By Walter Dubowec

Tiger Woods was at the Raptors/Magic playoff game and he now has a dozen potential new golf partners looking to join him for a Tuesday morning tee-off in central Florida.

Once again, the Raptors inability to play tough in crunch time was the deciding factor as they lost Game Five and the series to the Orlando Magic: 4-1.

               

With four minutes left, the Raps got it down to 84-82 and then, with little resistance, they let Orlando go on an 8-0 run to quickly run the score up to 92-82. That was it - a 10 point Magic lead which proved to be the final margin of victory.

This year, head-to-head including the playoffs the Raptors were an unflattering 2W-6L versus Orlando. As I repeated over and over again – the Magic are a better overall squad, despite what many Raptors fans believed.

I, for one, never believed this ‘best match-up’ crap.

Not much else to say. Even though I predicted a Magic series win, I thought the Raptors would at least take it to six games and possibly seven games. That, in my mind is the most disappointing aspect of the series loss.

Looking forward to off-season trade scenarios

The season is over for the  Raptors and I’m ready to focus on Colangelo’s off-season moves, instead of lamenting a disappointing season. Doug Smith made some interesting observations on the FAN590 pre-game show with Eric Smith.

Based on what he's heard from within the Raptors organization – Bryan Colangelo's #1 priority is a scoring wing player who can also defend. No team in the NBA has as big a drop off talent wise as do the Raptors when you go from Bosh down to their #2 guy.

Apparently, Doug has heard from others in the NBA that Bryan is already looking at potential trade targets. There are top tier wing players available, but Colangelo will need to accept another bad contract to land the stud he covets.

Word is that Bryan Colangelo is willing to do that. A package of expirings including Rasho and Joey will likely be part of any such deal.

Also, Bryan intends on resigning Jose and making him the starter. He would like to keep TJ as a back-up, but that's not a role TJ is willing to accept. Therefore, its a virtual certainty that TJ is moved in the off season.

Bryan Colangelo knows he has to make definite progress in the off season or he risks losing CB4 to free agency – who signed a short extension so he’d have flexibility if he wasn’t happy with the Raptors’ direction.

This will be an interesting and active off-season. I fully expect a very different and much hungrier Raptors team to take the floor in October.