WASHINGTON, D.C.—As flashbacks go, these were terrifying visions of long-lost playoff failures.

Was that Raptors all-star DeMar DeRozan forcing those questionable shots at Capital One Arena on Friday night? Was that Kyle Lowry, Toronto’s other all-star, turning the ball over repeatedly under pressure? And could it even be possible that those non-all-stars wearing the black road jerseys were the much-talked-about new-look Raptors? Could the deepest, most balanced squad in franchise history actually be guilty of playing such brain-cramped, slow-to-adjust basketball?

If you watched Toronto’s 122-103 Game 3 loss to the Wizards, you know the answers to all those questions was a shrug and a nod in the affirmative. You also might be of the belief that much of what happened could be cast aside as a one-off. Everything in this first-round playoff series had been going along swimmingly for the Raptors in Games 1 and 2, wherein they shared the ball with the same kind of all-for-one togetherness that turned them into a 59-win team with the second-best regular-season record in the NBA. But everything changed in Game 3. Sure, it didn’t help that the desperate Wizards got epic performances from all-star guards John Wall and Bradley Beal.

But a lot of what happened to the Raptors amounted to what Toronto coach Dwane Casey likened to the basketball version of “taking out a gun, pointing it at your foot and shooting ourselves.” Committing 19 turnovers, which led to 28 Washington points, was something Casey could only slough off as “uncharacteristic.” The Raptors, after all, coughed up the sixth-fewest turnovers in the league during the regular season. So the self-inflicted nature of some of their Friday-night hurt seemed to be a thing in which the Raptors could take comfort.

On the offensive end, Casey said he and his staff counted 10 plays in which “one or two guys totally screwed up things.” These are plays the Raptors have been running all year.

“That tells me that there’s a focus issue in certain situations that we gotta clear up,” Casey said. “And that’s very unusual for us.”

There were other developments that might qualify as easily correctable. Exhaustive forensic video analysis has yet to turn up evidence Serge Ibaka actually played in Game 3, outside the power forward’s extracircular tete-a-tete with John Wall. He didn’t get to be an uber-wealthy NBA veteran by repeating such irrelevance.

And maybe the in-team messaging upon arrival in the U.S. capital was simply off. Kyle Lowry, who’d spoken publicly about treating Games 1 and 2 “like a Game 7,” abandoned such rhetoric in the lead-up to Game 3. Not surprisingly, he was back on his soapbox on the eve of Sunday’s Game 4.

“Our Game 4 has got to be played like a Game 7,” Lowry said.

And just like that, the outlook in Raptorland was brighter.

“This team this year has always responded to a bad game, a bad loss and bounced back,” Casey said. “I have to go on how we have reacted this year. Two or three years ago? We probably would have crumbled in the first two games.”

Still, the Raptors have had recurring problems in all three games — problems that were papered over by excellent shooting that produced convincing enough wins in Games 1 and 2.

First, Toronto’s bench, which had its collective butt whupped in Game 3, has been largely outplayed all series. After three games Washington’s bench has a net rating of plus-12.8 points per 100 possessions, best in the NBA playoffs. Toronto’s reserves, meanwhile, are an ugly minus-20 points per 100 possessions — last in the league.

And while a lot of that has to do with the absence of Fred VanVleet, who has missed all but three minutes of the series with a shoulder injury and isn’t expected to be a viable force in Game 4, Toronto’s collective success has never been about one guy. The Raptors simply need more from Delon Wright, who was 2-for-8 from the field with one assist in 19 minutes on Friday, and from C.J. Miles, who was 1-for-5 on three pointers and a minus-22 in Game 3. Some overachievement from Pascal Siakam would be welcome, too.

But they also need better work from their stars. So much of what ailed the Raptors in previous playoff incarnations came down to DeRozan and Lowry and their inability to adjust to playoff-style defences meant to make them uncomfortable. And so we saw a resurfacing of that weakness in Game 3. Chart the numbers of the Raptors stylistic reboot. This year, during a regular season in which the Raptors committed themselves to sharing the ball and limiting the one-on-one ball-hogging, DeRozan and Lowry combined to account for about 33% of Toronto’s field goal attempts. And during Games 1 and 2, they commanded a similar percentage. All that was tossed into the garbage on Friday night. Through three quarters — at which point the game was essentially over, the Raptors down 19 points — DeRozan and Lowry had accounted for 48% of Toronto’s field-goal attempts.

Of course, maybe some of that was a matter of human nature. Down on the other end, Bradley Beal was torching DeRozan, whose defence is never a strong suit. John Wall was making life difficult on Lowry. Not that Wall is ever easily contained by a single defender. Returning fire is sometimes instinctual.

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“(Beal and Wall) getting to the basket, sashaying to the hole, getting the jump shots and having time to read the label on the ball, those are the things that should motivate you,” Casey said. “We did not bring the same intensity and the fight and the grit that we brought to Games 1 and 2. And the reasons are not important.”

Reasons never are important. Results, on the other hand, matter. Game 4’s returns will give us a better idea if what we saw Friday night was a momentary flashback or a return to old ways. Everything about this season says the smart money’s on the former. But metaphorical firearms pointed at friendly feet also feature prominently in the DeRozan-Lowry career arc. So take your pick.

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