The Raptors Have a Legit Shot at Dethroning LeBron and the Cavaliers

The Toronto Raptors are about to step on the Eastern Conference's most defining scale for a third postseason in a row, drawing LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers for a best-of-seven series. For seven consecutive seasons and the bulk of his entire career, the East has run through James, the most singularly dominant basketball player of his generation. The Raptors have made it here twice and fallen short each time, first in a spirited upstart-just-isn't-ready-yet six-game series in the Eastern Conference Finals and then in a demoralizing and, it appeared at the time, potentially franchise-altering sweep in the second round.

If the tone is different this time around, it is because of that sweep. On the day after, Raptors president Masai Ujiri began a search for answers by suggesting a "culture reset," a fundamental shift in the way the Raptors would approach the postseason, approach the Cavaliers, and approach basketball in the modern era in general was set to take place. Cory Joseph, DeMarre Carroll, Patrick Patterson, and P.J. Tucker were out, C.J. Miles was in, DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry would need to be different—not better, but stars through a different definition—and a wealth of opportunity and responsibility would be shifted en masse to the team's young, unproven core.

These Raptors were different, and that's not just narrative. Their 3-point rate spiked. They were the only team to finish the season in the top five at both ends of the floor. Lowry's minutes came way down to keep him fresh. DeRozan continued to redefine himself, his game, and his ceiling. That unproven young core became an unexpected starting lineup stalwart and the best bench in the league. They won 59 games, and by any analytic were one of the three best teams in basketball.

As for whether all this time spent resetting and rebuilding and redefining has the Raptors in a better position to beat the Cavaliers this time around?

"No question. I feel it," DeRozan said Sunday. "We all have that confidence in ourselves."

OK, but why? Everyone's had a "best chance" to topple James at some point, including the Raptors of 2016-17, when the window was thought to have never been open wider then, too. Then, though, they were being told to believe. They had the pieces, Ujiri had broke form and added at the deadline, and while Lowry was just back from injury (and then injured again), there was a sense that the Raptors squandered their best shot. Opportunity doesn't have to come in threes despite what a lot of clichés about third strikes and third chances might suggest, and the Raptors would have been foolish to try James once more on the same terms. This is their next "best shot" and their belief in themselves feels far more resolute this time around, forged by an entire season of change, empowerment, and success rather than buoyed only by how things look on paper.

It's a third meeting in a row, and it's the most legitimate a threat the Raptors have been to James making yet another NBA Finals. So what makes this time around different?

Rest/Fatiguing the Indefatigable

In each of the last two meetings, James was coming off a series sweep (or two) with a significant rest advantage coming in. James does not seem to be restricted by the same physical limitations as everyone else, but rest is still important for a player who has consistently played more minutes than anyone over the last decade-plus and for the postseason's oldest roster by average age. That George Hill and Kevin Love are playing through injury ratchets up the would-be value of a few extra days off further.

The Indiana Pacers may have done the Raptors a favor in taking the Cavaliers to seven games, as James is coming off of a series in which he carried an Atlas-type load, playing more first-round minutes than anyone, on the heels of leading the league in minutes during the regular season.

"I'm burnt right now," James said after a Game 7 in which he intended to play the full 48 minutes but ultimately needed a breather due to cramping. "I'm not thinking about Toronto right now. I'm ready to go home. I'm tired. I want to go home."

It's likely that James is overstating things, or that a return to his elaborate and meticulous post-gameday routine will have him feeling better come Tuesday. Still, this is different from the last two years, when Lowry and DeRozan carried similarly heavy burdens and looked exhausted by the time they reached their proving ground. Not only is Lowry not injured this time around, he didn't even rank in the top 30 for minutes played this year. DeRozan was still a workhorse but spent the year mostly healthy.

