CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavs won’t need to wait for their 2026 playoff opener.
Fourth-seeded Cleveland (52-30) will open Saturday’s four-game playoff slate against the fifth-seeded Toronto Raptors (46-36). Tipoff is set for 1 p.m. on Amazon Prime.
The remainder of the best-of-seven first-round series is still to be determined. The first two games will be at Rocket Arena before the series shifts north of the border.
Despite going into Sunday with a high probability of facing the Atlanta Hawks in Round One, the Raptors leapfrogged Atlanta and claimed the Eastern Conference fifth seed via a head-to-head tiebreaker.
Toronto crushed the Brooklyn Nets while the Hawks, who chose to rest all of their regulars, lost to the Miami Heat. Both teams ended the season with 46 wins and after Orlando’s stunning setback in its finale against Boston, the Raptors finished in fifth.
“We know that’s no picnic, right?” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said of the Raptors late Sunday night. “They lowkey dominated us for the games we played them this year. Have a lot of respect. Toronto’s a great challenge for us. Really good team.”
Cleveland lost all three meetings with Toronto, by a combined 35 points. But each came before a trio of season-saving and confidence-boosting acquisitions — James Harden, Keon Ellis and Dennis Schroder.
The Cavs are 22-9 since their arrival, the league’s fourth-best record during that stretch. They won five of their last six games to close the 82-game schedule and enter Saturday’s matinee with lofty expectations.
“We’re a better team than we were pre-trade,” Atkinson boasted. “Front office did an amazing job adding the pieces we added. We’re a better team, so therefore it gives us a better chance to improve on what we did last year and what we’ve done the last three years.”
