CLEVELAND — There was no staff dinner. No get-together for the Toronto Raptors coaching staff to hash out what went right or what went wrong (a longer conversation) after their Game 1 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday.

A full night and a full day with no travel to work around is an eternity in the NBA when it comes to game prep. Of course, the Raptors had five full days to come up with a game plan that might slow down the heavily favoured Cavaliers in a first-round series between a fourth and fifth seed in the Eastern Conference that suddenly is giving more 1-vs.-8 vibes.

The Raptors coaching staff left Rocket Arena for their hotel a few blocks over Saturday evening and got to work. They got an edit for the game film that captured what they wanted to emphasize at practice on Sunday and had some long conversations about how they wanted to present it.

They slept on it, met as a coaching staff at 8 a.m. Sunday, made any last-minute tweaks they hope will help them narrow the gap after a 126-113 loss that never felt as even that close, and then laid it out for the players at a team meeting before taking it to the floor for a light walkthrough Sunday afternoon.

They had a lot of material to work from.

“So, we did not have any transition (offence(,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “Our transition was bad. During the whole game, we allowed 126 points. Our defence was not good. We allowed them 13 second-chance points. That was not good. We were minus-seven in the possession battle. You know? It was not one thing …”

Put another way: the Raptors shot an uncharacteristic 13-of-27 from three — including eight-of-11 from Scottie Barnes and Jamal Shead, two players the Cavaliers were daring to shoot — and 52 per cent overall while shooting 35 free throws (to 28 by Cleveland) and were still trounced.

The Raptors might be in deeper than they care to admit against a 52-win Cavaliers team that is fully whole for almost the first time after a season upended by trades and injury. The Cavaliers won 64 games last season and added James Harden this year, so there's that.

Still, the Raptors have to start somewhere, and it might not be their offence.

The Raptors' offensive rating was a perfectly respectable 115.3 points per 100 possessions against the Cavs in Game 1, just a fraction over their regular-season average, which was 15th overall. It was even better than the 115.3 rating suggests because the Raptors had only three points on the fast break, compared to their league-leading season average of 18.6 fast-break points.

But........

© Sportsnet