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TSN Raptors Reporter

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WASHINGTON - With two minutes remaining in the most important game of Toronto's season, Paul Pierce drained a cold-blooded three-ball to stretch the Wizards' lead from five to eight. The dagger, or so we thought.

You couldn't have written it any better. The player that singled out the Raptors as a team without the "it" factor before their first-round series even began. The player that put an end to their season as a member of Nets a year ago. It was poetic. But it wasn't the end. Not yet.

After shooting bricks for most of the night (series), Kyle Lowry knocked down a couple of long jumpers to cut the deficit back down to three. In spite of themselves, the Raptors had a chance. They just needed a stop.

Less than 20 seconds left on the clock, John Wall darted into the lane attracting the attention of three Raptors. The Wizards point guard tossed the ball to Pierce on the elbow. The 17-year veteran pump faked and hoisted another trey. That was the dagger. That was the game. That was the Raptors season.

As Pierce ran back down the court he pointed to himself and shouted at the Verizon Center crowd.

"That's why I'm here," he yelled, having capped off Washington's 106-99 win over Toronto on Friday to put the Wizards up 3-0 in the series.

Prior to this season, 110 teams had dug themselves a 0-3 hole in a best-of-seven series. None have come back to win. It's never been done. Ever.

The Raptors were better on Friday. It was probably their best game of the series, which speaks more to how poorly they played in the first two losses. At no point have they looked like a team even remotely capable of making history.

"I know [the record of teams down 0-3," said DeMar DeRozan, who scored 32 points on 11-of-29 in Game 3. "I really don't care too much about it. Records are always meant to be attempted and be broken. Can't feed into it. If we feed into it, we've already lost."

The Raptors will not win this series and when it's all said and done the list of blunders will be lengthy. For the second time in three contests, they were held under 39 per cent, shooting 37 per cent on the night, 32 after the first quarter. Ranked third during the regular season, their shaky offence has gone dry. Some of that can be credited to Washington's defensive pressure on Toronto's featured backcourt, some of it on those guards missing shots they hit with some regularity during the season. But mostly, their decision making, creativity and offensive discipline have been regrettable.

They've gotten out-rebounded in all three meetings, pushed around on both ends of the floor and have been made to look like pylons by the dynamic Wall.

Lou Williams and Greivis Vasquez have been non-factors off Toronto's bench while Terrence Ross and Jonas Valanciunas have been varying degrees of awful.

Marcin Gortat has had his way in the paint, Drew Gooden has turned back the clock, young Otto Porter has frustrated DeRozan and third-year guard Bradley Beal has intimidated like the 37-year-old Pierce. Then there's Pierce. This is why he's here. Despite showing his age at points throughout the season, he's given this Wizards team something that the Raptors are sorely lacking - experience, and (not unrelated) toughness.

"They just don't have the playoff experience that Paul Pierce does at a championship level, a playoff level," Dwane Casey said after Toronto's latest defeat. "I don't know how many he has, but it's significantly more than we have. You have to continue to get there, it's the only way. I love our guys, I love their compete, I love our team."

Pierce appeared in his 151st playoff game Friday - more than all nine Raptors rotation players combined. He said they didn't have "it", and he was right.

For the Raptors to have had any chance at winning this series, playing as bad as they have, Lowry was their only hope. If he could replicate the level in which he played early this season, Toronto would have had a fighting chance.

The all-star point guard came into the postseason with a nagging back injury, he's added a shin ailment to his growing list of wounds since. On Friday he played with an illness, one he refused to discuss before or after the game but it was painfully obvious. After the loss he was barely audible, coughing and having lost his voice. He said it had nothing to do with his performance.

For whatever reason, Lowry has been a shell of his former self. It hasn't been for a lack of effort, at least it wasn't on Friday. He battled, he fought through it and tried willing them to a much needed victory but just didn't have it.

"I would think [this is the toughest situation we've been in]," said Lowry, who's shooting 23 per cent in the series. "We've never been in this situation. It's a Game 7 for us every single game out now. We are down 0-3 and everyone knows the history of that. We just have to take it one game at a time and at least try to get it back home."

That's the only question that remains. How long can they delay the inevitable.

"We just got to play," Lowry continued. "We're still professionals. They still have to get another win. We just got to go out there and do our jobs and make it fun. If we're going to go down, we'll go down having fun and go down the way we know how to go down and that's playing hard."

"It's not over yet, we're still on life support," Casey said. "There's no give up in this team, we haven't given up all year and we're going to continue to compete until they tell us we can't compete any more. That's the attitude we have to have."

"We've got nothing to lose," Vasquez echoed. "We're just playing for pride. We have to try to get a game and go from there. I don't think we've played our best basketball in this series just yet. I know you guys are going to say that nobody has come back from a 3-0, but there's always a first time."

He couldn't even finish that last sentence with a straight face.