Four nights ago, I wrote this:

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Whether this series winds up going four games or five — and it's really tough to envision it lasting longer than that — the [Cleveland] Cavaliers are just in a different class than the [Toronto] Raptors, especially with [Kyle] Lowry flailing like this and with [Jonas] Valanciunas in a suit. Unless both those things change dramatically in time for Saturday's Game 3 at Air Canada Centre, the Cavs will not face real adversity, the kind presented by an opponent that can take your best shot and return one in kind, until they reach their second straight NBA Finals.

Well, four nights later, Valanciunas is back in uniform, but not yet back on the court; he was active for Monday's Game 4, but the Raptors didn't need him. Not with Lowry and DeMar DeRozan playing like All-Stars, and with Bismack Biyombo wreaking havoc on the interior. The Raptors are in the Eastern Conference finals ... and maybe, for the first time in a while, the Cavs are in trouble.

The Raptors picked up where they left off in Game 3, taking the fight to the Cavs early and holding off a furious push late to earn a 105-99 win in Game 4 to get level at two games apiece. Toronto dropped the first two games of the series in blowouts but stormed back on its home court, turning this into a best-of-three contest that will resume at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland with Game 5 on Wednesday.

After facing widespread criticism following an 8-for-28 start to the series capped by a somewhat curious second-quarter siesta, Lowry followed up a strong Game 3 with an all-around masterpiece in Game 4. The All-Star point guard torched the first line of Cleveland's defense — typically Kyrie Irving, though Matthew Dellavedova got some too — early and often, popping for 35 points on 14-for-20 shooting to go with five rebounds, five assists, three steals and just two turnovers in 44 brilliant minutes.

"I'm a confident player," said Lowry, who now owns the Raptors' franchise record for 35-point postseason performances, to ESPN's Doris Burke after the game. "I go out there and do my job. My teammates believe in me. My family, my friends believe in me. I just go out there and play basketball. At the end of the day, I can live with the critics and everything. I can live with it. I'm gonna keep working. I know how hard I work on my game, so that's all that really matters."

After seeing a long jumper go through the net on the game's first possession, Lowry got engaged all over the court — pulling down rebounds, lofting a lob for Biyombo, and working hard on the defensive end as part of a scrambling Toronto attack that held Cleveland to 9-for-23 shooting in the opening frame. Lowry cranked up the offensive output in the second quarter, finding his shooting touch with deep 3-pointers off both the bounce and the catch, pouring in 15 of Toronto's 30 second-quarter points to help stake the Raps to a 57-41 lead at halftime.

On the other sideline, the Cavs faced many of the same issues in Game 4 as they did in Game 3. After selling out to run the hot-shooting Cavaliers off the 3-point line early in the series resulted in a steady stream of drives to the rim, the Raptors have focused more on packing the paint and forcing Cleveland to prove the blistering shooting of Rounds 1 and 2 could continue. It hasn't.

The Cavs shot 18-for-54 outside the paint in Game 3, and again struggled mightily to knock down perimeter shots early in Game 4. They shot a dismal 3-for-22 from 3-point land in the first two quarters, with Kevin Love, J.R. Smith and Kyrie Irving missing 13 of their 15 long-ball looks. During an interview between the first and second quarters, Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue told Burke that his Cavs were "getting every shot we want; we've just got to knock them down."

It took a long time — and a third quarter in which Lue rode all five of his starters for all 12 minutes, with Irving scoring 12 points on some ridiculously tough jumpers to keep Cleveland close — but the Cavs finally did start cashing in on the looks they wanted early in the fourth.

After getting his rotation a bit disjointed in the first half, Lue went back to the lineup of James, Dellavedova, Channing Frye, Richard Jefferson and Iman Shumpert, which has become something of a hammer second-unit lineup for the Cavs in this postseason. Lue stationed the veteran shooter Frye in the weak-side corner, pulling rim-protector Biyombo out of the paint, and ran HORNS sets with James and Jefferson stationed at the elbows, Dellavedova handling the ball up top, and running simple dribble handoff plays with James.