11 Takeaways from Cavs 126-104 Game 3 loss to Raptors: Is it time for Cavaliers to panic?

If you were to draw up the worst-case scenario for the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 — that didn’t involve injuries — it’d look pretty similar to what we saw. The Cavs couldn’t keep control of the ball, had awful games from their star backcourt, missed clean looks, and weren’t putting up good contests on three-point shots.

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

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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’t do that.

Cleveland turned it over 20 times, which accounted for 22.9% of their possessions (2nd percentile). This led to 23 points for Toronto.

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.

The Cavs have gone as Harden has offensively. He’s been at the center of their resurgence on that end to close the season. And when things go wrong — as they did on Thursday — he deserves the blame.

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The Raptors made cutting off lanes to the basket a priority — 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.

Just look at how crowded the lane is on some of these drives.

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Atkinson mentioned that the spacing wasn’t 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.

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.

Collapsing this hard made it difficult for the guards to score inside.

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None of Harden’s 13 shots came in the restricted area, while only three were in the paint….

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/11-takeaways-cavs-126-104-100000717.html

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Publish date : 2026-04-24 10:00:00

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