Toronto Raptors: ‘We The North’ Now Playing For Its Life

New year, same result, and now the Toronto Raptors roster as we know it is fighting for their very existence.

At first, it all was going according to plan.

Despite the poor shooting performance for most of the game, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan were doing their part in maintaining a small lead over the Indiana Pacers for three quarters.

The team was having it’s struggles from the line, at one point in the fourth shooting as low as 51 percent, but they still held the lead.

Then finally, almost mercifully, the “star power” of the Indiana Pacers, namely Paul George, erupted in the second half, and the Raptors are now the only team in NBA history to lose three straight opening round playoff games at home as the higher seed.

There were times this year that I wanted to sound off about the lack of respect that was seeming to come the Raptors way throughout the season from the American media.

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Here was a team that was having a franchise best year, it was hosting the All-Star Game, and was sitting second in the Eastern Conference for most of the season.

But I bit my tongue because I already knew the answer. This team had done nothing in the postseason — ever.

The talking heads and journalists down south had effectively neglected us all season, for the same reason I and about half the fan base were oddly unenthusiastic about the new records set this year.

As of writing this, we have as many playoff wins in three years as we have regular season division titles.

That’s something to think about.

It almost is getting to the point of Tracy McGrady and the Houston Rockets level of ineptitude from the previous decade. A great 50 plus win team with marketable stars, that just kept running into hot teams at the wrong time in the opening rounds.

The Raptors players will want us to forget about yesterday, and I wish I could, I think we all wish we could.

But this team has continued to show us that we can puff out our chests all we want, we can draw murals all around the country to make us look like 1970’s Harlem, we can have decibel piercing crowds, we can even have the hottest rapper on the planet stand courtside proudly waving our colours.

None of it makes a damn difference, because the only players on the floor, who seem to be intimidated by all of that, are our own. 

The pressure to perform at what has become the only important time of year now in Toronto basketball, has completely gotten to this group for the time being.

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Every year the crowds come, they cheer, they represent, and the Raptors can’t seem to understand that we don’t truly care if they fail.

We just want to see them execute, make the right passes, take our support as uplifting instead of burdening, because it has become clear that the core of this team, the DeRozan’s, the Lowry’s, the JV’s, all see this as disheartening instead of liberating when the big moments are here.

They want to make history, they want to win, I don’t know a single fan who doesn’t think they care.

In a league that increasingly markets its fans to root for the back of the jersey rather than the front, and for the players to carry themselves accordingly, I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, it’s like they care too much about us and our hopes for this city and team.

If that is the case, then it is now the eleventh hour on the three and a half year honeymoon that began with an unloading of a contract of some guy now in Sacramento, which almost seems like a lifetime ago.

If they falter, this will be it, Dwayne Casey will not be the head coach next year, hell, the guy who would fire him might be looking for new challenges in the big apple for all we know, and the face of the franchise ever since Chris Bosh left, will have become a high priority target in free agency.

Sadly, he will have a few less reasons to find out what happens here.

Next: Toronto Raptors Need To figure Out Their Rotation

If the Raptors don’t win this series, #WeTheNorth as we know it will officially be finished.

Bank That.