Game Ten - Cavaliers at Raptors - Friday, Nov. 5th 7:30pm on Sportsnet

[Jclaw]

The Knicks are getting schooled right now in Milwaukee... down 20 early in the 2nd q..... 20 point leads do evaporate in the reg season.. but the Knicks are struggling since that hot start.

And so they do! WTF was happened there?

[Jclaw]

Let's get the next thread going! (EDIT) May I suggest Mixx? You were the last one to host KD in Toronto

[golden]

We can't get just one game winning tip in against Cleveland FFS?! Bad memories. Shame of a hill for Saints to die on. I know it's too early in his career and, it's hard to believe, we are still just developing OG but it would have been nice to see Scottie get the ball and just rise up for a shot that he can get over most defenders.

Honestly, that JV missed tip gave life to the Cavs and cemented the legend of Lebronto. Raps were heavily favored and Lebron was tired. That one play had a massive domino effect leading to the firing of Casey and trading DeRozan.

[MixxAOR]

Scottie is human after all ... just missed that last tip in.

yeah wonder if it was that injured hand

[slaw]

Was only able to skim the fourth on replay but looked like Raps lost their composure on both ends. Bad shots, missed defensive assignments, etc. Saw lots of Bad Fred, too. Had some tough losses this year.

[golden]

yeah wonder if it was that injured hand

Fred and OG are 1st and 5th in minutes per game and 1st and 3rd in total minutes played. Maybe they’re getting tired. That’s going to become a factor, especially how hard we play. Gotta be careful not to run down our players.

[MixxAOR]

Fred and OG are 1st and 5th in minutes per game and 1st and 3rd in total minutes played. Maybe they’re getting tired. That’s going to become a factor, especially how hard we play. Gotta be careful not to run down our players.

Is Dragic, Banton or Flynn ready for those back up minutes? No choice unless we are ok with losing.

[The Claw Reborn]

Credit where credit is due, Cleveland was actually trying hard and made some good plays. Yes the raps sort of gave it away too, no big deal, one game to learn from. The let's trade og and freddy crap every time they don't play perfect or score 30 needs be toned down. I didn't see the after last game......

Again, if we had our best player this is a 15 point win.

Well it has to go both ways as well….if you are saying to give credit where credit is due then you also have to criticize where criticism is due, isn’t it?

Van Vleet because it worked for him the past 2 games before last night…this game was different especially late in the game, he took upon himself to focus on scoring rather than facilitating and allowing others to be more involved in the flow of the offense.

As a leader, he should know that he alone cannot carry the team every night. When his shots are not falling then he has to defer to others.

The minority of us in this forum, are not asking him to score 30 points every night but also we are not asking him to hurl 18 shots at a low percentage as well.

I hear you, when Siakam is back, maybe he limits his FGA so the jury is still out.

for now, and for him to be more effective, he has to play OFF, let Scottie initiate the offense. Van Vleet has to work on those screens, his midrange Js to me is an effective weapon that he can develop rather than driving the ball amongst trees because 90% of the time, he get smothered.

His defense is great against those bigs posting up, he can blindside them and get those deflections.

However against attacking and aggressive guards, he gets blown by and more reliant to his own bigs to provide the secondary help

[Jclaw]

Is Dragic, Banton or Flynn ready for those back up minutes? No choice unless we are ok with losing.

[MixxAOR]

yeah hopefully

[The Claw Reborn]

Our bigs got exposed a little bit last night against the twin towers of Cleveland….Allen and Mobley were unstoppable offensively. Combined them with the continuous barrage of attacks from Garland and Sexton, that overwhelmed the Raptors in the 4th.

We still won the rebounding battle and Birch had 8 rebs but only 1 “defensive” rebound. The total defensive rebs…28 for the Cavs vs. 25 by the Raps….10 of those 28 defensive rebounds were from Allen alone.

[planetmars]

[The Claw Reborn]

Good news…

[planetmars]

So OG and Barnes are now both 0-1 in their career for game winning shots? Raptors did some stupid stuff down the stretch and the Cavs seemed to win every battle. Once Allen hit that 3pt bank shot I knew it was going to be over. It just felt that way.

Cavs are for real. If they can find a way to swap Love out for some wing depth, they'll be a perennial playoff team. They also have to find a way to get rid of Sexton. That dude just keeps making bone head plays. But Garland is for real.

[inthepaint]

I wonder how much of them gambling is coaching and how much is discipline? They're trying to get turnovers so they're trying to be aggressive with attacking the passing lanes.

Also think OG driving to the rim instead of taking the open 3 wasn't the worst thing. He got by his man and had the higher percentage shot in a 1 point game. Just didn't fall.

Hit the nail on the head here. That's the defensive strategy put forth by the coach, aggressive defence to force turnovers so it fuels our transition offence. Everyone was celebrating that before, Trent leading the league in steals, how feisty the team is on defence etc... If this was a 1-point win instead of a 1-point loss, everyone would still be celebrating that style, as it has given us many transition easy buckets and extra possessions on every game.

If we're gonna criticize it on losses we gotta criticize it on wins too. The reality is, they need that strategy because our half-court offence (at least for the time being without Pascal) is not potent enough to keep us afloat in many games. Some nights it won't work as well, but it's viable and worth it for this group.

Shot selection was also fine in my book. This is the time for OG to take risks, develop his confidence, take big shots. It will come with some lumps, but these are the very lumps (taken at age 24 on early reg season games) that will get him ready mentally to take these shots on game 5's at 27 and knock them down.

Guard and wing play was toe-to-toe. We lost this game because of the Cavs bigs. They have 2 good ones, and we have only 1 (Birch). With Pascal in, it's a totally different story and they ain't scraping a 1-point win on the last 6 seconds.