Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- The Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors are deadlocked at 2-2, resetting the series to a best-of-three with home-court advantage now pivotal.
- Despite recent defensive success, Toronto’s offensive shortcomings against elite teams and key absences leave them at a statistical disadvantage.
- Cleveland’s veteran backcourt duo offers significantly more playoff-tested reliability than Toronto’s inexperienced stars in these high-pressure moments.
After the Cleveland Cavaliers took a convincing 2-0 series lead, the Toronto Raptors have stormed back to even up the series at two-games-a-piece. This means that the first four games are functionally useless and the series now becomes a best-of-three format.
In theory, it is anyone's game. But which of these franchises has the better chancing of advancing to the Eastern Conference Semifinals?
Why the numbers lean toward the Cavaliers
Obviously, in an Even Steven playoff series, the edge always goes to the home team. But more than that, Cleveland is the superior team.
A good way to get a feel where consensus is at by looking at what the sportsbooks have to say about everything. According to FanDuel, the Cavaliers are at -460 odds to advance to the next round. That is a 82.1 percent implied probability of winning.
All season long, the Raptors have struggled against quality opponents. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Raptors are 7-22 against teams with at top-10 point differential (like the Cavaliers) and 39-14 against all other competition (which is why we predicted them having a swift tour of duty in the postseason).
The big reason for this is they struggle to score the ball against high-level teams (who usually tout strong defenses). Their halfcourt attack is flawed because of a lack of perimeter shooting (25th in 3-point rate), and good teams can usually shut the faucet off on their transition game (hence their offensive rating being 22nd against top ten teams). Couple this with the fact that they won't have their best spacer (Immanuel Quickley) for the remainder of this showdown and you can see why they are facing an uphill battle in this regard.
The Raptors have done a great job leveraging their athleticism-rich personnel to hold the Cavaliers to just 96.5 points per game in the last two games. But think about this from a problem-solving perspective. The Cavaliers just need to figure out ways to score on the Raptors. Meanwhile, Toronto has to figure out how to keep Cleveland at bay while also finding ways to work around their structural limitations on offense. Which one sounds easier to you?
The other wrinkle to this, when you have a series as tightly-contested as this one, you have to project how things will go down in a close game. I know the Raptors just pulled off a four-point victory over the Cavaliers on Sunday, but that is a one-off occurrence.
In a nutshell, which duo do you trust more? Donovan Mitchell and James Harden have a combined 244 playoff appearances under their belt, both are averaging over 21 points per game in the postseason for their career, and the former is seventh all-time in playoff points per game (28.1). Meanwhile, Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram have a combined 22 games of experience, neither of them is averaging 20 points per game for their career, and the latter has a history of being more of a faller in the postseason.
The race to who can win two games is officially on, but based on the information we have available to us, it seems like the Cavaliers have a head start.
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