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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - First place in the Eastern Conference was never a real priority for the Toronto Raptors, and now they appear to be paying the price.

For most of the second half of the regular season, the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers were well within reach. With just about a month to go, the Raptors sat one game back in the standings and that's where they would go on to finish the campaign.

Amazingly, neither team seemed especially concerned about it, opting instead to rest players in anticipation of the post-season. With their spots in the top two all but locked up, the risks of going full bore seemed to outweigh the reward. That reward: home-court advantage in the East Finals, should they make it that far.

Even in hindsight both teams would almost certainly justify their decision - it made perfect sense at the time - but, as it turns out, that may very well be the determining factor in this series.

Following one of the most embarrassing losses you'll ever see from a conference finalist, the Raptors probably couldn't get back to the plane fast enough. They'll return home on the brink of elimination and, even if they manage to pull another rabbit out of their hat on Friday, a possible Game 7 would be in Cleveland, where Toronto has been outscored by a whopping 88 points in three contests. 

Their Jekyll and Hyde act has become the story of the series, narrowly supplanting the great debate of whether Kyle Lowry had to go to the bathroom or quit on his team in Game 2 and whether or not Dikembe Mutombo has officially signed off on Bismack Biyombo's finger wag. In their two wins at home, the Raptors have scored 102.0 points on 48 per cent shooting. In their three losses on the road, they've averaged 18.3 points fewer on 41 per cent shooting. As for the Cavs, they've been held to 91.5 points on 41 per cent shooting in Toronto while going off for 113.0 points on 54 per cent south of the border.

You can usually expect teams to look their best in the friendly confines of their arena, playing in front of their home fans, especially at this time of year, but there's no easy way to explain a disparity so glaring. It's bizarre but, then again, so are the Raptors.

"They kicked our butts, that's the bottom line," Dwane Casey said following his team's 118-78 blowout loss in Wednesday's Game 5, giving Cleveland a 3-2 edge in the series.

"They were locked in from the start to the finish. The force that they play with is different here and we didn't meet it. I don't know what else to say. They're a different team here but we had an opportunity to come in here and do something special but we didn't get it done."

After stunning the heavily-favoured Cavaliers, who had taken the first two games, by evening the series with a pair of inspired performances on home soil, the Raptors knew LeBron James and company would come out with that force Casey referenced. They did just that and after Toronto cut it's deficit back down to four late in the opening quarter, they closed the half on a 45-18 run and never looked back. All of a sudden Kevin Love, who totalled 13 points in the last two games, was back. He scored 25 on 8-of-10 shooting while James and Kyrie Irving each chipped in with 23. They got what they wanted where they wanted whenever they wanted it. If it looked familiar it's because you saw the same thing in Game 1, only this was worse and certainly a lot less expected.

"We can't play our game," Bismack Biyombo said. "We just can't somehow. It's crazy. We can't find our energy and that's just the bottom line. We're a completely different team on the road. When we play at home we enjoy the game, we're excited about the game but once we're on the road it's a different story."

"Honestly no," responded Patrick Patterson, asked if he can explain the drop off. "No idea. It just comes from within and we've just got to find out why individually we're not playing at the same [level] we do at home and collectively as a group."

Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan had combined for 67 points in Monday's Game 4 win. Two days later they totalled 27 on 7-for-20 shooting and were responsible for seven of the team's 19 turnovers. Cleveland put pressure on them early, trapping them at almost every opportunity. They've also looked completely different away from the Air Canada Centre.

The Raptors dialled back their minutes over the final weeks of the regular season, even sitting them out for rest in three of eight games during the month of April. All along they insisted that the goal was getting to the playoffs as healthy as possible, that the first seed would be gravy, if they landed it, but it wasn't something they were shooting for. That mindset, of course, was completely understandable given the franchise's history. For a team that hadn't made it out of the first round in either of the past two years, despite starting at home in both series, it would have been awfully presumptuous to be looking ahead to the Conference Finals. The Cavs were there last season and had a pretty good idea they'd be back but that was far from a certainty for the Raptors, who were still looking to win their first ever best-of-seven series.

These two teams are on opposite ends of the spectrum in that sense. Cleveland, expecting to compete for titles, calm, cool and collected in the face of adversity. Toronto, still growing and learning how to win on a stage they had never been on. Home-court advantage would have been nice and may have been a difference maker for them had they stolen it from a laissez-faire Cavs team in the regular season, but they don't have time to play what ifs, at least not yet.

"If we intend to win in this building," Casey said, "we've got to come in with that mentality, the same mentality we play with in Toronto."

In order to send the series back out on the road and give themselves one last opportunity to exorcise their demons in Cleveland, they'll have to win at home on Friday.

"We've got to find a way," Biyombo insisted. "There's no excuse. We've got to handle our business and that's just the bottom line. We can sit here and give all these excuses but at the end of the day all the great players you're seeing they don't make excuses, they just find a way to get it done."

"Our backs are against the wall," DeMarre Carroll said. "We're a resilient group. We've been in this same situation the last two series. We know what we've got to do. There's no more talking, no more motivational speeches, you just show up."