TORONTO – It’s time for the Toronto Raptors to grow up.

Time marches in dog years in professional sports. A team goes from kindergarten to high school to figure out what to do after graduation in the blink of an eye.

In the space of four years the Raptors have taken all those steps.

But the next one might be as big as any of them: Figuring out how to live for today while making plans for tomorrow; to be fully engaged in the moment while never forgetting that there’s a longer-term goal in mind.

It’s basketball adulthood.

The Raptors are facing the Milwaukee Bucks and their wonderful, emerging superstar, Giannis Antetokounmpo in Game 6 on Thursday at BMO Bradley Centre. Leading 3-2 in the series, the Raptors have a perfect opportunity to advance to the second round where the defending-champion Cleveland Cavaliers are already waiting.

But for all the problems the Bucks have presented to this point, the Raptors’ primary opponent is themselves and their tendency to procrastinate and leave things to the last minute. To get too high with the highs and then stare into the edge of the abyss when things go south again, to behave like a kid with unlimited tomorrows.

The Raptors aren’t kids.

If they can figure that out they can begin to take themselves seriously as a club that understands how to excel in the post-season, rather than simply bounce from crisis to crisis.

Fail and the Raptors run the risk of burning all their gas just to get out of first gear.

A win Thursday would be the first time in franchise history the Raptors won a seven-game series in less than the maximum.

It would bring with it the satisfaction of a job well done, but also, tangibly, three days off before heading to Cleveland for what would be Game 1 of the second round of the playoffs next Monday. It would signal ambition.

It would provide time to prepare. Time to heal. Time to look around at each other and recognize that a matchup with a wobbly, defensively suspect Cavs represents as good a chance as can reasonably be expected for a run at the Raptors’ first NBA Finals.

But they’ve got to get there giving themselves every possible chance to complete the job.

They’ve done the other thing before. They’ve careened through the post-season surviving, living day-to-day, leaving nothing aside for when it matters most.

“It takes a lot out of you physically and mentally, seven games, the pressure of the Game 7, trying to close out a team, every shot counts,” said DeMarre Carroll as the Raptors convened on Tuesday. “That’s the mental part, but then physically, nicks and knacks and bruises … I think in our best interests is to go down there and treat this like a Game 7 and hopefully come up with the win, because guys need time off to recuperate, and I feel like we should understand that more now than we did last year.”

Or even before that.

Raptors head coach Dwane Casey says it’s in his team’s DNA to walk right up to the edge of disaster before jolting into action.

“It’s human nature,” he says. “… Our M.O. has been to relax. We have great fans we get all excited after a win in the playoffs and we let our guards down after. Our job as a coaching staff and the leaders of the team’s job is to not allow ourselves or human nature to take effect.”

Stumble this time around in Game 6 and it will be fair to wonder how good this team really is and how seriously they take themselves as contenders to knock LeBron James from his six-years-and-counting reign atop the Eastern Conference.

These Raptors are half-a-career removed from the wide-eyed kids who took the floor at Barclays Center in early May of 2014 with a chance to knock off a team stacked with NBA legends and coached by one too, a rookie named Jason Kidd who had 19 NBA seasons under his belt as a coach on the floor.

They wet the bed that night. A Kevin Garnett free throw gave the Nets a one-point lead at the 51-second mark of the first quarter and it held up for the next 47 minutes. Toronto trailed by 15 at the end of the first quarter, 19 at half and never gave themselves a chance to win.

Last season, the Raptors couldn’t claim inexperience any longer. For the core of the team it was their third straight playoff appearance, the third-straight year they’d entered the first round as the higher seed with home-court advantage.

And yet, at every turn they squandered their opportunities to get ahead in the game, where the game is making the road deep into the playoffs as smooth and problem-free as possible. They lost both their Game 6s on the road, neither of them were close.

In each case they weren’t prepared for the energy that a team brings when facing elimination.

The Raptors admit they weren’t prepared for the crowd in Milwaukee in Game 3 and it showed. The Raptors lost the game in the first quarter.

“That caught us off guard, too, seeing that crowd,” said Carroll. “We wasn’t expecting Milwaukee, we played there in the regular season every year, twice a year, and we wasn’t expecting that. I think we’ll be ready this time.

They won’t have that excuse on Thursday and they will know what kind of hole they’re putting themselves into if they can’t go on the road and finish off a Bucks club with a fraction of the playoff experience the Raptors have.

Failing to eliminate the Pacers in Game 6 of the first round last year was the beginning of a post-season odyssey that saw the Raptors play 15 games in 29 days with no time to properly rest or prepare as the challenges kept growing.

“It was brutal, it was tough,” said DeMar DeRozan. “We really didn’t realize it until the conference finals and we looked up and said we’d been playing every other day for almost a month. It took a toll.”

In contrast, the Cavaliers played just eight games in the space of 29 days prior to meeting the Raptors in the Eastern Conference Finals a year ago.

The defending NBA champion Cavaliers seem to understand that every off day gained in April or May can benefit them come June. They have already knocked off the Indiana Pacers in their first-round series, improving the second-coming of LeBron’s Cavs to 28-4 against Eastern Conference opponents in the playoffs.

Would the Raptors have fared better against the Cavs last year with some more rest? Impossible to say, but a year later it’s clear they’re aware they weren’t in the best position to succeed against a strong favourite.

“When we saw them, it was like we hit a brick wall,” said Carroll. “We fought and fought all we could [but] we was tired, our legs were tired, we were missing shots, we wasn’t playing with that zip that we normally play with.

“Just to stay away from that would be great. We could go out there, play to exhaustion for 48 minutes, that’s what we’re going to do.”

The Raptors know what’s at stake, and over the past two games they’ve played that way too.

They’re growing as a team. DeRozan compared a heated film session after their Game 3 blowout loss to the kind of fight that long-term couples have.

“You all argue, right? You argue? The next day, it’s like, ‘Baby, let me take you out to a nice dinner.’ You have a great evening and a great day and you know the time after that it will be smooth until the next roller coaster. It happens.

“We are together [as a team] more than we are with our own families. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just part of the game. It’s something we build from and we respond from it.”

Now they have to respond to another challenge: The fight against their own bad habits.

They’ve defended better – in Game 4, especially – while Game 5 saw the Raptors look as close as they’ve been to the regular season club that finished ranked sixth in the NBA offensively.

Everything is in place.

All that’s left is for the Raptors to collectively decide what kind of team they want to be.

“I think experience is the biggest teacher,” said Carroll. “If we don’t understand it now, we’re never gonna understand it. Game 6 is a must-win for us.”