Brandon Ingram got 17 points but only nine shot attempts, and one of those came in the second half, as the Raptors opened their series with a 126-113 loss to the Cavaliers on Saturday in Cleveland.
The numbers told the story of Toronto’s night. Ingram, who averaged 17 field-goal attempts per game in the regular season as the Raptors’ top option, was rarely allowed to get comfortable. Cleveland denied him the ball and leaned on Dean Wade as the primary defender, squeezing the space Toronto wanted to create. Ingram said, “I’ll find my offence,” but added that “me shooting nine shots is not going to win basketball games.”
Darko Rajakovic said after the game, “We’ve got to definitely do a better job and find Brandon more, and he needs to be more engaged,” adding, “And we have a couple of solutions for that.” The Raptors coach spent part of Sunday morning on the sideline in a lengthy conversation with Ingram during practice, a sign that Toronto is already trying to repair an offense that too often stalled when its best scorer was taken out of the play.
That problem cut against the reason the Raptors acquired Ingram in the first place. Toronto needed a bucket getter who could create offense without waiting for a passing chain to set it up, and Game 1 showed how badly that kind of player matters when the defense takes him away. Rajakovic’s pass-first approach worked in stretches during the regular season, but Cleveland’s pressure exposed its limits in the opener. The Raptors’ $38 million man was supposed to be the escape valve. Instead, he spent much of Saturday fighting to get the ball at all.
Jamal Shead said the Raptors made life harder on themselves too, saying, “We had a couple of dumb (turnovers) and then a lot of just unforced errors where, you know, if a guy’s not open, don’t pass it,” as Toronto tried to pry loose a game that Cleveland controlled for long stretches. Rajakovic also drew up a halftime scheme that used Ingram off the ball as a screener, one of the adjustments the team hopes can free him before the series moves forward.
Game 2 is set for Monday night, with Game 3 coming Thursday in Toronto. If the Raptors do not find a cleaner way to get Ingram involved, they may spend the rest of the series asking the same question that hung over Saturday: how does Toronto beat Cleveland when its best scorer is seeing the ball so rarely?
