Cavs series once again proving Raptors are step below NBA's elite

CLEVELAND -- At practice Sunday after another disappointing loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dwane Casey was asked about his benching of DeMar DeRozan in Game 3. The Raptors guard was lifted from the game late in the third quarter and didn’t return. Toronto made a valiant comeback in the fourth, but fell short at the buzzer thanks to LeBron James.

In explaining why he left C.J. Miles on the floor instead of bringing DeRozan back, Casey revealed a truth about the team's roster.

“The threat of a 3-point shot,” Casey answered. “Spacing. A guy who can make a play out there. Those were the things (C.J.) was giving us.”

The Raptors are on the wrong side of a talent gap that's eventually been exposed in every postseason they have played. However, through the experience of the team's core, increased depth, and a highly publicized shift in offensive style, Toronto's managed to keep improving, climaxing in a 59-win season that made it the No. 1 seed in the East.

In the regular season, the team executed its formula to perfection. A group of young players came together to help form the best five-man unit off the bench. Kyle Lowry and DeRozan gave up some responsibility on offense and made themselves more complete players within the structure of the team. But in the playoffs, whatever advantage the Raptors built during the regular season has eroded.

The bench unit has been up and down. Fred VanVleet returned from a shoulder injury too early in the first round, then came back again in Game 6 and helped lead a fourth-quarter rally, but he hasn’t been a difference-maker in this series.

Pascal Siakam has fought valiantly against James, but until he develops into a shooting threat, he won't be a two-way player that can be relied upon in the postseason. Jakob Poeltl has struggled throughout the playoffs and didn’t play in Game 3.

In a game the Raptors absolutely had to have on Saturday, they couldn’t start their power forward, and couldn’t finish with their starting shooting guard.

Zoom out on this series, beyond the demoralizing nature of all three losses and the brilliance of James, and the Raptors can find plenty of positives (though they'd need to ignore the second half of Game 2, when they came out of the locker room with a two-point lead, gave it up within minutes, and simply stopped pushing).

Lowry, historically one of the worst shooters in NBA playoff history, has shot 52.3 percent from the field and 45.8 percent from three in these playoffs. OG Anunoby has proven that his icy exterior is no front. He's more than ready to contribute on the big stage as a perimeter defender, and he's demonstrated some signs of offensive development.

In the first two games, despite the disappointing finish to Game 1 and James turning the fourth quarter of Game 2 into a shooting exhibition, Toronto’s new offense worked. There was more ball movement and fewer isolation plays. Teammates looked for one another. The Raptors played within the flow of an attack they spent all season constructing. In Game 2, the Raptors were the second team since 1980 to shoot 50/40/90 in a playoff game and lose.

But it wasn’t enough. Scan the roster, and you'll see the Raptors have maximized the potential of an NBA team that lacks a top-10 player. They’ve done it by continuing to tinker, by pairing their stars with young players who have slipped in the draft, and by developing those young players with the guidance of Toronto’s coaching staff. They’ve improved on their postseason disappointments, and with some perspective, we might even remember this five-year playoff run as somewhat improbable.

What the playoffs have shown, however, is that the team’s identity isn’t really about how its depth can overpower opponents. The Raptors' identity is that they have a lot of decent-to-good players - in Lowry and DeRozan, occasionally great ones - but nobody that can swing a series for them. It’s been the flaw of this roster all along, and everything else the team did over the course of this season wasn’t enough to make up for it.

There are plays that could have changed this series. We could even be talking about the Raptors looking to take a 3-1 lead in Cleveland on Monday. But going up against the best player in the game exposes a lot of warts. Though it's easy to wonder what could have been, there’s a reason why teams like the Raptors always come up short. Just look around the Eastern Conference at all the teams James has eliminated for seven seasons running.

“It seems like it’s one play,” Lowry said at practice Sunday. “But it’s a lot of things … Last night we had plenty of mistakes. It’s not just one play. It’s a lot of plays, an accumulation of plays throughout the whole game.”

The Raptors will lament the result of Game 1, and wonder whether overtime in Game 3 could have been a turning point. But the bigger-picture questions are the more important ones, putting the most realistic frame around a series that, beyond building James’ highlight reel, once again shows the talent gap between the Raptors and the NBA's actual title contenders.