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The Raptors have closed out their disappointing 2012-13 season in seemingly impressive fashion, as they head into Wednesday’s season finale against Boston on a four-game winning streak and winners of six of their last seven games. In addition, the last four victories have all come against Eastern Conference playoff teams seeded fourth to sixth, and April 2013 now marks just the second winning month for the franchise in the Post Bosh Era (February of this season was the first).

With a win against the Celtics tonight and a Milwaukee loss, Toronto will finish just three games back of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, which would mark the closest they’ve been to eighth since early January. Regardless of tonight’s events and how the standings finish, the Raptors as an organization (except for Dwane Casey, who told it like it is on Tuesday night) will likely spin a tale of how encouraging the season ending streak was, how indicative of how good this team can be it is, how if only the season was a little longer they could have caught eighth or how if a few of those early season losses had gone their way, they’d be getting ready for the playoffs.

And I really hope that true Raptors fans aren’t naive enough to believe it all.

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With the canceling of Tuesday’s scheduled TNT game between the Celtics and Pacers due to the tragic events that took place in Boston today, the Raptors at Hawks game has been moved into the TNT slot.

The game will mark the first time the Raptors have been on national television south of the border since 2008 and the first time on TNT since 2004. Fans have been longing for that kind of exposure for some time, but for obvious reasons, this announcement should not be met with any sort of celebration.

I chose to write about it briefly here because this is a gathering place for passionate Raptors fans, and a Raps game being on TNT is something I thought fellow fans would want to know about, but again, it’s a horrible way to get there.

Part of the beauty of sports is the ability to serve as a distraction from the grind of reality and everyday life, and while the game itself means little in the standings or in the grand scheme of life, hopefully the Raptors and Hawks will be able to provide some form of entertainment and distraction for basketball fans, if even just for a couple of hours.

So by all means, try to enjoy watching your team in a TNT game tomorrow night, as you shouldn’t feel guilty about that passion. But keep things in perspective and keep the victims, first responders, their families and all those affected by the attack in Boston in your thoughts and prayers.

After refusing to talk playoffs for the longest time, I’ll admit that even I was fooled into false hope after the late February win over the Knicks and subsuquent Bucks loss which brought the Raptors to within four games of the top eight in the Eastern Conferences. I quickly came to my senses, however, with back-to-back losses against the Wizards and Cavs.

But while talk of playoff games in 2013 evaporated weeks ago, there is still a portion of this fan base that seems to assume that this exact same roster will magically turn into a playoff team in 2014. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

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Note the blurry basketball

With the Raptors dropping 16 games below .500 for the first time this season after their fourth loss to the Bobcats in the last two seasons, there isn’t exactly a ton of pressing news surrounding the lottery bound team right now. On a minor note however, Rudy Gay is trying to get used to wearing prescription goggles in practice because of vision issues.

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The Raptors look destined to miss the playoffs for a fifth straight season for the first time in franchise history – a real “feat” considering the futility of past eras of Raptors basketball – but you wouldn’t know it by the nine sellouts they’ve had this season or the 18,182 fans they average per game.

That passion, dedication and general loyalty among the Raptors’ rabid fanbase has been well documented over the years despite the team’s lack of success, and now fans will pay for that loyalty, literally, as MLSE will increase Raptors (and Maple Leafs) ticket prices by 2.5 per cent in 2013-14.

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