Recap: Cavs 116, Raptors 112 (Or, Getting things fixed in the six)

Overview:

The Cavaliers snapped a three-game losing streak with a 116-112 win over the Toronto Raptors, who had won six games in a row coming into Monday night’s game. LeBron James led all scorers with 34 points, and Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving added a combined 62 points for the Cavaliers.

The Breakdown:

Definitely not a perfect game from the Cavaliers, but I’ll take it, considering the form both teams had been in coming into Monday night.

This team still isn’t playing championship-level defense, or anything close to it, and the half-court sets weren’t as sharp as they have been at times this season. Still, the Cavs were able to tighten up their turnovers, hit shots, and win the battle on the glass, and that was enough for them to get out of Toronto with a much-needed win.

Let’s start with Kevin Love, who finished with 28 points and 14 rebounds while going 0-1 from inside the paint. (That’s gotta be pretty rare, right?) He looked really comfortable finding his spots and getting into his shots offensively. He didn’t force anything, slipped out where he needed to be to create the angle for the ballhandler to find him, and knocked down the open looks he got. It’s an obvious point to make, but when Love hits those open looks, the starting unit becomes all but unguardable. Just as importantly, Love and Tristan Thompson were everywhere on the glass, which had become a major problem for the Cavs over the course of their three-game skid.

When Love makes those early shots, it helps because made shots count for points, and the team with the most points wins when the game is over. That’s the obvious benefit. The other benefit is that Love seems to get a little more patient when he makes those jumpers, and doesn’t slow things down when he’s the featured player. When Love is pressing and trying to get himself involved this season, he tends to reverse pivot, stare at his defender’s forehead, and shoot an 18-footer directly over him, which is not good offense. Very glad to have not seen that on Monday.

Talking about LeBron — he did seem to have a greater sense of urgency in this game, especially offensively. He was making his move before passing the ball and creating the look himself rather than trying to do it all with the pass, and he paid more attention to detail, only turning the ball over once all game. Considering how bad his turnovers were getting during the losing streak, that was a promising sight. Honestly, the headline is that he came out in “I am the best player in the freaking world and we are not losing this game” mode instead of “passing is so much fun, and aren’t sports really about fun?” mode.

Still, there were some worrisome elements. I’m officially off my “JUST FEED LEBRON IN THE POST” hobby horse for the time being, because he flat-out has not been making shots off of post-ups this season. Sometimes he draws a hard double and creates an open shot on the perimeter, but as often as not, he lets the soft double get into position, which gives the defense time to recover to an open shooter, and he’s rarely just flat-out punishing his defender on the block. He had one nice spin move on Terrence Ross from the mid-post for an and-1 on Monday, but that sight is becoming much too rare.

Additionally, I still feel like LeBron has a case of Donyell Marshall fever this season, even on the fast-break. Open corner threes are nice, but LeBron isn’t the four-time MVP, three-time Finals MVP, and 5th-highest average scorer in the history of the NBA because he gets guys open corner threes — it’s because he’s an undeniable force of nature when he gets a step and decides to go to the rim. Like I said earlier, I was glad he was calling his own number and making things happen more this game than in previous games, but I’d still like to see him a little more willing to get ugly when he gets all 260 pounds of himself into that restricted area. I’m not the one up in the air near that rim, and LeBron was just 8-15 in the paint tonight, but a team with the most unstoppable rim attacker of all time shouldn’t be living and dying by the three to this degree.

As for Kyrie (my main breakdown is going to be on the big 3, because they accounted for virtually all the Cavalier offense tonight), I’ve accepted that he’s never going to be the type of point guard I want him to be, but dear lord is he a deadly shot-maker this season. What’s interesting is how him and LeBron attack help defense in equally effective but completely opposite ways — when LeBron gets past the first defender, he’s going to go straight at the help and either get all the way to the rim or pass to the open man when the help defender commits to LeBron, while Kyrie is perhaps the best guy in the league at punishing help defenders for giving him space to pull up and drain a jumper, which is probably the greatest deficiency in LeBron’s game. Also, Kyrie had a play in the first quarter where he picked up his dribble, made a move like he was going to throw a baseball-style bounce pass to Love, pulled it back directly into a jump shot, and drained the three while his defender was trying to play the pass Kyrie had faked. I’ve never seen that exact move before. This dude can play.

