After Game 3, I don’t feel angry. I don’t feel wronged. I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel frustrated. I only feel disappointment because I believed in this team.
I don’t want to point the finger and gawk because that’s what Games 1-3 were for. The team has been embarrassed, their warts exposed. The playoff spotlight ripped away the veil of excitement to reveal the naked truth: the Raptors are not good enough.
If you watched all season as I have, you caught enough glimpses behind the curtain to form the fear that what we saw wasn’t reality. That’s why we lashed out at national writers who cast doubt parallel to our own. That’s why we jeered Paul Pierce for the “it” comment. We didn’t want to come to terms with the truth. We built a fake bravado to uphold the faith. We wanted to believe, as if we didn’t see the flaws, as if we didn’t see their one-dimensional offense and systematically inept defense.
We wanted a true contender. But we also wanted to live the fantasy, even if it meant shutting our eyes for the sake of our hearts. It was more fun to love. It was fun to sit at the big boys table and pretend like we belonged. It was more fun to bellow “Louuuu” at the top of our lungs than to critique the backwards thinking behind an endless string of mindless isolations. It was more fun to cape up for Kyle Lowry to start the All-Star Game than to see two unbelievable months for what they were: unbelievable.
At times, the Raptors really did look the part. Most of it came early in the season against weaker opposition, but they did enough to stoke our desperate longing for a team to be proud of in Toronto. It all fed into a confirmation bias. Lowry looked like a superstar. The offense was unstoppable. The wins against Cleveland, San Antonio, Atlanta and Los Angeles were real and more importantly, it reinforced the idea of this team being real, feel real.
But it wasn’t real. The playoffs revealed that much. The later 40 games of the season previewed as much. Our gut instincts were right. The outside critics were right. This team isn’t good enough. Lowry is playing hurt and largely out of control. DeRozan has made strides and improved marginally as he always does, but was remains doomed by fatal flaws. The prospects in Ross and Valanciunas remain prospects, not reliable starters and the supporting cast is too often stuck trying to fill in for absent leading men.
I assure you that I take no delight in this. No part of me takes pleasure in deconstructing and undressing this team. I don’t feel duped. I don’t blame them for this, not their fallen stars, not their limited bench producers, not Masai Ujiri, not even Dwane Casey. They worked their hardest and made the best of it. I can accept that. I don’t think it was a case of hidden agendas or egos colliding. They worked their hardest but it didn’t work out. I think this point is too often lost on people.
I can accept that because the disappointment isn’t necessarily rooted in the team’s shortcomings. I feel disappointment that I can no longer dream the dream in all consciousness. I can no longer suspend my disbelief and believe in a fantasy. Even if I wanted to, I cannot summon enough hope because every sliver of delusion has been brutally stripped away. The spirit and swagger we once toted is now empty.
The option to dream is gone. We have no choice: we can now only live in reality.
