by this season in a tough conference, but the Raptors are 1-0.
“It makes tomorrow a little better, the plane ride a little more fun,” said VanVleet. “But we made our share of mistakes that we need to clean up and the schedule is not getting any easier.”
