Moreso than most teams, the Toronto Raptors enjoy their prepared talking points.
By enormous coincidence, three or four guys will drop the same word or two repeatedly into conversation on the same day, and then never again. Already this series, we have heard "poise" and "identity." Sunday's word was "accountability."
As in, now would be a good time to locate some.
On Saturday, the Raptors were forewarned that the Indiana Pacers would come at them early and often. For reasons the team was having trouble explaining, they began the game at a pace that suggested they'd all taken Quaaludes during the anthems.
"They ambushed us," coach Dwane Casey said.
That's not how it looked. It looked like the Raptors ambushed themselves.
The result was, for long stretches, unwatchable basketball. This series shouldn't be close, never mind tied. The star of Game 4 was lightly regarded Frenchman Ian Mahinmi of the Pacers. Statistically, it was the best game of the 29-year-old's entire career. As in, Ian Mahinmi is more likely to spontaneously combust on the court than he is to score 22 points again.
But because this is the Toronto Raptors we're talking about, many fans are already laying out their mourning attire.
As one exasperated press-row wag in Indianapolis put it immediately after the loss: "Raptors trail series 2-2."
"It ain't gonna hurt my feelings if people write stuff. It's motivation," Kyle Lowry shrugged on Sunday. "The same people who love you, hate you the next day."
Things are not yet bad. They're so-so. Toronto has played its choppiest, most inconsistent basketball of the year in the playoffs, and it is still even.
But there are no more mulligans left.
While no one looked good in Game 4, we all know who is to blame.
It's not Casey's adjustments or Luis Scola's weary movement or Terrence Ross consistently choosing to do the hard thing. Coaches and 15-minute-a-game players don't decide contests.
This is all on Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. Their mid-30s shooting percentages have become a statistical scarlet letter, marking them as two of the poorest postseason performers of the past 30 years. We're beyond a couple of bad nights. Either the disaster of last year has got in their heads or they are hiding some significant physical impediment.
On Sunday, Lowry suggested that he'd discovered the problem – "If it usually takes us .9 seconds to shoot, we're shooting in like .4."
He made it sound as if this was some brilliant tactical innovation on Indiana's part, rather than "playing solid defence." The fairly obvious counter-measure is "Don't rush your shots" – a strategy Lowry promised to deploy on Tuesday, fours game too late.
DeRozan was blunt – "We just stink right now" – but straight talk isn't helping things. Over the past couple of days, DeRozan has hit on another rhetorical gambit – blaming the officiating by not blaming the officiating.
"We're not going to complain about nothing," DeRozan said. For the second day in a row, he said he and his team "ain't whining," while strongly hinting that the Pacers are.
Repeatedly saying that you're not complaining is, in fact, the single most annoying way to complain. We have all known an "I'm not complaining, but …" person. They are the lowest of the low, just underneath "I'll go anywhere you like/Oh, not that place" people and "I'm not hungry enough to order, but maybe I'll just pick off your plate" people.
DeRozan isn't one of these people, and this would be a particularly bad moment to become one. If he wants to blame the officials for his poor performance, he should just do that. It'd probably be easier and cheaper to just hit a few shots.
On Sunday, at practice in Toronto, he was working alone with a trio of assistant coaches on finding his sweet spots after coming off screens. He missed a lot more than he hit.
A season ago, when he was on a particularly bad run of forcing up off-balance, long-range twos, Raptors' staff set DeRozan a task.
They would not complain about or gainsay any of his shot selections as long as he had one foot in the paint as he took them. All other shots would have to be justified.
Maybe it's time to go back to that plan.
It's neither Lowry's nor DeRozan's fault that they have to spend so much time sounding clueless about all this stuff. There's only so many ways two guys can say, "I don't know" when people ask what's wrong.
But they should also understand that, at this time of year, talk is worse than cheap. If they don't turn this around immediately, all people will remember from this year is how they both seemed more mentally prepared for the all-star game than for the ones that actually matter.
At a certain point, failure can't be explained away.
"I've just gotta shoot the shots better," Lowry said. Yes. But now he has to actually go out and do that, rather than making vague promises to do so.
He and DeRozan are both paid a preposterous amount of money to play a child's game. What they are failing at right now is the sport's most basic skill.
This isn't a last chance, but it's starting to feel that way.
"If we don't play desperate … we struggle," Casey said. He was talking about the whole team. But not really.
All the Raptors and their fans can do is trust that two players this good can't be this bad for very long. We'll see Tuesday in Game 5 just how desperate they are.
Cathal Kelly