The benefits of that rest, and how the team managed it, were on display in the first round. The Washington Wizards' star backcourt of John Wall and Bradley Beal looked exhausted come fourth quarters, while the Raptors were capable of ratcheting up their defensive intensity. Lowry played only one full fourth quarter—a previous staple of their rotation—and neither star hit the 40-minute marker, both instead averaging a reasonable 36 minutes. They're capable of pushing higher, and they might here, but their workloads being managed so well to this point could have a profound impact on the series, especially since Cleveland has relied so heavily on their ability to close out tight games (30-15 with the league's No. 2 net rating in "clutch" situations) and the Raptors on their league-best fourth-quarter defense.

Fatigue has not seemed to have an impact on James' offensive play yet. He's also never had to go seven in the first round, and then draw a better-rested team immediately. Toronto will—or at least should—aim to fatigue him further by playing a hard, physical brand of defense. James is going to get his, and the goal should be to make that increasingly difficult while forcing him to take defensive possessions off rather than roaming as a rim-deterring free safety.

Depth/Non-LeBron Minutes

It follows that if the Raptors better managed workloads and were a better team overall, their depth proved more important, something that was resoundingly true. Their five-man bench unit challenged convention about rotations all year long, proving to be one of the league's best lineups over a decent sample and leading Dwane Casey and company to challenge the unofficial postseason playbook. Fred VanVleet's injury limited the actual usage of The Bench Mob in round one, outside of an emphatic Game 6 performance, but they figure to be a factor here.

Even if Toronto ends up pivoting from that unit—they did not have success in a noisy regular-season sample against Cleveland, largely because the game Toronto won was without Lowry, forcing them to shuffle rotations—the five bench players in question will have roles. VanVleet has become maybe Toronto's third or fourth most important player, Miles their best shooter, and Pascal Siakam one of their best options to throw on James. Delon Wright was the best bench player against Washington. Jakob Poeltl might be the odd-man out if the rotation tightens and Cleveland plays heavy minutes small, and even then, he was one of the league's best backup centers.

Cleveland's depth, meanwhile, is a problem. It's not so much that they don't have players—there are probably 12 names you can expect to see at some point—it's that any lineup without James looks wholly beatable. That hasn't always played out in the on/off numbers, though it does play out in the results. To wit, Indiana actually outscored Cleveland by 40 in their series, showing how beatable the Cavaliers are from game to game.

If Toronto is going to do the same and actually win the series, it will be imperative that it wins the rare minutes where James sits. The Pacers did that to the tune of a 16.2 net rating in 48 James-less minutes, and as good as the Raptors are, they can't bet on beating the Cavaliers regularly when James is on the floor. The best bench in the league needs to be just that, whether it's as a five-man group or the vaunted Lowry-and-bench groups that could be called on in close fourth quarters. They should also use those youthful groups to dial up the pace in transition.

Familiarity/Starting Lineup Carousels

Good luck figuring out what the Cavaliers' rotation might look like game to game. Not only did the Cavaliers play 22 different players this year and use 29 different starting lineups, they used four different starting lineups in the first round alone. What's more, their three most commonly used first-round playoff lineups played a total of 15 minutes together in the regular season, and the three lineups they used most in the regular season (that are still available after roster churn) played a total of one minute in the first round.

Obviously, that didn't derail them. They won the series. They beat Toronto late in the season starting a fivesome that had never played together before. They have a few different options available to them that will pose legitimate challenges to Toronto defensively. Drop four warm bodies around James and things have a way of working out.

Still, the Raptors are intimately familiar and adorably cohesive. The Cavs don't have that spice. Now, what that counts for is unclear, and Casey has admirably shown a willingness to adjust if what's become rote falls ineffective. It feels like it should mean something.

Defense/Staying at Home

Remember a year ago when the Raptors' supposed cast of LeBron Stoppers couldn't even prevent James from grabbing a beer on the court and spinning the ball in their collective faces? Yeah. Whatever happens with the Cavaliers, don't ever, ever presume to have pieces that can slow James down. Even Tucker, who isn't that tall but is thick as hell and made James work tirelessly once he got the full-time assignment, could only do so much.

Instead, the Raptors will trust a rookie in OG Anunoby, a sophomore in Siakam, and a bit of a defensive wild card in the inconsistent Ibaka. There will be no false airs about slowing James down. Instead, the Raptors will likely lean on a lot of the elements that made them the league's fifth-best defense in the regular season.

