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TSN Raptors Reporter

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WASHINGTON - With the regular season in the books, the winningest in his team's 20-year history, Toronto Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri met with the media a couple weeks back and was asked how the upcoming post-season might impact his decision making this summer.

"100 per cent it influences everything, in my opinion," Ujiri replied. "It just depends on the results that you have.

"When the offseason comes, we'll really look at both last year and this year's playoffs. You assess everything. You have to assess your players. You have to evaluate all of them. The playoffs does make an impact in terms of evaluating for the off-season."

The result, 10 days later, was a four-game sweep to the Washington Wizards, a team they had gone undefeated against in the regular season, a team many of them had hoped to face in the opening round, and a team they obviously underestimated.

Summertime has arrived early for Ujiri and the Raptors and with that comes the uncertainty you might expect following a disappointing end to their roller coaster campaign.

"Yeah, I'll say it, it was embarrassing," Patrick Patterson admitted after a fittingly uninspired 125-94 loss sent Toronto packing on Sunday evening. "A horrific effort on our part. I'm not going to say that we didn't try. Each and every one of us tried, we had the mindset that we wanted to bring it back to Toronto and play another game there. Nobody wanted to go out, but, it was just embarrassing, it was horrific, it was a let-down. It was just ugly."

The Raptors went out in seven games a year ago as Brooklyn needed a final series-deciding possession to put them away. It took players months to put that moment behind them but a valiant effort and a promising, feel-good season had helped soften the blow. Naturally, this will sting even more.

"[It hurts] a lot more," DeMar DeRozan said. "It's going to be a long summer for me. My patience is really going to be tested and I have to use this as fuel."

"There are not many words you can say on TV [to sum it up], without them being four letter words," Kyle Lowry added.

Last summer Ujiri doubled down on this group. He brought Lowry back, re-upped Patterson and Greivis Vasquez, also giving his coach, Dwane Casey a new deal. They had rewarded him for his patience, giving the team a platform to sink or swim after the early-season trade of Rudy Gay, and he repaid them with the opportunity to build on their success.

Despite their franchise-best 49 wins, aided by an unsustainably hot start to season, this year's club never truly felt the same.

On top of all the tangible areas in which they regressed - primarily on the defensive end, where they dropped from a top-10 team to 23rd ranked - they gradually became unwatchable. Of course, that's a generalization. On some nights, when shots were falling and their offence was buzzing, particularly early in the year, they would entertain. But remember when they played hard every night, when no deficit was too big to overcome, when their passion spread through a city and a country in desperate need of a likeable basketball team to call their own? That hasn't been the case in a long while.

Their brief playoff showing was painful. They had coughed up early leads in each of the first three contests, succumbing to Washington's superior play on both ends of the court, before getting blown out in the series clincher. They were out-rebounded in all four games and allowed a Wizards team that could barely execute a simple play two weeks ago to score at will from all over the floor.

Washington averaged 98.5 points during the regular season. They scored 110.3 in the series.

"It was hard for me as a coach to get the horse back in the barn defensively," Casey said after Sunday's loss. "It's not for a lack of trying. We worked on defence. We harped on it. We did everything to try to get the horse back in the barn, to get our defence and mojo back. Couldn't get it done."

"We all have to blame ourselves," Vasquez said. "Could I have done better? Yes? Could we all do better? Yes. They just hit us and we couldn't get back up. We just lost. The better team won the series."

All season long, the Raptors had difficulty balancing confidence and humility in the aftermath of last year's accomplishments. DeRozan and Lowry had both been All-Stars, they had won their division twice and all of a sudden they came face to face with something many of them had never dealt with: expectations. They got comfortable, bordering on arrogant, confident they could flip the switch when the playoffs rolled around. They stopped out-working opponents, instead they were trying to out-score them, out-talent them. They're a good team, but they're not that good, not yet.

Now Ujiri goes back to the drawing board, only this summer figures to be a lot more eventful.

Oddly enough, outside of Bruno Caboclo - a 19-year-old rookie who logged just 23 total minutes this year - no one on this roster or coaching staff is a safe bet to return.

Ujiri has yet to truly put his stamp on this team. He hasn't had to. He's pulled the trigger on deals to rid the franchise of Andrea Bargnani and Rudy Gay. He stole Lou Williams - the NBA's Sixth Man - from Atlanta last summer. But the starting five and the head coach were here when he took his post ahead of last season.

Changes are coming this summer and this team will likely look very different when training camp opens next fall.

Often times it's hard to see the forest for the trees, but there's reason for optimism looking ahead to the team's future, both in the short and long term. The Raptors have assets in some affordable and moveable contracts, they have financial flexibility and draft picks. They're also in capable hands with Ujiri, the 2012-13 Executive of the Year at the helm.

Williams and long-time Raptor Amir Johnson are two of six players who will hit unrestricted free agency this off-season. They'll have over $28 million US coming off the books. How much of that they can or will use to try and lure free agents over will depend on whether they bring Williams and Johnson back, and if they opt to extend Jonas Valanciunas or Terrence Ross (they'll both by up for extensions this summer, entering the final year of their rookie scale contracts).

Casey, who has one more guaranteed season on his deal, will be on the hot seat. Fans are calling for his head but to suggest that this is all on him is to imply that a replacement could have taken this same flawed roster to the next level, which is simply not the case. Could Casey be relieved of his duties? Quite possibly. But it's just as likely that Ujiri turns his attention on the roster, as he should, and aims to put together a team that better suits his coach.

One way or another, the next four months will be telling. On Sunday the Raptors hit rock bottom, but where do they go from here?

No one knows for sure.

"That's not my department," Casey said. "My job was to get us ready, is to get us ready to play and develop, continue the process. That's my charge, that's my goal."

"I don't know," Lowry echoed. "That's not my job."

"I'm not a GM," Vasquez wisely pointed out. "I'm a point guard."