TORONTO -- The last time the Cleveland Cavaliers found themselves in the visitors locker room at Air Canada Centre after a game, LeBron James had just conducted a teary interview with ESPN's Doris Burke about making his sixth straight NBA Finals, not about winning his third championship -- as he did with Burke after Game 7 of the Finals against Golden State.

The last time the Cavs beat the Raptors, as they did thanks to Kyrie Irving's go-ahead 3-pointer with 44.3 seconds left Friday to seal a 94-91 victory, it was before Irving hit that 3 on Stephen Curry in Game 7 that will dwarf every other 3 he'll take for the rest of his life.

It was before James made "The Block" and Kevin Love made "The Stop" and before Cleveland blew Game 4 only to come back and win three in a row against a Warriors team that hadn't lost three in a row since Steve Kerr took over as head coach.

It might have been only five months ago, but it might as well have been a lifetime ago. It was a different time. A different team.

Kyrie Irving said the Cavs pulling out a tight win at Toronto "shows a lot of growth on our end as a team." Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Yet the only way for Cleveland to function at its best this season is to omit all that from its memory and operate as if it never happened.

"It's just Game 2 of a new season," said Irving, chuckling at the mention of his 3 against Toronto being anywhere comparable to his 3 against Golden State. "I'm glad that we went through a close game with a great team like that tonight though. It shows a lot of growth on our end as a team."

Cavs coach Ty Lue said, bluntly, "Last year we would have lost this game." Indeed, early on in the 2015-16 campaign, Cleveland lost a road game in Toronto when the Raptors went on a late 31-16 run, prompting a players-only meeting to sift through the wreckage.

This time around, Cleveland saw its early 12-point lead turn into a one-point deficit with 2:37 left in the fourth thanks to DeMar DeRozan scoring 22 of his 32 points after halftime. Yet, remarkably, the Cavs won by going to Irving with less than a minute left even though he was just 1-for-9 in the fourth quarter up to that point.

"I mean, the fourth quarter is usually money time," Irving said. "I've always felt that way since I've kind of played basketball, but having the trust of your teammates and trust of the coaching staff, it means a lot. It goes a lot further than I think people realize."

Deprogramming the overconfidence from achievement (the championship) or complacency from assignment (a regular-season game versus a playoff game) also is a lot more difficult than people realize, to be sure.

Yet Cleveland has done an admirable job of it so far. On ring night, the Cavs waxed the New York Knicks so as to not spoil a great event for their town with the Indians' World Series opener going on simultaneously. And on Friday, they outplayed a Raptors team that spent its offseason stewing over how close they came to knocking off the Cavs, not celebrating over how great it felt to knock off the Warriors.

Now they are in the business of building for a repeat title. Of course, the memories from their magical run last spring will always be there. And they'll serve their purpose when things go sideways this season, as they inevitably will, when guys have to remember what they're all capable of accomplishing together.

However, the goal should be to become a championship team all over again. Not just through having the requisite talent or experience, but by -- to use the buzzword of the night uttered in mirrored fashion by James, Irving, Love and Lue -- "growing" into one.

That's why as satisfying as the result might have been, it was just as important to see Lue experiment with a second unit surrounding James at the 5 or accepting that having Iman Shumpert play a heavy dose of backup point guard could look bad before it looks good, but having it look bad is the only way to know if it can ever look good.

"It's a game we wanted to win," Lue said. "Our guys wanted to win, they wanted to make a statement on [Toronto's] home floor, second game of the season."

A new season. A new goal accomplished. And a little bit of growth from the Cavs.

"It's something that we've moved on from," Love said of the surreal splendor of last spring. "We still have obviously a goal of winning another championship and repeating and defending a title, but that's a long ways away. We have a lot of [time to go]. We've got to respect the process, love the process and just continue to go through it."