There is only one person in the Toronto Raptors set-up who is willing to risk real optimism.
How far is the team going to get?
"Definitely Eastern Conference finals," the team's global ambassador, Drake, said this week. "I like to be humble, so I'm going to cap it with Eastern Conference."
Drake's releasing an album in two weeks, but said he'd told his management that getting to as many games as possible was a top priority. Unlike the rest of the city, he seemed seriously stoked about the NBA playoffs. The Raptors face the Indiana Pacers in a best-of-seven series starting Saturday in Toronto.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have coach Dwane Casey ("We're still a growing program, a growing culture"), general manager Masai Ujiri ("Winning takes time. There are plenty of franchises that don't do well for years and try to build") and de facto team leader Kyle Lowry ("For us, it's just about growth").
This sounds like it was torn from a Young Pioneers poster: "Victory Through Growth!"; "Building Takes Time!" How about "The Motherland Requires Your Sacrifice" or "Losing Will Be Ruthlessly Punished"?
Because on the cusp of another game-changing postseason for basketball in Canada, that's where we've got to. We've moved past the point where surrender is a learning opportunity. This roster has one option – move forward. Backsliders and retreaters should and will be eliminated.
One seriously wonders if the Raptors get that. Because it doesn't sound that way.
This is the downside of the "cozy little family" storyline the Raptors have been selling this year. They seem to have convinced themselves that the goal over these three years was to get happy, just as much as it was to get good.
I'm sure it's a lot more fun for them, but a sports franchise is not an experiment in social optimization. Harmony only matters when it's accompanied by performance.
On Friday, Lowry made a great show of interrupting DeMar DeRozan's news conference by lurking in a doorway loudly "Pssst"ing him. They bantered for a bit, with DeRozan playing the exasperated dad.
It was cute. Everyone laughed. It won't seem very funny in retrospect if either of them disappears in Saturday's Game 1, as they have occasionally been wont to do at this time of year.
In each of the past two seasons, there was friction on the team, much of it coalescing around Lowry. He warred with the coach, then ran himself into the ground trying to get into the all-star game.
"We was trash," Lowry said Friday of the second-half Raptors from a year ago. "We knew we was trash."
Since everyone said the complete opposite at the time, it's a helpful reminder that you cannot believe anything players tell you in late April. They're always going to over- or under-sell, depending on which sounds more palatable.
According to DeRozan, he and Lowry spent the days after last season's playoff embarrassment taking a series of mutual oaths. They would try harder, play better and do more.
Again, we've heard that one before, almost verbatim. After the first time around with Brooklyn. Then they slowly steered the ship onto Washington's rocks.
There is no disputing that this year Lowry is in a better place, physically and emotionally. All the malcontents on the fringes have been jettisoned. The room is filled with veterans who understand and happily accept their roles. Everybody is getting along swimmingly.
Which is great. If you win.
If you don't, they might as well be in the locker room duct-taping icepicks into their hands after games and staging human dogfights. The result is the same.
The boldness of two years ago, when everything seemed new and possible, has been leeched out of the organization. You can't imagine anyone saying "F- Brooklyn" these days and not being yelled down by the home crowd.
Based on their messaging this week, the major lesson learned by the Raptors in these three years is that no one ever regretted an abundance of caution.
That's true. No one ever has. Not until it costs them.
This is not a squad with someone who can win a game in the press, before it's played. There is no Paul Pierce on this roster. They are a very good team, but one without any innate swagger.
It's time to begin learning some.
The quickest way to get there is to realize the truth of this statement – there is no world in which the Raptors can lose to the Pacers and not see it as a total, top-to-bottom disaster. Much worse than the previous two. Much, much worse.
You know what you do after a disaster? You scorch the rubble and rebuild.
Ujiri has already guaranteed coach Casey's job for next season. If Casey guides them to another early exit, the GM will have to renege on that promise.
If they lose, they will have to accept that there is something flawed in the Lowry-DeRozan nexus. You don't lightly rid yourself of all-stars in the NBA, but you can start planning for a life beyond them. That would have to happen.
Everyone in a supporting role is at risk, and most would have to go.
If the fans are jaded now, only the purple-jersey loyalists would remain after another pooch. The peripheral supporters would not return until Toronto actually managed a good run into the postseason. By the team's internal logic, that might be years from now. Most of the current roster and staff would already be gone by then.
Given all that, exactly whose expectations do the Raptors think they are managing? Because it isn't the fans. It's only their own.
"This is the best run in franchise history, and it's still been nearly two years since the Raptors won a playoff game. That is not "growing." It's the opposite.
"Sometimes you have to fail to understand what you have to do," DeRozan said Friday.
Cool. Okay. Now prove it.
Cathal Kelly