The 2018 playoffs were supposed to go differently for the Toronto Raptors, but they were in the process of ending the same old way — with an emphatic defeat to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.The Raptors won 59 games and the top seed in the Eastern Conference that year, after being bounced by the James gang two consecutive years: in six games in the 2016 Eastern Conference finals and in four a year later and a round earlier. Despite the Cavaliers looking like a pale imitation of themselves, needing seven games in the first round to beat the Indiana Pacers, they stole Game 1 from the rested Raptors and won the next two. Toronto had lost nine straight playoff games to James and was down by four points with 2:44 left in the second quarter of Game 4. That is when then-Raptors coach Dwane Casey subbed third-string center Lucas Nogueira, who hadn’t played a meaningful minute since Game 3 of the first round, in for the struggling Serge Ibaka.In the next 111 seconds of game time, the Cavaliers outscored the Raptors 10-0, with Nogueira looking woefully out of place. The Cavaliers finished the sweep with a 35-point win. Asked after the game why he called Nogueira’s number at that point, Casey said that it had been the idea of an assistant coach.This was a very silly thing to say. The head coach makes the substitutions, regardless of who suggests them. Whatever is said privately, the head coach cannot say a tactical decision was someone else’s fault. However, when you have so thoroughly failed to meet your own expectations, you look for any available life raft. Public relations considerations become less important, while self-preservation takes center stage. We’ve seen that again recently in Cleveland — except it’s the Cavaliers, not the Raptors, who are repeatedly sticking their feet in their mouths.The Cavaliers were swept out of the Eastern Conference finals by the New York Knicks on Tuesday. Like the Raptors in 2018, the Cavs appeared to let go of the rope, losing by 37 points in the final game. After going up by 22 points in the fourth quarter of Game 1, the Cavaliers lost the remaining 157 minutes of the series by 99 points. In fact, this series played out in the same cadence for Cleveland as that one did for Toronto: overtime loss, blowout loss, respectable loss, total mauling.On the whole, though, it was not a close series, which did not stop the Cavaliers from theorizing: What if it actually had been?