An hour before Sunday's game, LeBron James was laid out on his back in the main hallway leading to the Air Canada Centre court.
James has an elaborate pregame stretch routine. He usually does it with his physio in a locker room. But he wanted to be seen this time, so he brought out his yoga mat and made himself comfy in the high-traffic zone.
In order to pass by, dozens of people had to step around or over James. He pretended to be oblivious, laughing too loud at something on his phone and screaming, "OH MY GAWWWD! THAT IS CRAAAAZZZZY."
Even on this stage, with this guy, at this moment, it was a bit much. However, it was thematically consistent. Wherever the Toronto Raptors go, James is in their way. He was once again the star in Sunday's 109-102 coup de grace. The real insult was delivered after the four-game sweep by Cleveland's erratic human catapult, Kyrie Irving.
"We want to thank the Toronto organization for coming out and competing. We needed that," Irving said. God love him, he was serious. I've known some very cute dogs who have not been patted on the head that hard.
The problem – James & Co. – isn't changing over the next few years. And so the Raptors now have to make some hard decisions about their short-term goals – are they in it to win; or in it to be profitably mediocre?
Asked to evaluate his team while standing amid the rubble of the season, coach Dwane Casey pointed emphatically at Option Two.
(Imagine me staring at you. For a long time.)
Casey: "I don't know if we're there yet." (Answer: I know. You aren't. You know how I know? The scoreboard.)
Casey: "We're knocking on the door." (Answer: The funeral home isn't open on Sundays. That's why no one answered.)
Casey: "I like our team. I wish we had a little bit more time for them to gel together." (Answer: Anthropologists could lock this group up in a biodome for five years and they might come out better human beings, but they will not be a team gelled well enough to beat Cleveland. Having seen up close what just happened, suggesting otherwise is delusional.)
Maybe the players have some radical ideas for change that might help them take the next step?
DeMar DeRozan: "It's on us to let this sink in … We've got to play extremely better … We just got to figure it out."
So, no.
In fairness to Casey, what else is he supposed to say? 'Enjoy commuting on parade-free streets. Forever!' The coach has to lie and say the team is close because it isn't getting any better.
In fairness to DeRozan, there is no palatable way of explaining, 'We're not good enough.' People don't want to hear that from a guy making $28-million (U.S.) a year. They'd prefer he prevaricate. So DeRozan gives them what they want.
For four mostly fun years, that's what the Raptors were best at – giving Toronto the thing it had been wanting. At the outset, it wasn't a high bar.
If you'd been there for the whole Raptors gong show, simple competence was new and thrilling. The team gave the fans something more. If it wasn't basketball played at the very highest level, then it was something so close as to be indistinguishable.
Apparently, the crowd has finally learned the difference. When it ended on Sunday, the cheers that sent the team off the court were tepid and grudging. They weren't even really cheers. It was the applause you'd hear after the keynote of an especially dreary insurance conference – 'Please, just leave.' This was the Toronto audience losing patience with good-enough'ism. Fifty-win seasons are great. A couple of rounds in the playoffs can be vivifying for a bit. But if it's not headed anywhere, it gets boring fast.
Right now, the Toronto Raptors are as talented as they've ever been. They're also incredibly tedious – settled, complacent, unwilling to take offence at even the most obvious insults, lacking urgency or purpose. This is a team whose spirit animal is a shoulder-shrug emoji.
The Cavaliers didn't just beat the Raptors, they slapped them around. On Sunday, the repeated slights were taken to absurd new levels when Iman Shumpert kicked DeRozan in the crotch, putting the Toronto talisman briefly out of the game.
Toronto's response? Crickets. Everyone wandered out onto the court to take a sympathetic look at DeRozan as he writhed around on the ground. Then they returned to the bench to recommence their losing.
Casey talked earlier about dealing out "a couple below the belt" when you're fighting the champ. This Toronto team was too timid to punch you in the face.
It was telling that after it ended, no one pushed the excuse of losing Kyle Lowry for Games 3 and 4. That's probably because after injury claimed their biggest name, Toronto got better. Not a whole lot, but enough to notice. That's been a trend going back a couple of years.
And they're going to give this guy $150-million in the off-season for what exactly? More of this?
At this point, re-signing Lowry is both prudent and profoundly cynical.
Prudent in that there is no one better out there and that you know what you're getting – an intermittently brilliant and often brittle player who's never proved the ability to rise when it counts. He's a safe bet, and not a winning one.
Cynical in that committing this team's future to the Lowry/DeRozan nexus is admitting you cannot win, and that you'd rather not try.
Trying would be very hard. At a guess, it'd involve a two-year demo and a three-year rebuild. It'd mean temporarily giving back all the public relations ground you've gained, and perhaps more. It has no guarantee of working.
So the Raptors will go the other way. There's no shame in it. It is a business.
But once they do, it'd be best if they'd lay off the "we're in it to win above all else" clichés. They aren't. They're in it to entertain.
In order to appreciate the difference, take a look over at LeBron James. He's awfully hard to miss.
Cathal Kelly