Why James Harden’s turnover troubles won’t sink Cavs vs. Raptors

The Cleveland Cavaliers responded under a heap of pressure in Game 5 against the Toronto Raptors. After losing Games 3 and 4 on the road, the Cavs trailed Toronto by seven at halftime as the Raptors gained more and more confidence.

Cleveland responded in the second half, riding stellar performances from James Harden, Evan Mobley and Dennis Schroder to get a 125-120 win and take a 3-2 series lead. Now, the Cavs will head on the road and try to break the trend of the home teams dominating in order to close out the series.

In order to do that, the Cavs will need a measured and solid performance from their stars against a tricky Raptors defense, one that has a lot of length and can cause problems for even the best backcourts.

That has been on display in this series as Harden, normally one of the most cerebral floor generals in the league, has been sped up and struggled with turnovers at times. Harden had six turnovers in the win after giving the ball away 22 times in the first four games. Even against a team that is offensively challenged like the Raptors are, that’s too many free possessions to be giving up.

As long as it doesn’t get too out of control, like it has at times during his career in the playoffs, Harden’s carelessness with the ball shouldn’t be the reason the Cavs are knocked out in this round. While it may come up later in the playoffs and be a fatal flaw for Cleveland, here’s why the Cavs are built to withstand these turnovers against the Raptors.

Toronto struggles to score in the half court

Turnovers only hurt if your opponent is able to score off of them, and the Raptors simply haven’t been able to do that often enough in this series to grab the advantage. While they did score 120 points in Game 5, they did that off the back of a shooting performance that will be very hard to replicate.

Ja’Kobe Walter snapped out of his slump to hit six 3-pointers and Jamal Shead hit four triples off the bench, both marks that will be difficult to replicate moving forward even after heading back home.

The Raptors can get out in transition off of some of those live-ball turnovers, but when they are forced to execute in the half court, they don’t have the depth of shotmakers that can bother a Cavs team that still has Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley manning the paint on the defensive end.

Toronto also lost Brandon Ingram in this game due to a heel injury, and his status moving forward in this series is unclear. Ingram is the best pure scorer in the half court on the Toronto roster, and even though he isn’t having a great series, the loss of his shotmaking ability will eat away at the Raptors’ half court offense even more.

Harden’s turnovers come from high usage, which is still a net positive

Even while playing with Donovan Mitchell in this new partnership in Cleveland, Harden has the ball in his hands all the time and is one of the best table-setters in the league. He can also get it done as a scorer, and he did just that in Game 5 with 23 points and nine assists to go with those six turnovers.

Now, this isn’t meant to hand-wave those turnovers. They are an issue against a lengthy defense like the Raptors, and Harden will have to deal with similar pressure if Cleveland advances to the next round to take on either the Detroit Pistons or the Orlando Magic. However, against a team who struggles so much on the other end at times like the Raptors do, Harden’s contributions on the offensive end far outweigh the damage that the turnovers do.

Now, it will still be very tough for the Cavs to close things out in Game 6 on the road if Harden is still being careless with the ball. He had 15 turnovers in Games 3 and 4 in Toronto, the two games that the Raptors won in the series. However, even if those numbers are still high, this ultra-talented Cavs team should still be able to get the job done and move on to the second round.

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