It seems strange to say, but one round after being eliminated from the playoffs, the Toronto Raptors are losing the Eastern Conference final. Sure, on the scoreboard it says the Boston Celtics lead the Cleveland Cavaliers two games to none, and who are we to argue with that? The games are on television and everything.

But the subhead is that the Toronto Raptors look ever more like chumps, more like suckers, than they did when they were swept out of the second round as the No. 1 seed. The Celtics are tough, smart, fearless. The Celtics are a gang of handsome teenagers who ride motorcycles in formation and get straight A’s. Boy, they’ve been good.

Meanwhile, LeBron James and his ragged band of work colleagues have been made to look, in no specific order: uncertain, tired, disjointed, divided and insufficient. Some of the sharpest Cleveland observers see an exhausted team with a star who could leave. They see a franchise ready to implode.

In other words, the Celtics, without injured stars Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, have performed the simplest trick there is: They made the Cleveland Cavaliers look like their actual selves.

And in the land of the exiled, the Raptors are losing status every day. They were highly interested in former Atlanta coach Mike Budenholzer, but Budenholzer signed Wednesday with the Milwaukee Bucks, who have a superstar in Giannis Antetokounmpo and upside. That left the Raptors with a second choice — likely assistant Nick Nurse, who redesigned Toronto’s offence this year, but has never been an NBA head coach. There are a lot of positive words for Nurse among some coaches. But with the top, most experienced option off the board, everything is a risk.

Meanwhile, Boston was making them look bad. Going into the second round the Raptors knew LeBron was tired; they knew they had to cut off his teammates. They knew they had to be aggressive and physical, as Indiana had — to play, as many in the organization agreed, “f--- you basketball.” None of this was a secret.

And they blew it. They blew it in Game 1, letting the Cavaliers play free and easy after a hot Toronto start. They blew it by missing their final 11 shots from the field in regulation, missing 19 of 24 in the fourth quarter, choking. Real toughness isn’t fighting; it’s competing with poise in every facet, under pressure or not. Toronto wasn’t competitively tough enough. And from that moment the Cavaliers were a flame that had been given all the oxygen it could inhale.

Boston, though, have snuffed out the flame. When LeBron tortured the Raptors in Game 2, splashing unnecessary fadeaway after unnecessary fadeaway, he finished with 43 points on 28 shots, plus 14 assists and eight rebounds. The Cavs won by 18. In Game 2 against Boston, LeBron finished with 42 points on 29 shots, plus 12 assists and 10 rebounds. The Cavs lost 107-94. One elite, top-ranked defence held up. Toronto’s, ranked fifth in the regular season, collapsed.

So what does this series, only two games in, teach us about the Raptors?

Witness the differences against the Celtics. Instead of a Valanciunas-killer, Jeff Green is every guy who looks great in warmups and is an absolute dog during the games. Instead of being a glue guy, George Hill is an afterthought. Instead of being a space-creating killer, Kyle Korver is being hunted. And instead of being a cocky shot-maker, J.R. Smith is back to being the soup-throwing goofball about whom, as he and ex-Raptor James Johnson chatted during a warmup before a playoff game two years ago, a sharp league observer wondered, “are they comparing how much money they’ve left on the table during their careers?”

There are personnel differences, of course. Boston’s young wings, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, are who OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam have to hope they become. Boston doesn’t have a DeMar DeRozan to hide on defence, but has guards Marcus Smart and Terry Rozier growling away. Instead of a creaking Serge Ibaka as a Kevin Love-guarding, switching power forward, Boston has Al Horford, who does it all with ease.

But more, the Celtics have been smarter and tougher, and have won close games all the way along. The defining characteristic of these Celtics might be that nobody is afraid.

They still went seven against pedestrian Milwaukee, so maybe it’s not that simple. Dwane Casey was and is a deeply admirable man whose love of this city’s best qualities was beautiful, and who commanded the big strokes of the job in his peerless Raptors coaching career. But Boston’s Brad Stevens is making every other coach in basketball look bad, with his players publicly proclaiming his genius every second game.

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So can a new Raptors coach make players tough? Or challenge DeRozan’s defence more than Casey did? Or evoke in the Raptors what Brown said of Smart: “He was born with his hands dirty”? OG is tough. Fred VanVleet and Kyle Lowry are different kinds of tough. There are a few others.

What’s clear is the gap between Toronto and the next level up exists, and it could grow. Outside of their four-game sweep of Toronto, the Cavaliers have lost five of nine and have been outscored by 78 points. The Raptors are out of the playoffs, but the losing has yet to end.

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