Fansided

LeBron James cares not for your culture reset, Toronto

By Ti Windisch

TORONTO, CANADA - MAY 3: LeBron James #23 of the Cleveland Cavaliers talks with the media following Game Two of Round Two of the 2018 NBA Playoffs against the Toronto Raptors on May 3, 2018 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2018 NBAE (Photo by Ron Turenne/NBAE via Getty Images)
TORONTO, CANADA - MAY 3: LeBron James #23 of the Cleveland Cavaliers talks with the media following Game Two of Round Two of the 2018 NBA Playoffs against the Toronto Raptors on May 3, 2018 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2018 NBAE (Photo by Ron Turenne/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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The Toronto Raptors switched up their entire ethos to stop LeBron James, but it’s nothing the King can’t handle.

The Toronto Raptors had so much going for them this season. Canada’s only basketball team had its best season ever, going 59-23 and claiming the first seed in the Eastern Conference. Brandishing a brand-new offense and a capable bench, the Raptors seemed poised to finally make it out of the Eastern Conference.

Toronto was so damn good for most of the regular season that the NBA zeitgeist was finally ready to overlook the franchise’s habitual postseason failures. The feeling around the Raptors was, for once, good.

Except, there’s a problem with Toronto’s idyllic season. LeBron James quite frankly does not care about the new-look Raptors. It doesn’t matter what they do, or how much Dwane Casey manages to maximize his roster, or what new tricks DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry add to their repertoires. The Raptors are naught but a distraction on LeBron’s inevitable eighth consecutive trip to the NBA Finals.

LeBron hasn’t literally said he doesn’t care about the Raptors, but his absolute demolition of the poor dino souls tasked with guarding him in Game 2 of the series was worth more than a thousand words.

LeBron put up 43 points in 41 minutes on Thursday night in Toronto, needing just 28 shots to get his scoring done. At one point he just started posting up Raptors and taking fadeaway jumpers over them, seemingly just to do it. He hit eight of them in the second half.

Despite him having the ball in his hands for most of the 41 minutes he played, and taking 28 shots, and getting to the free throw line eight times, and dishing 14 assists, LeBron had just one turnover in the game. LeBron can simply do whatever the hell he wants to do in this series, and Toronto seems powerless to stop him.

The sad thing is, this really is a new Raptors team! Even with LeBron’s virtuoso passing performance going against the Raps, Toronto had more assists than the Cavs did on Thursday. The Raptors’ bench outscored Cleveland’s bench, and it would’ve been by a lot if Jeff Green didn’t become an honorary Splash Brother for most of his minutes.

Toronto is still heading into Cleveland down 0-2, with a sweep looking like the most likely outcome of the series. The Raptors have never won in Cleveland in the postseason. In fact, LeBron’s Cavs have destroyed Toronto at home in their two previous playoff series, winning those five games by an average of 24-plus points per game.

For all of the talk about how these are not the same Raptors, the sad truth is in some ways they are. Toronto plays a more modern style of offense, and has a deep bench, but at the end of the day this team is still doesn’t look ready to handle playing against LeBron James in the playoffs. They appear to get shook, and disheartened, and LeBron feeds on it like mana from heaven.

Victor Oladipo and the Indiana Pacers didn’t have the talent to overcome LeBron, but they sure did have the attitude for it. Oladipo and company attacked Cleveland relentlessly, and as a result had a realistic chance of actually defeating the King of the East.

The Raptors’ collapse at the end of Game 1 probably doomed them, but it didn’t have to. Toronto was the better team all season long, and might have had a chance to steal a road game and really make the series interesting. All that probably ended when the entire city sat and watched LeBron sink their season, one fadeaway at a time.

LeBron scored more points in the second half than any Raptor did over all 48 minutes, pouring in 27 on 19 field goal attempts. Nobody went at him and made life difficult, as Oladipo and Thad Young did in the first round.

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DeRozan and Lowry combined for 16 points on 17 shots in the second half. DeRozan scored 13 points on 14 shots, and Lowry managed just three points on three shots. Even with a system that encourages other players to step up, Toronto needs more from its star guards than that.

This is not a phenomenon unique to the Raptors. LeBron has toppled several Eastern Conference playoff powerhouses in his 15 NBA seasons. Toronto just seems to be a little more unnerved by the whole experience, which only serves to make LeBron more dangerous. It’s a vicious cycle, and one that doesn’t seem like its going to end for the LeBronto Raptors anytime soon.