Recap: Cavs 108, Raptors 100 (Or, The Time A Dinosaur Beat The Raptors)

(Photo Courtesy of oldpeopleinhats.com)

Overview:

In a high-scoring game, the Cavs dispatched the Raptors 108-100. LeBron James had a final line of 28/9/11, and Mo Williams added 22 points and 10 assists. The Cavs held the Raptors to 17 points in the final 15 minutes of play to seal the win.

Cavs-Related Bullets:

-The big matchup to watch in this one was how well the Cavs’ Shaq-led froncourt would fare against the speedier, perimeter-oriented bigs of the Raptors. In the Cavs’ first meeting with the Raptors, Toronto absolutely whooped the Cavs whenever Shaq was on the floor. The Raptors outscored the Cavs by 25 points in the 25 minutes Shaq played, and made him look silly on both ends of the floor.

Rather than trying to adjust his lineups for this game, Mike Brown accepted the mismatches and played Shaq for 24 minutes. The result was an offensive slugfest, with each team exploiting mismatches for easy baskets. Shaq finished with a minus-5 on the night, but let’s look at Shaq’s first and last stretches in context:

First Lineup: Shaq/Hickson/LBJ/AP/Mo, 12:00 – 7:05, Q1

Shaq is able to get deep position on Bargnani and gets the passes inside for two easy layups. On defense, Shaq starts the game on Chris Bosh. Bosh drains a mid-range jumper, sets DeMar DeRozan up for a layup, and beats Shaq for a tip-in in the opening stretch. Even worse, Bosh is able to draw Shaq away from the rim. This leaves JJ Hickson on an island against Bargnani, who gets two layups of his own in the first five minutes.

After five minutes of nobody playing effective defense on either end, the score is 14-12 Toronto, and Shaq takes his first rest.

Last Lineup: Shaq/Varejao/LBJ/Delonte/Mo, 5:58-0:34, Q4

Before Shaq enters the game, the Cavs have become stagnant offensively, scoring four points in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. The team feeds Shaq on the left block, runs a split, and Shaq finds Mo Williams open in the short corner for a line-drive three. On the next possession, LeBron finds Andy in transition for a layup. The next time down, the team again sets up Shaq on the left block, and LeBron gets an uncontested dunk off a dribble handoff. With 3:05 to play, LeBron finds Shaq under the basket for an easy dunk. The Cavs have stretched their lead from one to six, and they hold onto that lead for the remainder of the game.

This is the reality of Shaq on the Cavs. No one way to use Shaq properly has emerged for the Cavs this season, but he has given the team an extra dimension. He does take things off of the table for the Cavs at times. Tonight, Shaq had a lot of trouble dealing with the speed of the Raptors, and got caught making slow rotations a number of times. Sometimes, the ball stops when Shaq gets the ball 10 feet out and tries one of his flat running hooks. Other times, Shaq will hurt the spacing of the offense.

However, sometimes Shaq will neutralize the production of another team’s post-up threat. Sometimes, he’s better off being used at the beginning of the quarter to get the Cavs in the bonus and wear down the other team inside, then sitting late as the Cavs close out with a more athletic lineup. Tonight, it turned out Shaq helped the most by closing the game out. The more flexible Mike Brown is with how he uses the Big Fella, the more effective he becomes.

-One last Shaq note: of Shaq’s seven made field goals against Toronto, six were assisted.

-In LeBron news, he went off for 28/9/11 with a 58.3% TS%, added three blocks and three steals, and nearly made me tear my hair out.

LeBron was 8-8 from inside of 10 feet, and equivalent of 12-12 from the line when you factor in his two and-1s. That’s 28 points on 14 attempts from inside. LeBron was also 0-10 from outside of 10 feet, including 0-7 on threes. He missed five jumpers in the fourth quarter. He missed bad looks, good looks, red looks, blue looks.

There’s a line between having confidence in your shot and pressing, and it seemed like LeBron was on the wrong side of that line tonight. You could tell that he was trying to prove to himself and the world that he could make the deep jumper at times tonight, rather than trying to get the easiest shot for himself. Part of that is trying to keep the defense honest, but the other part of that is pride.

There’s nothing wrong with LeBron making shots at the rim and deep jumpers the backbone of his game. This is especially true considering LeBron’s natural shooting range and how much more efficient threes are than two-point jumpers. But Tuesday was one of those nights when having a more reliable shot from the post or the 10-15 foot range would’ve helped LeBron get his perimeter game going.

-It sure seemed like the Raptors were hot from outside for most of this one, but they only finished with 55 points on 59 shots from outside of 10 feet. That’s very good, but not off the charts. Of course, a lot of the reason for that is the Raptors only going 5-15 on shots outside of 15 feet over the final 15 minutes of the game. Live by the jumper…

-Mo Williams was able to take advantage of the weak Raptor defense, tallying 10 assists. Of those 10 assists, seven led to layups, and two more set up threes. He also played through a shoulder injury and made some big threes, hitting four of his eight shots from deep. He was also able to get baseline and set up my favorite play ever, when Mo goes baseline and feeds a cutting LeBron for the counter-motion slam. Very good to see Mo back on his game a bit, but keep in mind the Raptors can’t guard anybody, especially point guards.

-Zydrunas Ilgauskas was a step slow on defense and only played 13 minutes, but I actually like what he did offensively against the Raptors. A few times, Z got the ball at the top of the key and drew his man out to contest, but rotated the ball and waited for a better shot. There’s a reason I like this. From the top of the key and the left elbow, Z is shooting a combined 5-37 this season. That’s not good. He’s actually shooting better than 40% from every other zone in the 15-20 foot range, and 44% from the left wing.

And guess where Z ended up draining two jumpers from after he passed up a jumper from the top of the key and set picks for LeBron? The left wing. Then he took a shot from the left elbow, which he bricked.

-Ultimate Jawad, game seven: 2-5 from the field, a game-low -10, and some ugly offense when that small-ball lineup was in during the fourth. Ups and downs.

-Ultra-efficient night for Anthony Parker, who was 2-2 on threes, both from “Parkerville.” (The corners.) He also added a jumper off of a curl, which Windhorst recently mentioned the Cavs expected to see more of from AP when he was signed.

-Delonte uncharacteristically went only 1-4 from inside the arc, but the make was a beautiful jam in transition when the Cavs needed it in the fourth.

-Cavs outscored the Raptors 50-32 in the paint, and actually beat them 25-16 in fast-break points. In the bad news column, the Cavs did turn it over 16 times. However, a lot of those turnovers were a byproduct of how much they were moving the ball, as 27 of their 38 field goals were assisted.

Bullets of Randomness:

-Bosh is a beast with that mid-range jumper. He reminds me of a Minnesota KG, in more ways than one. Although Bosh plays outside-in while KG played inside-out.

-Andrea Bargnani is better than I thought defensively. That might even have been a clean contest on LeBron late in the fourth.

-Um, where was this effort a few months ago, Hedo?

Alright, campers, I’m done for the night. Have a good one, and get ready for the Lakers on Thursday.