{"id":620456,"date":"2026-04-21T02:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T02:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/620456\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T02:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T02:31:10","slug":"nba-playoffs-2026-takeaways-brandon-ingram-remains-m-i-a-as-potent-cavs-trio-emerges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/620456\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA playoffs 2026 takeaways: Brandon Ingram remains M.I.A. as potent Cavs trio emerges"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> protected home court, as expected, as they walked away from Game 2 of their first-round matchup against the Toronto Raptors<\/a> victorious and in great position to close out this series sooner rather than\u00a0later.<\/p>\n

Despite just modest bench production \u2014 19 points to Toronto’s 45 \u2014 Cleveland’s starting lineup and potent offensive system was simply too much for the Raptors.<\/p>\n

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Let’s get into some takeaways.<\/p>\n

Cavaliers 115, Raptors 105Brandon Ingram<\/a> is becoming a problem \u2014 and not in a good way<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-8 forward, in his first active season with Toronto, had a lackluster 17-point Game 1 and criticized the coaching staff for his lack of shots (nine). He followed that up by scoring a grand total of zero points in the first half of Game 2 \u2014 scoring seven overall on 3-of-15 shooting \u2014 putting even more pressure on his teammates to offset his lack of production.<\/p>\n

Ingram, who has a history of being a reluctant 3-point shooter, is currently re-triggering old habits and offering limited spacing to the Raptors, who aren’t exactly deep in the shooting department as is.<\/p>\n

Cleveland’s primary trio is working<\/p>\n

Donovan Mitchell<\/a>, Evan Mobley<\/a>, and James Harden<\/a> found a substantial rhythm Monday night, combining for 83 points in Game 2.<\/p>\n

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While all three are getting their shots up, at no point does it seem like a “my turn, your turn” type of situation.<\/p>\n

In fact, they all seem potent playing off each other, with Mobley in particular realizing and embracing the fact that his scoring is primarily going to come off dribble penetration as a byproduct of the space created by his two guards.<\/p>\n

Twenty-two turnovers certainly didn’t do Toronto any favors, and while Jamal Shead<\/a> has done a decent job replacing Quickley in the starting lineup, there’s clearly a talent deficit in play as the 23-year-old sophomore guard is far too inconsistent to carry the role over a long period of time.<\/p>\n

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While Shead is actually adept at hanging on to the rock, he relinquishes the ball a fair bit to Ingram, RJ Barrett<\/a> and Scottie Barnes<\/a>, who are simply overtaxed as primary ball-handlers, leading to rushed decisions and indecisive play.<\/p>\n

The return of Quickley from a strained right hamstring can’t come soon enough.<\/p>\n

Game 3 is slated for 8 p.m. ET on Thursday in Toronto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Cavaliers protected home court, as expected, as they walked away from Game 2 of their first-round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,55087,17603,23659,39603,36175,52200,1173,590,47078,16108,85,17602],"class_list":{"0":"post-620456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-brandon-ingram","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-donovan-mitchell","13":"tag-evan-mobley","14":"tag-immanuel-quickley","15":"tag-jamal-shead","16":"tag-james-harden","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-rj-barrett","19":"tag-scottie-barnes","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-toronto-raptors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}