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Having gone down in the proverbial abyss that is a 0-3 deficit in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Toronto Raptors head coach Dwane Casey will try to make Sunday's Game 4 about pride and avoiding a sweep in front of his team's home crowd at the Air Canada Centre.
Casey summed up what Game 4 is all about in three words: “It's about pride.”
“Sunday's game is about pride,” Casey elaborated to Mike Bohn of USA TODAY Sports following the Game 3 loss. “You don't want to get swept, especially in your home building. I think our guys will come out and compete on Sunday… The mentality is: You're down 0-3 – (what) if things get hard on Sunday? Do you keep fighting, do you keep scratching?”
“(If we lose) then you don't have to go back to Cleveland. But our team has played with pride all year long. We know who we're playing against, we know who we're up against and I think we have a lot of pride in our locker room.”
Much like how Jeff Teague told reporters his Indiana Pacers weren't getting swept after facing this same deficit in the first round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Casey's hopes might be all in vain against a well-oiled machine that has peaked at the right time despite late-season struggles.
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A Kyle Lowry-less Raptors team had its best chance leading by three points at the half, which quickly evaporated in the third quarter — only to push it to an even bigger margin by the fourth, which became garbage time for the Cavaliers.
While initially expected to come off the bench, Lowry was unable to play due to an ankle sprain that hindered his play in Game 2, eventually sidelining him for the remainder of the game after trying to play through the discomfort.
“We got another opportunity,” DeRozan said, after tallying a game-high 37 points in a bounce-back performance. “We can't look at it like (what's happened in the) history of teams being down 3-0. We got another opportunity to have another opportunity. That's all that matters. We got to go up and play that way.”
