{"id":717071,"date":"2026-04-24T11:06:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/717071\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T11:06:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:06:49","slug":"11-takeaways-from-cavs-126-104-game-3-loss-to-raptors-is-it-time-for-cavaliers-to-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/717071\/","title":{"rendered":"11 Takeaways from Cavs 126-104 Game 3 loss to Raptors: Is it time for Cavaliers to panic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were to draw up the worst-case scenario for the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> in Game 3 \u2014 that didn\u2019t involve injuries \u2014 it\u2019d look pretty similar to what we saw. The Cavs couldn\u2019t keep control of the ball, had awful games from their star backcourt, missed clean looks, and weren\u2019t putting up good contests on three-point shots.<\/p>\n

This all came to a head in the fourth quarter when the Toronto Raptors<\/a> ran them off the floor. They outscored Cleveland 43-23 in the final frame to cruise to a lopsided 126-104<\/a> victory to trim their deficit in the series to 2-1.<\/p>\n

Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson has consistently talked about wanting to win the possession battle. To do that, you need to take care of the basketball. The Cavs simply didn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

Cleveland turned it over 20 times, which accounted for 22.9% of their possessions<\/a> (2nd percentile<\/a>). This led to 23 points for Toronto.<\/p>\n

James Harden was the worst offender. He coughed it up eight times, which included six in the second half when the game was getting away.<\/p>\n

The Cavs have gone as Harden has offensively. He\u2019s been at the center of their resurgence on that end to close the season. And when things go wrong \u2014 as they did on Thursday \u2014 he deserves the blame.<\/p>\n

The Raptors made cutting off lanes to the basket a priority \u2014 especially when Harden drove. They completely sucked into the paint to close avenues for Harden to score or pass inside. Given how switchable and how much length Toronto has at the wing, this led to turnovers.<\/p>\n

Just look at how crowded the lane is on some of these drives.<\/p>\n

Atkinson mentioned that the spacing wasn\u2019t great, which led to some of the miscues. Part of that is due to the clunkiness of playing two non-shooting bigs. Part of that is due to not having a good offensive process.<\/p>\n

A situation like the one below, where everyone is below the free-throw line, and four are either in the paint or one step removed, is only going to end one way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Collapsing this hard made it difficult for the guards to score inside.<\/p>\n

None of Harden\u2019s 13 shots came in the restricted area, while only three were in the paint. Meanwhile, Donovan Mitchell took just three of his 16 shots at the rim and only seven in the paint in total. That all led to no free-throw attempts for Mitchell and six for Harden.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to keep Cleveland\u2019s guards from getting to the basket, even when you\u2019re making a concerted effort to do so. The Raptors deserve a ton of credit for this. All five defenders were competing hard, communicating, and executing the game plan at a high level. This included Scottie Barnes, who was hands down the best player on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the Raptors did a good job of making Harden and Mitchell work when they didn\u2019t have the ball. They weren\u2019t allowing easy catches above the arc, and denied them the ball whenever they could.<\/p>\n

At the same time, playing this way is incredibly risky. Toronto\u2019s entire game plan was predicated on the hope that the Cavs, particularly their guards, would miss wide-open threes, and that\u2019s exactly what they did.<\/p>\n

Mitchell went 1-7 for deep. Many of those were clean looks that he got through pull-ups or from spotting up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anything bought from the links helps support Fear the Sword. You can buy the Let \u2018Em Know shirt HERE<\/a>. You can also shop all of Homage\u2019s Cavs gear HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Harden went 3-10, and it was much the same story. Toronto went under on screens to cut off the drives to the hoop that were so effective in the first two games of the series.<\/p>\n

Collapsing the paint this aggressively lends itself to open catch-and-shoot threes as well. Some made the most of those opportunities, like Max Strus (4-8) and Jaylon Tyson (3-6). Others couldn\u2019t, such as Dean Wade (1-4) and Evan Mobley (0-4).<\/p>\n

As a team, the Cavs went 14-45 from three (31.1%). Those looks accounted for 50% of their shots (94th percentile<\/a>).<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s easy to say the Cavs should\u2019ve gone inside more, they\u2019re a good three-point shooting team. If you\u2019re going to get that many open looks for your best players, you simply need to knock them down.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a make-or-miss league, and the Cavs missed.<\/p>\n

