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“In the Eastern Conference, it’s still open,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. “Four games or five games separate a lot of the teams. It’s wide open for the taking. That’s what I told our guys: Let’s not just be satisfied with winning the division. Let’s fight, scratch and claw and get better.”

You can forgive Raptors fans if they are not indulging their optimistic side right now. Following a smothering at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks, and a 17-day stretch of bad basketball, a single series victory seems far away, never mind a deeper run. The Hawks spanked the Raptors 110-89 on Friday, and it was a lot worse than that in many ways.

It was enough of a disaster to cause a team meeting, called by Kyle Lowry, who declined to get into the details of the meeting.

“We had a long talk,” James Johnson said. “It’s going to stay internal. But we just got a little over-confident and we started taking to heart that we’re a good team and we haven’t accomplished nothing yet.

“It was what we needed to hear.”

Moments later, Johnson pointed out that the Raptors are still, halfway through the season, in a perfectly fine spot. He is right. The Hawks are running away with the conference, five games up on the pack. The Raptors are still jumbled up with the Wizards and Bulls, with a nice cushion on the rest of the field. Toronto has also clinched the Atlantic Division, spiritually speaking.

However, the opportunity to make a run might be fleeting, and that is a concern general manager Masai Ujiri is going to have to contemplate as we head toward next month’s trade deadline. It does not have to be a now-or-later proposition, with Ujiri sacrificing the future in order to make a serious run at a conference title. However, their best player, Lowry, turns 29 in March (and is looking worn down at the moment), and their two third-year starters are flirting with regression. Time is not endless, at least in professional sports.