{"id":1957701,"date":"2026-05-27T10:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1957701"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:28:07","slug":"want-to-understand-kenny-atkinson-and-james-hardens-bizarre-comments-start-with-denial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1957701","title":{"rendered":"Want to understand Kenny Atkinson and James Harden\u2019s bizarre comments? Start with denial"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 2018 playoffs were supposed to go differently for the Toronto Raptors, but they were in the process of ending the same old way \u2014 with an emphatic defeat to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.<\/p>\n

The Raptors won 59 games and the top seed in the Eastern Conference that year, after being bounced by the James gang two consecutive years: in six games in the 2016 Eastern Conference finals and in four a year later and a round earlier. Despite the Cavaliers looking like a pale imitation of themselves, needing seven games in the first round to beat the Indiana Pacers, they stole Game 1 from the rested Raptors and won the next two. Toronto had lost nine straight playoff games to James and was down by four points with 2:44 left in the second quarter of Game 4. That is when then-Raptors coach Dwane Casey subbed third-string center Lucas Nogueira, who hadn\u2019t played a meaningful minute since Game 3 of the first round, in for the struggling Serge Ibaka.<\/p>\n

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In the next 111 seconds of game time, the Cavaliers outscored the Raptors 10-0, with Nogueira looking woefully out of place. The Cavaliers finished the sweep with a 35-point win. Asked after the game why he called Nogueira\u2019s number at that point, Casey said that it had been the idea of an assistant coach.<\/p>\n

This was a very silly thing to say. The head coach makes the substitutions, regardless of who suggests them. Whatever is said privately, the head coach cannot say a tactical decision was someone else\u2019s fault. However, when you have so thoroughly failed to meet your own expectations, you look for any available life raft. Public relations considerations become less important, while self-preservation takes center stage. We\u2019ve seen that again recently in Cleveland \u2014 except it\u2019s the Cavaliers, not the Raptors, who are repeatedly sticking their feet in their mouths.<\/p>\n

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The Cavaliers were swept out of the Eastern Conference finals<\/a> by the New York Knicks on Tuesday. Like the Raptors in 2018, the Cavs appeared to let go of the rope, losing by 37 points in the final game. After going up by 22 points in the fourth quarter of Game 1, the Cavaliers lost the remaining 157 minutes of the series by 99 points. In fact, this series played out in the same cadence for Cleveland as that one did for Toronto: overtime loss, blowout loss, respectable loss, total mauling.<\/p>\n

On the whole, though, it was not a close series, which did not stop the Cavaliers from theorizing: What if it actually had been?<\/p>\n

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\u2022 Before Game 4, Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said that, based on shot quality, the Cavaliers had actually outplayed the Knicks<\/a> in two of the first three games. The process was sound.<\/p>\n

\u2022 After Game 4, Atkinson said<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what didn\u2019t help, was losing those two Game 6s (in the first two rounds). \u2026 That\u2019s not to say, \u2018If we win those Game 6s, we beat the Knicks.\u2019 I\u2019m not saying that. But I think it gives us a better chance. I think the density, the frequency of the games, never had two days in between games, you know the whole deal, played a part in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2022 Guard James Harden added after the series<\/a>, \u201cThey dominated us 4-0. \u2026 Genuinely, I do feel like we are the better team. Series-wise, we didn\u2019t show it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before picking those statements apart, we should consider the Cavaliers\u2019 context. The Cavs, like the Raptors of the mid-2010s, have become playoff mainstays. They have made the playoffs in four straight years, advancing to at least the conference semifinals in the last three. Yet, each playoff appearance was disappointing.<\/p>\n

Even this year, with the Cavaliers reaching the conference finals for the first time since that James-led team in 2018, the journey was way harder than it should have been. They needed seven games to escape the first round against the undermanned and inexperienced Raptors, and another seven to beat the Detroit Pistons in the second round, including a 21-point loss in Game 6 at home when the Cavs led 3-2 in the series.<\/p>\n

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Repeatedly, the Cavaliers have fallen short of their own expectations. And if you want to point out that Harden has only been in Cleveland for a few months and shouldn\u2019t relate, you can sub in the All-Star\u2019s name for his team\u2019s name in the previous sentence and it would still make sense.<\/p>\n

When that happens, you cling to any logical reasoning you can find before being able to make an honest assessment. Yes, Atkinson did say, \u201cAnalytically \u2026 we\u2019ve won two out of three\u201d before Game 4. You can be sure there were numbers that Atkinson had seen that verified that. Still, it is not a good PR move to say, Actually, we\u2019ve played pretty well<\/em> when you\u2019re down 3-0. It is why coaches and players have turned to \u201cIt\u2019s a make-or-miss league\u201d since before most of the players in the series were born.<\/p>\n

Likewise, there is undoubtedly truth in Atkinson\u2019s suggestion that the Cavaliers would have benefited from some time off before or during the series against the Knicks. Alas, winning both of those Game 6s would have meant the Cavaliers were better than they were. Ultimately, Atkinson is saying, if we were a better team, we would have shown we were a better team against New York,<\/em> which is so self-evident as to not be worth saying.<\/p>\n

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As for Harden\u2019s comment \u2014 well, who knows? Perhaps he was referring to his midseason trade not giving Cleveland enough time to come together when he referenced the \u201ccircumstances\u201d of the series. Perhaps there were injuries at play. Regardless, denial is a hell of a drug.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s no lack of confidence. We don\u2019t feel overmatched or anything,\u201d then-Raptors reserve C.J. Miles said before his team got swept<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s none of that. \u2026 All three games have presented different plays that would have to be done at certain points of the game to get over the hump. We see them. It\u2019s not like there\u2019s no door to get out of the room, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Raptors acted unusually during and after that series in 2018. It was widely reported that team president Masai Ujiri went into Casey\u2019s office after Game 3 to chew out the coach for not preparing his team better to defend James\u2019 memorable game-winner over OG Anunoby,<\/a> who is now a Knick. DeMar DeRozan, the Raptors\u2019 leading scorer, widely respected across the league, was ejected for a flagrant foul on Cleveland\u2019s Jordan Clarkson<\/a> (another common link between then and now). Ultimately, those were DeRozan\u2019s and Casey\u2019s final on-court moments with the Raptors, with Ujiri firing the coach a week after the playoffs ended, oddly saying that even with the move, the Raptors were \u201ccelebrating\u201d Casey. In July 2018, DeRozan went to San Antonio in the Kawhi Leonard trade.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the Leonard trade sprung from a unique situation, and the Raptors benefited from plenty of luck on their way to winning the title the next year, including James finally leaving for the Western Conference in the offseason. There is no saying similar avenues will be available to the Cavaliers this offseason, while the Cavs have already committed to keeping Atkinson<\/a>. Still, it took being thoroughly embarrassed on the court for the Raptors to truly reckon with their shortcomings.<\/p>\n

And before they really looked in the mirror, members of the Raptors said and did some pretty regrettable things to try to save face, to make sense of all of the failure. The Cavaliers can only hope for a similar payoff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2018 playoffs were supposed to go differently for the Toronto Raptors, but they were in the process of ending the same old way \u2014 with an emphatic defeat to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Raptors won 59 games and the top seed in the Eastern Conference that year, after being bounced by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1957701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1957701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1957701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1957701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1957701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}