The first round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs can be an overwhelming time for analysts. With eight series taking place, you can’t possibly keep up with and do thoughtful analysis on all of them. So, you need to narrow down which ones require the most focus.
After the Cleveland Cavaliers took a 2-0 series lead over the Toronto Raptors, I thought I could put this series to bed. The Cavaliers only needed to win two of the final five games, the Raptors have struggled against top ten teams all year (7-22 against those groups, per Cleaning the Glass), and Toronto’s best spacer, Immanuel Quickley, was ruled out for the rest of the round.
Fast forward to today and the series is currently knotted up at two games a piece and the Raptors have completely flipped the script on the Cavaliers. The Cavs might be an 8.5-point favorite as they return home for Game 5 according to FanDuel, but it truly feels like this series is still up for grabs.
The Key Adjustment That Saved The Raptors’ Season
After two games of being demolished by James Harden and Donovan Mitchell in the pick-and-roll, the Raptors said, ‘hey, we were the fifth-best regular season defense and we are not going to stand for this anymore.’
In Game 1, the Raptors went with some pretty standard matchup assignments. RJ Barrett on Harden, Jamal Shead on Mitchell, Brandon Ingram on Dean Wade, Scottie Barnes on Evan Mobley, and Jakob Poeltl on Jarrett Allen. Juxtapose those matchups with what we saw at the start of Game 4: Barnes on Harden, Ja’Kobe Walter (now starting in place of Shead) on Mitchell, Ingram on Wade, Poeltl on Mobley, and Barrett on Allen.
What this does is take away the pick-and-roll with Allen as the screener, as any time Harden or Mitchell try to initiate this action, the Raptors can nullify it with a simple switch – since Barrett, Barnes, and Walter are all long and athletic enough to handle a multitude of different player types.
So, if Harden and Mitchell want to hunt Poeltl (the weak link defensively in Toronto’s starting five), they have to use Mobley as a screener. This may not seem like a big deal, but look how little separation Mitchell is able to generate on Mobley screens:
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The Raptors also did a great job of enhancing their gap help to clog up driving lanes, mitigate passing windows, and force Cleveland’s sketchier shooters to vanquish them (as a team, the Cavaliers shot just 25 perect from downtown in Game 4).
Cleveland should still be able to pull this one out. They have home court advantage, superior closers, and a lot of fat they can cut out of their process (they had 18 turnovers in Game 4). But credit goes to Toronto for turning what should have been a clean sweep into an instant classic.
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