Namely, the help ain't coming. The Raptors switched freely all year and that probably needs to be curbed here. They'll still send help on James post-ups and zone up the weakside, though, which a risky but likely necessary strategy. They also stayed at home on shooters as a matter of principle, guarding pick-and-rolls 2-on-2 and limiting corner threes better than all but one other team. That's important for a team with as much shooting as Cleveland. There's no right answer to "load up on James" or "let James beat you and take out his supporting cast." The latter seems a better strategy in terms of further exhausting James and exploiting the Cavaliers' lack of depth, age, and not-quite-healthy status.

Cleveland is still going to make shots, to be clear. The Cavaliers shot above even their own cloudy heads over four games last year and won two regular season meetings by shooting incredibly well, even on contested looks. The Raptors will have to trust the math over seven games, believe in their approach, and hope that James doesn't have four more Herculean individual efforts in him the next two weeks.

Offense/Armed for the Shootout

Perhaps nothing underlines Casey's ability to change and grow as a coach as much as how he talks about offense these days. Throughout the season, he emphasized that the Raptors would need to be ready for shootouts come playoff time, and the tweaks in playing style were designed specifically with a series like this in mind. There can be no more getting outscored from behind the 3-point line by near-historic rates, or stars shooting poorly surrounded by role players who can't or won't step into larger roles.

Toronto's changes have multiple impacts. The biggest may just be the team's willingness to shoot threes. The Raptors tied Cleveland for fourth in the NBA in the percentage of field-goal attempts that came from beyond the arc (a massive spike from a year ago), and they managed to be league average in terms of effectiveness. Threes are high-variance by nature, and a willingness to ride those waves—to keep shooting on nights it's not there, to not freeze up with an open window—will be imperative to scoring with the Cavaliers.

Beyond the 3-point shooting, Toronto saw the biggest spike in assist rate of any team in the league. Scoring usage came down slightly for DeRozan, replaced by a jump in his individual playmaking, and Lowry's role was redefined and no less effective. All 10 players in the rotation are willing to shoot and are capable of making plays, and the Raptors have a better grasp on how to leverage mismatches rather than running from them. (Jonas Valanciunas looms large as someone who can punish smaller Cleveland looks; he's improved enough defensively to trust him to start here, and the Raptors are downright lethal when he's screening for one of the stars.)

This is no longer a team that is asking players to do new things and expand their roles in a postseason series. They're deeper, better balanced, and more multi-faceted. So if their defense can't hold up, they've at least got a prayer in a shootout.

Belief/Playing the Favorite

Hanging over everything in a matchup like this is James. There's no way around it. You can slice up the season data however you'd like, and it will almost always point to the Raptors being the better team. They've changed, and it has not been change for the sake of change. What they've done this year has been a pretty incredible basketball undertaking and a very compelling philosophical and organizational behavior experiment. None of that puts LeBron in a Raptors uniform, though, and it will be impossible to fault anyone who sides with James in the series after he's beaten the Raptors two years in a row.

It is not crazy to pick Toronto, though. This isn't "maybe the Raptors have a chance" for the sake of telling a story or making the series more interesting. The Raptors are the favorites. Even if that won't be the case in the market of public opinion, the money is on Toronto—they opened as -240 favorites in the series, and while that line will shift as money comes in on the rare opportunity to bet James as an underdog, bookmakers are not risking a dangerous position in the series to make some point.

For the Raptors, that is irrelevant. They prefer being the underdog, anyway, and I'd be far more confident betting that Casey's message is that of "nobody believes in us still" than betting on the actual series outcome. It's a strange place for them to be. You're not supposed to get three cracks at a team, let alone with the requisite faith to completely redesign yourself between attempts.

"Those past experiences are in the past," VanVleet said. "It's a new year, a new team, feels different, looks different. And we're going out there to make the outcome different."

There's no question the Raptors are different. Now it's time to see how much that matters.