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DeRozan: Season a failure if Raptors don't get out of 1st round

Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images Sport / Getty

The Toronto Raptors are facing yet another moment of truth, and one of the faces of a franchise that has never been able to put it all together at the right time is offering an honest assessment about Sunday's Game 7 against the Indiana Pacers.

"(The) season would be a failure if we don't make it out of the first round," DeMar DeRozan said Friday, less than an hour after finishing 3-of-13 for eight points in Indiana's decisive 101-83 Game 6 victory.

Game 7 goes Sunday night in Toronto. The Raptors have never won a best-of-seven playoff series, and are now 1-5 all time in games where they could have eliminated a postseason opponent. More worrisome, the current core of DeRozan and Kyle Lowry is 0-3 in the same situation.

Two years ago, the Raptors held a 3-2 lead in their first-round series against the Brooklyn Nets, only to lose the final two contests - including Game 7 at home. Yet that squad was younger and more surprising in its accomplishments. This season's Raps won a franchise-record 56 games, and have, at times, been considered legitimate challengers to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It's against that backdrop that many Raptors observers have become fatalistic in their outlook. DeRozan is more optimistic.

"You can't make it sound like a funeral," he told reporters. "It’s a chance for us to play."

In order to avoid another Raptor extinction, DeRozan will need to perform. The unrestricted free agent is guaranteed a max contract this summer, and has been dreadful in four of six games so far.

DeMar DeRozan FG% FTA/G PTS TO
Regular season 44.6 8.4 23.5 2.2
vs. Pacers 32.1 5 15.4 3

Meanwhile, Lowry, his fellow All-Star backcourt partner, is playing with an elbow injury. The point guard downplayed that Friday, instead crediting the defense of the Pacers' George Hill for keeping him in check to the tune of 32.4 percent shooting in the series. Teammates believe it's all about a total team effort.

"We have to have a long, hard look in the mirror at ourselves and realize what basketball team do we want to be?" forward Patrick Patterson said, according to the Toronto Sun's Ryan Wolstat. "Do we want to be the team that won 56 games, do we want to be the team that got two All-Stars ... or do we want to this team that's come in Indiana the past two times and got blown out of the water? We have to decide what we have to be."

The last 50-win, No. 2 seed to get knocked out in the first round of the NBA playoffs was the 2010 Dallas Mavericks.

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