CLEVELAND – As soon as the ultimate whistle sounded in a disappointing Game 1 loss, Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic and his staff set to work.
Rajakovic, his coaches, and all of the Raptors players watched, rewatched and analyzed what went incorrect in Toronto’s 126-113 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers within the opening game of their first-round playoff series on Saturday afternoon. They then got right down to working on the long list of things that have to be fixed before Game 2 on Monday.
“We had long conversations last night, this morning, about what (the) potential adjustments have to be,” said Rajakovic before practice began at Rocket Arena in Cleveland. “What do we want to scrub up? What do we want to do higher?
“There may be quite a lot of those things. That’s very, very exciting, because there may be quite a lot of room for us to grow.”
Starting centre Jakob Poeltl, who scored just 4 points and had six rebounds within the loss, welcomed the round of constructive criticism.
“I feel at the top of the day, we all know a playoff series needs some changes, needs some adjustments. It’s only one game,” he said. “We didn’t play our greatest basketball, prefer it’s not even nearly X’s and O’s.
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“It wasn’t our effort that we’ve shown within the regular season, like we didn’t have that very same determination.”
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It was an extended list of issues that may have to be fixed if the Raptors are going to tie the best-of-seven series, but Rajakovic and his players were focused on three foremost points.
– All-star forward Brandon Ingram has to stand up more shots after he managed only nine field-goal attempts on Saturday, including only one within the second half.
– They should tighten up on defence, especially against Cleveland guards Donovan Mitchell and James Harden.
– Kick-start Toronto’s NBA-best transition offence that averaged 18.9 points per game within the regular season but were limited to simply three within the loss.
Ingram said that the film sessions helped quite a bit and that it is necessary to keep in mind that it was only one game.
“We needed to see what their game plan was coming out of the primary game, how they were going to attack us, what they were going to do on the defensive side to slow us down,” said Ingram, noting he enjoys solving the puzzle of one other team’s defence. “I feel we’ve got those answers now, so we will have a look at them and see how we will recover in practice and refocus and take a look at to recover tomorrow.”
Point guard Jamal Shead, a defensive specialist who made his NBA playoff debut on Saturday, said that the Raptors weren’t themselves in the primary game. Toronto had the NBA’s fifth-best defensive rating within the regular season (113.25).
“I don’t think we tried quite a lot of coverages. I feel that was quite a lot of failures, you realize?” said Shead. “I feel we were in quite a lot of places that we weren’t speculated to be, and that was on us, that wasn’t on coach, that wasn’t on our game plan.
“We just weren’t executing defensively like we must always have been, and that’s on us.”
A part of that defensive lapse was a scarcity of rebounding.
Although the Cavaliers got 33 boards to the Raptors’ 27 — not an amazing differential — Scottie Barnes, Toronto’s best rebounder within the regular season, only got one. He averaged 7.5 over 80 games.
“Our transition offence is actually good when (Barnes) rebounds the ball, when he’s pushing the ball,” said Rajakovic. “We’ve got to simply be certain that (Barnes) gets himself involved in rebounding together along with his teammates.
“We didn’t do a great job of rebounding the ball and running. We’ve got to recover in that aspect, needless to say.”
Rajakovic still had no update on point guard Immanuel Quickley.
Toronto’s go-to starter missed Game 1 with a gentle strain of his right hamstring. Quickley averaged 16.4 points and a team-best 5.9 assists over 70 games this past season.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press