Toronto opens their season with a blowout loss to Cleveland

Late October has rolled around again and everyone’s favorite Canadian basketball team has tipped off another season. The Cleveland Cavaliers made their way to Scotiabank Arena to battle against Toronto and safe to say, they won the battle. With a final score of 136-106, Cleveland made somewhat quick work of Toronto. There were some bright moments for Toronto, mostly early on in the game. For most rebuilding seasons or retooling seasons, the emphasis likely won’t be on the win/loss record, it will be about the development of the younger players and about establishing a specific playstyle and scheme.

This was a game in which the star players did not do much, namely Scottie Barnes, and Immanuel Quickley, albeit due to injury for Quickley. Gradey Dick had an encouraging game offensively. Dick was in constant motion, trying his best to attack Cleveland at multiple levels, and he somewhat succeeded. His fearless drives into the paint where he was not shying away from contact were a welcome sight, and his ability to use off ball movement to get looks shined as well. Dick got to the free throw line early as a result of these strong drives. Dick even had a beautiful layup along the baseline that came as a result of attacking a closeout.

Cleveland’s defense seemed to truly stifle Barnes all night. There were moments where Barnes could have been more decisive, especially when he was in the middle of the floor with a mismatch. Cleveland conceded to switching a smaller defender on Barnes many times and on a lot of those plays he just didn’t use that matchup to attack the paint and stretch the defense out. In Barnes’ defense, Cleveland’s defense placed a lot of gap help in the way of his drives, ultimately making life extremely difficult for him. With there being so many bodies in the way of his drives and post-ups, Barnes struggled on the night, and his outside shot wasn’t dropping at all making it even worse.

Davion Mitchell and Chris Boucher had solid nights. Boucher was firing from three and making them, often being one of the only players punishing Cleveland’s defense and his constant energy going into the paint led to six free throws as well. Mitchell’s decision making stood out, as he whipped passes all over the floor out of his drives.

Toronto’s offense obviously isn’t high powered, and nobody knew that better than Cleveland. At one point Cleveland ran a zone defense because they knew Toronto likely wouldn’t be able to punish them for it. The zone defense caused the lead to balloon and made Toronto’s offense look extremely pedestrian. Zone defense in the NBA is usually easily broken, but due to injuries and just a lack of effective offensive personnel on the floor, Toronto succumbed to the zone. They tried to send Barnes in the middle to bust the zone, but neither he nor anyone else were doing enough offensively to get Cleveland out of it. Ideally you want to see Barnes be fixated on the rim any time he has a mismatch, but last night he tried to shoot mid range looks or make passes from a standstill, which didn’t frighten Cleveland in the slightest.

Defensively, at times Toronto’s ball pressure stonewalled Cleveland, although this was mostly early in the game. Darko Rajakovic has placed an emphasis on full court ball pressure, and Quickley and Jamal Shead executed this in the early stages of the game. As the game wore on though it became extremely difficult to keep Donovan Mitchell from getting paint touches and that ultimately led to Evan Mobley’s big night as well. Mobley finished with 25 points and the majority of the scoring came from just waiting in the dunkers spot, or somewhere in the paint and benefiting from Cleveland’s guards drawing his man’s attention. With the point of attack defense breaking down so much it became next to impossible to stop Cleveland’s offense and their bigs took full advantage of the looks their guards were creating.

Cleveland’s size proved to be too much for Toronto to handle, along with their rim pressure as well. With no Quckley in the second half and no Kelly Olynyk or RJ Barrett in the game at all, Toronto’s offense suffered. By the beginning of the third quarter this game was out of reach for Toronto which allowed bench players like Jamison Battle and Jonathan Mogbo to get some solid minutes. 

It’s tough to take too much away from a 30 point blowout loss but nights like last night are going to happen during a rebuild especially when multiple starters are injured. It’s important to learn from these games so they happen less in the future.

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