No player or coach will ever admit it, but there’s no question the Cleveland Cavaliers are already thinking on who they’ll meet in the NBA Finals this June.
It seems like a disrespectful statement considering Cleveland still needs to win three more games against the Toronto Raptors to reach the NBA Finals, but after they cruised their way to a 115-84 win on Game 1 at Quicken Loans Arena, it seems there’s no way Toronto can take the Cavs out of the road to prevent a sixth straight Finals appearance for LeBron James.
LeBron, actually, is one of the reasons why Cleveland has these series locked down. The former four-time MVP thrives on the open court and it was noticeable during Tuesday’s win that he doesn’t have problems against DeMarre Carroll, or the rest of the Toronto defenders for that matters. James finished the game with 24 points (on 11-of-13 from the field, no less), six rebounds, four assists and two steals.
The Raptors can try to eliminate LeBron’s impact from the game (something no other team has done, by the way) but they’d still have to deal with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. Love ended with 14 points in the first game and made two of his four attempts from beyond the arc, something that the Cavs need to exploit as the Raptors are pretty poor defending the three. Irving, on the other hand, led all scorers with 27 points and made 11 of his 17 shots from the field.
Then there’s the shooting. Cleveland destroyed the Atlanta Hawks with a historical shooting performance that saw them score almost the same quantity of threes (77) as two-pointers (81). Then we have Toronto’s aforementioned problems to defend the perimeter. Even though the Cavaliers only made seven of their 20 three-point shots in Game 1, it’s safe to say that number should improve in the coming days. After all, Cleveland made 50% of their long-range buckets (43-86) against the Raptors in their regular season series.
Another factor against Toronto is the rest. The Raptors have played the maximum of games so far in these playoffs, and they came off an emotional Game 7 win against the Miami Heat only 48 hours before kicking things off against Cleveland. The Cavs, must be said, had eight days to rest and prepare these series so not only they have far more left in the tank, they probably also scouted Toronto quite well in their last games against Miami.
The Cavs have a 9-0 mark in the playoffs so far, and it doesn’t seem they are going to stop any time soon. The Raptors still have a shot, but they would have to outmatch even the loftiest expectations while the Cavaliers would have to crumble in the next games which, based on recent evidence, is pretty unlikely to happen.