It's just another casual day for LeBron James as he attempts to put the Cleveland Cavaliers up 3 to 0 over the Toronto Raptors in their second round series. The hall of fame player passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in career playoff points and just keeps climbing up the rankings.
Game 2 recap
Game 2 was much like game 1 for the Cavs. Pure dominance. The Raptors have proven no match for the Cavaliers and they showed nothing positive in game 2. They tried to with a small starting lineup, sending Serge Ibaka to play center, but it ended up backfiring for the squad.
The Raptors were dominated on the boards and it led to the Cavs going berzerk on offense.
The Cavs shot 54 percent from the three point line, and 54 percent from the field. Even if they weren't defending well, they still dominated on offense and that is tough to beat when the Cavs are rolling. They are getting wide open shots off of their ball movement and everything is going according to plan for Cleveland. The Raptors didn't even get close to challenging the Cavs by shooting the ball. They made just 5 threes on the night compared to 18 for Cleveland.
When will we see DeRozan dominate?
DeMar DeRozan has been non-existent in this series thus far. It's not surprising, considering he lives off of tough mid-range shots and the Cavs actually have defensive specialists guarding him.
The thing is the Raptors desperately need DeRozan to have a 40 point game if they want to win. Will this performance come in game 3? It's hard to tell. In their first series against the Bucks, it took DeRozan a few games before he really started picking apart Milwaukee on offense. The problem is, Milwaukee is nowhere near the level of the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron.
A huge key here is that Kyle Lowry is listed as questionable heading into game 3. Lowry suffered an ankle sprain in game 2 and it doesn't sound like it's a major injury, but Kyle missed practice on Thursday and might even miss Friday's game.
If Lowry misses game 3 or anything after that, this series might as well be over. The Raptors have no real firepower other than Lowry and DeRozan and if it's just DeMar out there, the Raptors are in trouble.
If the spots were flipped and it was just Lowry out there and DeMar out, we might see the Raptors play a lot better basketball than normal, but somehow they are going to have to generate offense without their All-star point guard.
Game 3 starts at 7:00 PM EST Friday night on ESPN.
