The disappointment of the moment will eventually pass, because it always does, and the hurt that Raptors fans feel today won’t last forever. When it comes time to reflect on the era that has now ended, there will be smiles where today there are not.
That is because this has been, quite simply, the greatest era of sustained sports excellence in Toronto in more than half a century, and maybe that’s the way to think about this iteration of the NBA team that will miss the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.
By every imaginable metric, what the Raptors have done has been historic — unprecedented, really — in the modern sports era in the city.