In the regular season, the Raptors ranked first in the East with 59 wins and 23 losses, with a win rate of 72.0%, while the Cavaliers ranked fourth in the East with 50 wins and 32 losses, with a win rate of 61.0%.
The two teams meet in the second round of the playoffs, and the Cavaliers currently lead 3-0.
In the first game, the two teams fought to overtime, the Cavaliers beat the Raptors 113-112; in the second game, James had 43 points, 8 rebounds and 14 assists, and the Cavaliers beat the Raptors by 18 points; in the third game, the two sides fought to 103 draws, James hit a killer hit, beating the Raptors 105-103.
It looks like the Cavaliers have only one result of a 3-0 lead — LeBron James.
Falling behind 0-3 and reversing is simply an impossible task, and we can basically assume that the Raptors will lose to James for the third consecutive season. In fact, the Raptors are not inferior to other teams, but as long as they meet James, there is no way to win, what is the reason for this?
How did James, the master of dragon training, develop?
Zhan Huang was extremely excited after the killing
From Tyrannosaurus Rex to Hellokitty, the abilities of a master of how to train your dragon
Before talking about the cultivation of dragon masters, let's continue to understand what kind of level James's dragon training level has reached.
41 wins and 10 losses — that's james' record against the Raptors in the regular season.
11 wins, 2 losses — That's james' record in the playoffs against the Raptors.
56 points – In March 2005, James scored his highest score against the Raptors, his third-highest score of his career.
17 assists — That's the assist record James set against the Raptors, the second-highest assist of his career, and he didn't make a single mistake that game.
2 triple-doubles — James has had 21 triple-doubles throughout his career playoffs, 2 of which were with the Raptors.
4 triple-doubles — James has had 73 triple-doubles throughout his career regular season, four of which were with the Raptors.
Throughout his career against the Raptors, James averaged 26.6 points, 7.0 rebounds, 7.7 assists, 1.3 steals, 0.5 blocks per game, which was basically the same as james's career average from the data point of view, and even declined. But in terms of winning percentage, the record of 41 wins and 10 losses is much higher than james's career season of 763 wins and 382 losses. Not to mention that in the playoffs, James held a series unbeaten record against the Raptors.
So much so that fans joked in private that the Raptors were the Tyrannosaurus Rex (40-12) against Eastern conference teams, the Velociraptors (19-11) against Western teams, and the Halokitty Dragons (1-2 in the regular season, 0-3 in the playoffs) when facing the Cavaliers.
After reading the above, it makes people feel even more confused.
There were no particularly high scores, no particularly high triple-doubles, not even rebounds and assists, and only occasional highlights. Why can Zhan Huang become a master of dragon training, and even become a nightmare for raptors?
Zhan Huang snatched DeRozan
Three years and three strategies, helpless talent limits imagination
To answer the above question, let's first review the past three seasons of playoffs between Zhan Huang and the Raptors.
Let's take a look at the 2016 playoffs.
The 2016 playoff Raptors' strategy was to make James a passer rather than an attacker. The Raptors tightly defended James's individual offense, but that didn't work, with James' assist-to-turnover ratio of nearly 3.0 and three Cavaliers shooting at least 14 three-pointers in six games.
James, meanwhile, hit 62 percent of his offensive shots, beat the Raptors 4-2 and eventually won the championship.
In that series, James averaged 26.0 points, 8.5 rebounds, 6.7 assists, 2.0 steals, 1.0 blocks per game, James's assists were easy, and his offensive Raptors did not fully control. Two water pipes, originally wanted to pinch one and put the other one, did not think that they could not be held at all, and as a result, they lost sight of one or the other, and fell into a thousand miles.
Next look at the 2017 playoffs.
The 2017 playoff Raptors changed strategy, and they wanted to control James's organizational abilities and make him a pure scorer. Success or failure, let's look at a set of data.
That series James averaged 36.0 points per game, shooting 57.3 percent from the field, shooting 48.1 percent from three-point range, 8.3 rebounds and 5.3 assists.
Yes, James' passing was indeed under control, and he delivered a total of 21 assists in four games with 17 turnovers. But in the face of James's terrifying personal attacks, the Raptors simply could not resist.
