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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - Neither Kyle Lowry nor DeMar DeRozan could bring themselves to speak of the worst case scenario, but it wasn't hard to see it had crossed their minds.

After everything that they've accomplished - the 56 wins, the individual and team accolades, and the franchise records - will the result of Sunday's Game 7 make or break the Toronto Raptors' season?

"Uh, yeah," Lowry said, giving an obvious answer to an obvious question. "If we... I mean, I'm not even going to say [it], but yes, it determines a lot, what happens [Sunday]."

"Yes, if tomorrow don’t go...," said DeRozan, roughly 30 minutes later, also stopping himself mid-speech. "I don’t even want to put that negative energy out there."

Despite Masai Ujiri and Dwane Casey's understandable, yet futile attempts to temper expectations and alleviate pressure ahead of this series, there's no sugarcoating the reality of the situation: If the Raptors lose on Sunday it would be devastating.

They're doing their best not to think that way, to block it out, and their fate could very well be dependent on their ability to keep their focus on the task at hand. The mandate: forget about the first six games of a series that hasn't exactly gone your way, forget about Friday's second-half collapse - the reason you're in this predicament to begin with - and forget about your team's checkered playoff history. It’s easier said than done.

As the East's second-seeded team and the consensus favourite entering this first-round series against seventh-place Indiana, the pressure is on Toronto. Whether they ignore, embrace or ultimately succumb to it, it's not going anywhere.

With the exception of that infamous night in Philadelphia 15 years ago - Game 7 of their second-round series against Allen Iverson and the 76ers that was ultimately lost on Vince Carter's missed fadeaway - the stakes have never been higher for a franchise that has had its share of playoff disappointment. They haven't advanced in the postseason since 2001 and have never won a best-of-seven series. Now here they are, so close to exorcising those demons but just as close to adding to them.

The gravity of the moment is not lost on them, particularly the players that have been in Toronto long enough to truly understand what's riding on this, not just for those in the locker room - for many it'll be the biggest game of their careers - but for the city and its fans.

"It’s Game 7," said DeRozan, the longest-tenured Raptor. "It’s what you live for, to be in these moments and go out there and have the opportunity and have a new feeling that this franchise hasn’t experienced in a while.”

"It’s like our Super Bowl, win or go home," Lowry echoed. "It’s one game. Survive or don’t survive. That’s the mentality that we’ve got to have. It's like the NCAA tournament. Gotta win. Gotta win."

Internally, the goal hasn't changed. Even as the team continued to win, continued to exceed expectations and fans or members of the media wondered if they could make it to the Conference Finals or even compete with Cleveland, they never wavered. From the first day of training camp, this season has always been about getting out of the first round of the playoffs.

Some of the history is relevant, some of it isn't. Surely, the fact that Carter missed that shot isn't on DeRozan, who was 11 at the time. It's not Lowry's fault that Chris Childs forgot the score in the dying moments of a series-deciding loss in Detroit the following season. The history that haunts them is their own.

Lowry and DeRozan are two of five Raptors players that played in and lost Game 7 to Brooklyn two years ago. They shot 39 per cent in that series. Last year, they were humbled in a four-game sweep at the hands of Washington. They shot 36 per cent in that series.

Toronto's all-star duo is hitting just 32 per cent of its shots through six games this time around. DeRozan has been stymied by Paul George and while Lowry also credits the Indiana defence, his lingering elbow ailment is almost certainly causing him more trouble than he's letting on. Conventional wisdom would say they're due, but it would have said the same thing going into Game 6 - DeRozan's worst of the series and one in which Lowry shot 4-of-14 from the field and 1-of-7 from long distance.

The truth is nobody knows what to expect from Lowry, DeRozan or the Raptors in general. Getting a read on this team has proven to be a challenge. Just when you think you've made sense of them, they flip the script. They're the better, more talented team, but that doesn't exactly inspire confidence having been outworked and outplayed in each of the last three games.

Relying on talent or any false sense of security playing at home would be unwise in a one-game, winner-take-all scenario, where just about anything can happen. All of the tinkering and adjustments can mostly be thrown out the window now. If the Raptors truly want this they'll have to go out there and take it. This is about the will to win, the mental fortitude to turn pressure into purpose.

"The expectations are high and the guys understand that," Casey said. "They see it, they read it, they watch television, but again, the good teams handle it, they stay together and they fight through it and embrace it. We have built things to [this] level for a reason and now we have to embrace it."

In his Players' Tribune article, on the eve of the playoffs, Raptors forward Patrick Patterson wrote: "We aren't scared of losing. We're excited about winning."

On Sunday, that will be put to the test, once and for all.