Everything Round 2: Toronto Raptors vs Cleveland Cavaliers

[rocwell]

What a run by the Wizards wow

26-0 run

Coach Brooks #keepingITreal pic.twitter.com/qZBUS2CZGd

— Hoop District (@HoopDistrictDC) May 8, 2017

[The Great One]

what the fuck edmonton

McDavid and Draisaitl = Jordan and Pippen.

[big boi]

I'll be praying every night until it happens

Sent from my SM-G900W8 using Tapatalk

I'll kill some chickens and a goat... if nothing else some good curry meat.

[hotfuzz]

Maaaaaan, that could have been us wrecking the Cuntics :/

[Scraptor]

Maaaaaan, that could have been us wrecking the Cuntics :/

I'm glad it wasn't. If we made the ECF there would be no impetus for change. Casey would get a pass and it'd be more of the same BS.

[big boi]

Welp that was a wasted season.

Thanks to Coach Casey and to Masai for keeping him two years past his expiry date.

Conventional wisdom said (and many posters cautioned) that making a coaching change mid year would have been risky. It would have been controversial and ballsey but if we made a coaching change at the all star break it couldn't have turned out worse than this.

The team was incredibly stale at the all star break. Lowry was incredibly frustrated. And even the quality additions of Ibaka and PJ couldn't paper over the cracks.

Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, can Casey be fired now?!

[ball4life]

It's going to be really tough to try and dismantle 90s roster and reassemble it to a current one in a single year....

That's going to take the movement of MULTIPLE players and basically "reconstruction" of your roster.

Not really. Look what the rockets have done from what they did to what they have now.

[DanH]

Here at the end, all I've got to say is, it was a pleasure watching this team with you guys. We got another 50 win season, and another playoff round win, and yeah, another sweep against, but all in all I got a lot more good out of this year than bad.

We'll fight and claw over what to do from here, but I'd like to do that another day.

Thanks to everyone here for a fantastic year.

[S.R.]

Just thinking about how this roster might just be the next of a long line of EC casualties in the Lebron era. Look at what this guy has done to teams in the East:
- Ended the championship core Pistons
- Ended the championship core Celtics
- Ended the George/Hibbert Pacers
- Ended the Spurs-lite Hawks
- Ended the DD/Lowry Raptors?

It's a damn graveyard.

[big boi]

Just thinking about how this roster might just be the next of a long line of EC casualties in the Lebron era. Look at what this guy has done to teams in the East:
- Ended the championship core Pistons
- Ended the championship core Celtics
- Ended the George/Hibbert Pacers
- Ended the Spurs-lite Hawks
- Ended the DD/Lowry Raptors?

It's a damn graveyard.

To have any chance of beating the Cavs we can't start out from the standpoint of a coaching / preperation disadvantage. We need every chance we can get. And with Casey we're going in to a fight against the champ with one arm behind our back.

Who knows what is going to happen with this lineup now, but this lineup needed all the help it could get.

This team has become stale under Casey. A new voice / direction is needed regardless of what we choose to do with the roster.

[Mindlessness]

Just thinking about how this roster might just be the next of a long line of EC casualties in the Lebron era. Look at what this guy has done to teams in the East:
- Ended the championship core Pistons
- Ended the championship core Celtics
- Ended the George/Hibbert Pacers
- Ended the Spurs-lite Hawks
- Ended the DD/Lowry Raptors?

It's a damn graveyard.

I mean the Hawks only lasted a season, maybe two seasons if you really wanna count last year.

At least we lasted four, maybe more if Masai decides to keep running with this team (I doubt he does).

[inthepaint]

Here at the end, all I've got to say is, it was a pleasure watching this team with you guys. We got another 50 win season, and another playoff round win, and yeah, another sweep against, but all in all I got a lot more good out of this year than bad.

Ditto. For all the noise out there, we lost this series because of one reason: 3-point firepower discrepancy. That's it. The Raptors on the 2 home games (specially this last one), busted their tails and did all the little things that normally gets you a W: rebounds, assists, moving the ball, taking care of turnovers, points in the paint, defensive energy etc... Cojo had one the best defensive performances Kyrie has seen, DD put up numbers, Ibaka, albeit cold at times, had stats pretty close to Love's. JV was decent. Tucker, in his first playoff appearance ever, guarding you know who, was also respectable. Powell also held his own.

But the reality is, and I said it here after game 2, the Cavs have at least seven players that are much more reliable than our best 3-point shooter from deep (LBJ, Kyrie, Love, Frye, Jr Smith, Korver and yes even Schumper). When you're faced with that kind of discrepancy, you can't make runs or sustain leads, no matter how good your other fundamentals are. A writer here at RR actually put the numbers up, confirming what I had suspected: this series had the biggest 4-game discrepancy in 3-point shooting ever in NBA history. I wish I was joking. You can't survive like this. Forget about free throws, reputation calls, respect or lack thereof, blablabla. It's the 3.

Some fans/players/commentators don't like this, saying this is oversimplifying the game, but there's no running away from it. You can't compete like this when you get in the top 8 like we did. Period. Even the Spurs, such a solid team, has trouble with the Rockets because of 3-point discrepancy. Now yes, when the 3 firepower is at least somewhat matched, yeah then everything makes a difference.

As down in the dumps as players and fans are right now, keep in mind this: we have a decent, carefully developed core, in the top 8, while also being the 3rd youngest team in the NBA. Lots of room to grow. But also keep in mind this: we have a glaring, crippling deficiency that will destroy us if not fixed: lack of 3pt shooting. What does that mean for the summer? You don't have to necessarily blow your core (it's a solid, promising one), but if you have to do it in order to get at least TWO elite shooters, do it. I'm not talking so-so ones, it's gotta be top in 3pt%, the caliber of Eric Gordon, Klay Thompson, Korver, C.J MacCollum, JJ Reddick etc...

That will be the true test for management in the off-season. If you can do that then it will show we learned something from this sweep.

[Abbas]

Pressure discussing the raps with y'all, finally my heart rate will drop down to normal.

- Survivor out!

[slaw]

Don't want to re-post the whole thing but that's a great point on the three point shooting. Just watching the Spurs Rockets and it's just a three point contest. Entire series will be decided by who makes the most in the most games. That's basically it. There is very little tactical brilliance - it is just about firepower.

Cavs just ran away from Toronto. Raps were out scored so badly from beyond the arc even playing a perfect game couldn't beat it.

[psrs1]

Let's first start with a new coach.