The Raptors were the opposite.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t generate many threes, but they knocked down the ones they took. They also hit 14 triples, but needed 21 fewer attempts to hit that number as they converted 61% of their looks. This included RJ Barrett going 6-8 and Jamison Battle connecting all four of his looks.<\/p>\n

One of Toronto\u2019s biggest disadvantages is the fact that their offense comes from much less efficient places on the floor. The three best spots to score from are at the rim, the free-throw line, and from three.<\/p>\n

The Raptors were an efficient offense in Game 3, but in a somewhat roundabout way.<\/p>\n

Toronto converted just 50% of their looks at the rim (5th percentile<\/a>), had a free-throw rate in the 17th percentile<\/a>, and took less than a quarter of their shots from three (2nd percentile<\/a>). However, that didn\u2019t matter because of how well they shot from three, and the fact that they connected on 62.5% of their midrange shots (96th percentile<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Once again, the Cavs kept the Raptors from really hurting them in transition, despite how many turnovers they committed. Toronto was in the second percentile<\/a> for points added in transition and had just nine fast-break points. That\u2019s impressive given how much the Raptors emphasize playing fast.<\/p>\n

The Cavs\u2019 defense wasn\u2019t perfect. The looks they gave up from deep were clean, and they overall didn\u2019t play with the sense of urgency you\u2019d like to see. At the same time, the Raptors executed a very difficult game plan to absolute perfection.<\/p>\n

Cleveland\u2019s rotations should be shrunk.<\/p>\n

The minutes distribution feels off. Tyson played well and provided exactly what the Cavs needed physically in this matchup, but was limited to less than 16 minutes. There\u2019s no excuse for that happening, especially given how this hasn\u2019t been a favorable matchup for either Dennis Schroder or Keon Ellis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for Atkinson to go away from the 10-man rotation.<\/p>\n

The Cavs\u2019 lack of fight in the fourth quarter was a problem.<\/p>\n

Letting go of the rope while up 2-0 in the first road game of a series isn\u2019t exactly something new. Teams that we consider good and mentally tough can do so. We even saw the Indiana Pacers \u2014 a team that never let go of the rope last season \u2014 do so at home when they had a 2-0 lead on the Cavs last spring.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Cavs haven\u2019t earned the benefit of the doubt. They\u2019ve consistently shown a lack of fight when things get difficult in the playoffs. That cropped up again as they completely folded in the fourth quarter after continually battling back through the first three quarters to make it a two-point game heading into the final frame.<\/p>\n

That said, there isn\u2019t a reason to panic for the Cavs, at least not yet.<\/p>\n

Any playoff loss is a cause for concern to some degree. The Cavs have been upset too many times in the Mitchell era to take anything for granted. But there\u2019s not a lot from this game that feels repeatable from Toronto\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n

The margin for error is considerably smaller for a team that plays the way Toronto does. Where they get their offense from puts them at a disadvantage. If they can\u2019t get out in transition \u2014 like the Cavs have kept them from doing \u2014 they need to rely on hitting inefficient midrange shots and canning a good portion of the limited threes they take.<\/p>\n

As an example, Toronto scored 18 more points from three than they would have if they shot their season-long average from three. That was more than the margin of victory (which speaks to how poorly things went in the fourth quarter), but also shows how much of an outlier this performance was. Can you reasonably rely on making that many jumpers in three of the next four games?<\/p>\n

On the other end, Toronto had the right game plan defensively. You can\u2019t let the Cavs have their cake and eat it too. Preventing Mitchell and Harden from wreaking havoc inside is a win, and it speaks to how well Toronto\u2019s defense was.<\/p>\n

That said, you can\u2019t take everything away. The Cavs missed so many open three-point looks and turned it over an uncharacteristic amount. It feels like at least one of those things would need to continue if the Raptors are going to steal this.<\/p>\n

Anything can happen in a short series. Trends that wouldn\u2019t last over 82 games can produce unexpected results in a seven-game sample. So yes, maybe this is a formula that Toronto can use to win three of the next four games. But I\u2019ll need to see it work out again before putting my faith in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you were to draw up the worst-case scenario for the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 \u2014 that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,1236,1215,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-717071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cavs-analysis","11":"tag-cavs-playoffs","12":"tag-cleveland","13":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","14":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","15":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116459372486628869","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}