In the 2018 playoffs, the Raptors once again changed their strategy.
This season, the Raptors' depth is the strongest in history, and there are also a number of strong and physically strong young players in the small forward position. The Raptors' plan this time is to use a multi-person rotation of defense to consume the physical strength of the "aged" James, and then control his play on the court. As a result, James was not controlled, and the physical strength of a bunch of young generals was consumed enough.
Neither Anunoby, Siakam, or anyone else could keep up with James' rhythm.
The Raptors' plan was good, but in front of Emperor Zhan, it was like a soap bubble, breaking at a poke, leaving a cloud of colorful water droplets in an instant.
Some people say that the Raptors have been trying to defend the James of last season, and they did not think that James was improving every season, and the improvement was far beyond the Raptors' imagination. However, in my opinion, the Raptors want to push out James's limit again and again, but every time the Raptors have found James's limit themselves, James will use a new limit to tell the Raptors: You are wrong.
Perhaps the average super talent in the league limits the imagination of everyone including Coach Casey, Raptors players, fans, and James' ability has really exceeded most people's imagination.
Anuno will defend James with all his might
No one can defend Against Zhan Huang, and the Raptors' psychological defense line has been lost
Many data analysis experts believe that the reason why the Raptors are inferior to Zhan Huang is due to the fact that their small forwards are too pitted.
In this season's game, when the Raptors' Anunoby defended James, James's average score per game was 1.09; when Siakam defended James, James's average score was 1.23 points per game; and when the rest of the Raptors defended James, James's average score was 1.54 points per game.
As a contrast.
Harden's average score per game in the playoffs this season is 1.09 points, Curry 1.02 points and Durant 1.04 points.
In other words, it's not that small forwards are incompetent, it's that the Raptors simply don't have anyone to defend James. Some people may say that last season's Finals, Durant's defense against James was not quite successful?
Averaging 33.6 points, 12.0 rebounds, 10.0 assists, shooting 56.4 percent from the field and 38.7 percent from three-point range, james would have led the Cavaliers to the championship with such performances. What's more, how many Durant can be in the league, and how many people can really effectively defend James.
This situation is more prominent in the Raptors than on other teams.
Because the Raptors' team is mainly double-guard + inside, Ibaka, Valan Yunas, Lowry, DeRozan, are all powerful stars. There is nothing wrong with playing defensively brilliant newcomers in the small forward position rather than All-Star players.
DeRozan, one of the Raptors' two star stars, averaged 18.0 points per game in this playoff series with the Cavaliers, shooting 43.6 percent, averaging three shots per game and never hitting a shot; and averaging 23.0 points per game, 45.6 percent shooting, and 1.1 three-pointers per game. In fact, whether it is Lowry or DeRozan, there are often emotional instabilities in the game, the performance is too ups and downs, and once one of the two performs poorly, the Raptors simply cannot compete with the Cavaliers.
When the stars collapse first, counting on the raptors and the rest of the people? That was a joke.
And from some of the recent remarks by Raptors player coaches, we can also see that they are somewhat unbalanced in their mentality.
Coach Casey said: "We wanted others to beat us, but we didn't do it. And when James said he was tired after playing two consecutive away games in Toronto, Coach Casey often said six no's in a row: "No, no, those are all nonsense. He's not tired, no, he's not tired, don't let him fool you. ”
When James threw in the dead end of the last game, the Raptors' bench collectively stared blankly, apparently unwilling to believe such an outcome.
Even during the game, seeing James's excellent performance, Valan Yunus sitting on the Raptors bench has made no secret of his frustration. Holding his head, raising his arms, and sighing in the air, he was completely puzzled by James's performance.
epilogue
As Coach Casey said, if you really want to see James' achievements, then it will be too late after James retires. Although they are now 3-0 behind, the Raptors still have to fight for the rest of the game.
"We don't want to be a backdrop for history," Coach Casey said.
From "We're going to try to beat James and the Cavaliers" to "We're a better team, we just didn't grasp it at the last minute" to "We don't want to be a backstage board for history."
Maybe Coach Casey himself didn't realize that subtly, the Raptors had lost mentally.