Wait, what if? Literally every piece written about the Toronto Raptors in the last week has had to include variations of the following phrases: I Don’t Think The Raptors Are Going To Win, The Cavaliers Are Still The Favourites, Toronto Hasn’t Won On The Road, LeBron James Is Still The Best Player In The Series, or I Know I Said The Raptors Couldn’t Make It This Far, But They Won’t Make It Any Further, I’m Pretty Sure.

This column includes them all, as a convenience. Nobody thinks the Raptors are going to pull this off. There.

Except . . . what if they do? What if LeBron reaching the NBA Finals every year isn’t written in stone? What if the Raptors have figured something out, and Cleveland’s seams are showing, and even widening?

“I think I played to the game plan that I wanted to play, both offensively and defensively,” said James after losing Game 4 to tie the series 2-2, despite finishing with 29 points on 11-for-16 shooting, 1-for-3 from three, 6-for-6 from the line, plus nine rebounds, six assists, two steals, one block and one turnover. “For me, I gave everything that I had in the 46 minutes that I played, both offensively and defensively. I felt great. Tried to get my guys involved, get myself involved. My individual game plan was pretty good.”

His individual game plan, yes. Maybe he’s being passive-aggressive again, but maybe he’s diagnosing the problem that led Toronto to take two games in a series that wasn’t supposed to be close. LeBron delivered a hammer game, a massive game. He even hit many of the jump shots that Toronto simply offered up, as they treated the generation’s most dominant player like he was Bismack Biyombo, 20 feet from the hoop. James could have forced more shots, but he is resolute in his trust of teammates, and in his belief that he needs them to be great in order for him to win more titles.

But what if his teammates fail? As the series has gone on, Toronto has decided who and how to attack at the offensive end: Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in pick-and-rolls; J.R. Smith in any one-on-one situation; Tristan Thompson, or anyone, at the rim.

In Games 3 and 4, Toronto got the shots they wanted, and Love crumbled, and Irving dribbled, and the Raptors defended in a way that protected the paint, mostly. When the game was in the balance, the only field goal the Cavaliers could get in the final four minutes was a long, contested, clap-and-move-on three-pointer from Irving. When the pressure was on — or more accurately, after the Raptors had responded to Cleveland’s pressure — the Cavaliers didn’t look like they had it.

The Raptors did. Two years ago, after that Game 7 loss to Brooklyn, Paul Pierce — the man who authored the until-now-defining phrase, ‘They Don’t Have It’ — met Lowry and DeRozan in the hallway, and told them, “Y’all the future.” It came to feel hollow — last year was a bust, and the first two rounds a rolling struggle. Of course nobody believed in the Raptors. Toronto needed a fourth-quarter meltdown from Indiana which included Rodney Stuckey, a career 83 per cent free throw shooter, to miss two free throws, and while he was at it dribble the ball off his own leg and out of bounds. They needed seven more games against a denuded Miami team. Lowry and DeRozan were mired in deep, dispiriting shooting slumps.

And now, after four games against the best team in the East, DeRozan is shooting .524 en route to 26.0 points per game, and Lowry, despite his awful first two, is at .475, and has hit eight of his last 15 threes. They’ve been cooking since midway through the Miami series. The 67 points they combined for in Game 4 was the most they have ever produced in one game.

There has to be a part of LeBron that worries he has won his last championship, and instead of chasing Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson in the modern age, he is destined to be tied with Hakeem Olajuwon. No shame, but not the top of anyone’s mountain.

And now the Raptors — the Toronto Raptors! — are the ones applying pressure, forcing a reckoning. Cleveland Will Probably Win. The Stars Could Cool. The Raptors Would Need A Miracle. Yes.

But it’s possible now, right?

“I already had this conversation with Kyle on numerous nights the last couple weeks — we can’t never get down, or let the media, or people discourage us in any type of way on the way we’ve been playing,” said DeRozan, before the Raptors won Game 5 against Miami. “As long as we have the opportunity to put on these shoes and this jersey and go out there and play, we still have an opportunity to go as far as it goes. And that’s to get somewhere this franchise has never been to, to play for the world championship. That’s six wins away. And that’s the type of motivation, whatever we need to believe in ourself, we’re right there.

“And we can’t say, ‘Okay, we got this close, we can get even closer next year.’ We got to take advantage. I tell everybody, we might never get this opportunity again.”

Two wins away, now. You can ask yourself, What If. How about that.

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