CLEVELAND—Maybe, as the asteroid approached, the dinosaurs peered up into the sky at their brilliant, brightening doom. Maybe they tried to adjust; to run, to fight, to change their habits. Whatever they did, it didn’t work. They never had a chance.

The Toronto Raptors might be the second-best team in the Eastern Conference, but you’d never know right now, because the gap between them and the Cleveland Cavaliers seems as vast as it ever was. In sports, anything can happen, sure. But a lot of things usually don’t.

“It’s the same situation as last year,” said head coach Dwane Casey, after Toronto’s 125-103 loss to the Cavaliers in Game 2 of this second-round series. “For whatever reason we’re not playing with the confidence offensively. We should be. They’re not doing anything we haven’t seen before defensively, so I’m encouraged. Again, I haven’t given up.”

“I know it hurts. Like I told the team, we should be mad, upset, but it’s a long series. It’s two games. Two games on their floor ... They played well. We haven’t scratched the surface of where we can go, so we take our butt-whuppin’ and go home.”

If you’re looking for reasons that this could turn, the Cavaliers were the second-best three-point shooting team in the NBA this season, at 38.4 per cent: through two games they are 32-for-67, or 48 per cent, to 15-for-43 for the Raptors. They hit 20 of 36 contested field goals in Game 2, according to nba.com. That can’t continue.

The Raptors haven’t played well enough to make that matter enough, though. They altered themselves in Game 2, changed their starting lineup and their strategy: Norm Powell for DeMarre Carroll, Patrick Patterson for Jonas Valanciunas. They actually got Valanciunas going off the bench, and played better for a while, sure.

And after two games, despite all its depth, Toronto hasn’t had enough good players, or enough of a coherent system to make their players look good. Through two games the Raptors can’t guard LeBron James — 39 points on 14 shots in Game 2, which has been done once in a playoff game in the last 33 years, at least — and they can’t guard the three-point line. Kyle Lowry’s ankle sprain forced him out in the third quarter, and if he isn’t healthy it’s really over. One thing the Cavaliers have done to honour the Raptors is come out like the games truly mattered to them. Something to hold on to.

“I thought we were a little sloppy with the ball offensively, especially really, turning the ball over,” said Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue. “I thought we really could have really blew the game out early in the first half.”

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Look, Cleveland is better. But they were so much better that the Raptors have tried to become a small, fast, three-point gunning team. Speaking with ex-Raptor Luis Scola on Wednesday morning, he said changing at this stage is difficult.

“You don’t want to have those questions getting to this point,” said Scola. “You want those questions early, and you answer those questions, and by the time you get to this point you just play, you just know who you are, this is who we are, this is how we beat you. That’s what the good teams do: Golden State, San Antonio, they play that way. And now, a team like Houston, they know who they are. They say, this is who we are, and this is how we’re going to beat them. And we’re just going to go all in on this.”

Toronto is trying to change on the fly, and Cleveland has handled them with ease. LeBron is now second all-time in career playoff points, trailing only Michael Jordan, which is about right; but in this game, Kyrie Irving went 6-for-19 and Kevin Love had nine points and Cleveland won running away. At this point, it’s clear that Toronto needs to play something like their perfect game to beat the Cavaliers in Cleveland. Or something closer to perfect, anyway.

“LeBron is going to be LeBron,” said DeMar DeRozan. “We can’t let other guys like that get going. You find somebody who stops LeBron and you can come on this team. I’ll give you $100. It’s on us to take out all the other key players, and not let them get going and take advantage of that.”

Recap: Raptors lose to Cavs in Cleveland

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Last year Toronto lost the first two games by a combined 50 points; this year, with Cleveland shooting at a rate that no team can continue for too long, it’s been two games by a combined 33. Subtract some garbage time and maybe there’s no real difference, but as Casey said, this Raptors team hasn’t scratched the surface of how well it can play. Maybe in Toronto, the series swings the other way.

But if not, then this will become a bigger, more difficult question. If this doesn’t turn, and even if it simply doesn’t turn enough, the question is going to be whether this series is enough to destroy the whole idea of these Raptors. Nobody thinks this is a title team; the next question will be whether they are worth keeping together. That question is coming, no question, the day this season ends.

Right now, though, the Raptors have a problem. It might not be possible to solve.

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