Defensively, it wasn’t a terrible game, but there were some issues. The strategy when the Cavs play the Raptors is “let Patrick Patterson shoot as much as he wants,” and it has worked well so far — a lot better than it should, honestly, but that guy just cannot seem to put together a decent game against the Cavaliers. The Raptors made 40% of their threes, which looks bad on paper, but a lot of those were pretty well contested shots off the dribble, particularly from Terrence Ross, and one of them was a late-clock three from Kyle Lowry from freaking Winnipeg.

The big issue was how easy of a time DeMar DeRozan had — he finished with 31, and they weren’t coming on his signature midrange shots. (He finished 5-14 from outside 10 feet, and 3 of those makes were assisted.) He had way too easy of a time getting to the basket for layups and floaters and drawing fouls. J.R. going out early hurts there, but that’s something you simply can’t have happen. If DeRozan was feeling it from midrange, the Cavs could easily be on a four-game losing streak. At some point, I have to accept that this is a team that is counting on their ability to flip the switch defensively in the late rounds of the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Stray Notes:

Big story coming out of this game is probably J.R.’s injury. For now, it looks like initial X-Rays were negative, but he’s heading back to Cleveland for additional testing and “had been favoring the knee for a while,” according to Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com. On the macro level, this is a concern, because J.R. has had knee issues before and has played a LOT of NBA basketball for a man his age, and is in year one of his contract. That’s for another post, though.

Tonight, J.R.’s replacement was DeAndre Liggins. Mike Dunleavy got a few minutes, but Lue seems to have lost confidence in him, Kay Felder didn’t dress for the game, and Jordan McCrae is Jordan McCrae. In Liggins’ first big-time minutes, it would appear that his game consists of “let your man run you off the three-point line off the drive-and-kick, go towards the basket, and hope something good happens.” The offensive spacing when he was out there was less than ideal. Still, he did slingshot in the one corner three he did take, and he was long enough defensively to acquit himself well against Lowry.

I’d obviously like to see the adjustment be to have Shumpert take J.R.’s spot in the starting lineup and have Kay Felder The God get an extended look as the backup PG, because Shumpert’s court vision running the second unit has been ugly while his shot-making has been fantastic, and Kay Felder is my favorite human being, but I did just spend a lot of time complaining about the team’s defense, and Felder hasn’t looked ready to overcome his size in his last few appearances, so I understand the move for now. For now. Eventually, Ty Lue, you will give me Kay Felder.

How about Richard Jefferson blocking Cavs: The Blog favorite son Jonas Valanciunas? (WE STILL LOVE YOU JONAS. WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU.) RJ seems to be finding his groove again on both ends, and considering the J.R. injury, the timing couldn’t be better.

Favorite sequence of the game: LeBron gets the rebound, pushes it, and ends up in a 2-on-1 fast break with Irving on the other side of the court and a terrified DeMarre Carroll backpedaling. LeBron throws it to Kyrie, who stops at the three-point line and misses a pull-up three. LeBron looks at him, and, using gestures that were clear to television watchers, says “What are you doing? You’re supposed to give that back to me for an alley-oop. I am really good at jumping!” (I am not making a joke. He mimed the ball coming to him and him dunking.) A few possessions later, Kyrie was pushing it on the break with a defender on his shoulder, and instead of taking his chances on a layup, slung a beautiful left-handed bounce pass to a trailing LeBron for a layup. That’s the good chemistry, folks. See y’all later, campers.