After losing again on Friday night, Dwane Casey delivered a pre-eulogy for the season and for his team.
"They gave everything they had," Casey said. "We came up short."
By 21 points. Which is actually quite long.
Now down 3-0 to the defending NBA champions, Casey acknowledged reality – that this thing is over. His approach to Sunday's Game 4?
"It's about pride. You don't want to get swept, especially in your home building … When things get hard on Sunday, do you keep fighting, do you keep scrapping, keep scratching? Because then you don't have to go back to Cleveland (for Game 5)."
If that's an option, I'm going to guess his team is going to choose 'don't go back to Cleveland.' For a bunch of good reasons. Because all that awaits them there is Clevelanders, a moribund downtown casino and more humiliation.
The going theory on this series was that Toronto would get pummelled on aggregate, but that the Cavaliers might take a breather in the middle. Because why not? They do have to go back to Cleveland, one way or the other. Why not give the Raptors one or two at home? They'd done it before.
That now looks like a false premise, owing almost entirely to LeBron James. In years past, he has allowed himself to drift in and out of the post-season, often taking teammates with him, only fully applying himself when the stakes are highest. This year, those little drifts in focus have been reduced from entire nights to a few minutes at a time.
For long stretches on Friday, James was not himself. Casey had come as close as he ever will in the prelims in putting out a half-hearted bounty on James.
"You work all year to go against the champ in a boxing match … and then you go to the rope-a-dope instead of going 15 rounds?" Casey said. "To beat the champ, you gotta throw punches, whether its haymakers, undercuts, maybe a couple below the belt."
James must've heard it. During a break in play during the first quarter, Casey spent a long moment shrieking at the referee. Rather than move away, James stood well within the Toronto coach's personal space, eyeballing him throughout.
Casey pretended not to notice, but there are few humans alive who are more physically remarkable than James. He noticed, and James noticed him noticing.
You will often see cruelty on the court, but you rarely see rudeness. This was a small, meaningful breach of etiquette. Below-the-belt, you might say.
There are only a few Raptors capable of similar tactics, none of whom will frighten James. Even P.J. Tucker, who would intimidate most reasonable men. The most reliable of Toronto's frighteners was lost at the outset when Kyle Lowry scratched himself with an injured ankle.
"I wish I could be out there helping my teammates. That's the goal. The goal is to try to play tonight. That is the goal," Lowry said in the morning.
Unfortunately, Steinian repetition is not a substitute for functioning hinges.
One of the few things that remains interesting about this series is whether we've seen the last of Lowry. He has about 150 million reasons to end his season immediately. He's also as stubborn as an especially stubborn mule.
Will competitiveness thwart prudence? Regardless, it doesn't matter.
You could put the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers out there against James, and they would not slow his roll.
You didn't see him for much of three quarters. He'd pop up every now and then, running the floor, shouldering people out of the way, staring out into the middle distance like he knew how it was going to end.
To their credit, Toronto was in it for three quarters. That's a sort of progress. Maybe they'll win the NBA's Participation Award.
Cleveland's Kyle Korver tilted it the other way with a pair of spirit-killing threes in the late-third, early-fourth. Then James began to put in the boot.
He had 13 points in the fourth quarter – six more than the entire Toronto team at the point he vacated the game for good.
In the aftermath, Casey was left looking for a stat to give him hope. He found it in the three-point numbers. Cleveland made 13 three-pointers. Toronto made two. Two!
It's hard to win in the present NBA, but it's especially hard if you're going to shoot like a team time-warped in from the 90s.
But it was like that all around. Cleveland had twice the number of rebounds (49 to 25). They had three times as many second-try points (15 to 4). They had four times as many turnovers (16 to 4) – which isn't a good thing, but is an astounding imbalance when you win a game 115-94.
What they had most importantly was LeBron James.
What did Toronto have? Casey and Drake (returned from a long absence). Casey was there to dangle the red cape to his team. Drake, up to his usual courtside arm-waving, 'What ref?'-ing shenanigans, was there to goad the opponents. Neither attempt worked.
James came into his post-game presser looking ridiculous – camouflage jacket, acid-wash jeans and a fedora – and profoundly serene.
"We just want to get better every game," he said. Believe it or not, that was the most interesting thing. Because it sounds like a threat.
It doesn't matter at this point. Losing this series is not about statistics or match-ups. It's about one team having the best player alive, and the other team not having him.
Toronto wasn't bad. Some to them – DeMar DeRozan (37 points) in particular – were good.
So what it was was a reminder that the cliché isn't true. It isn't just about the 15 guys in the room.
You need more men than that to beat LeBron James. However many you've got, it still won't be enough.
Cathal Kelly