The Toronto Raptors were never in a very good position to get a win over the Los Angeles Clippers at the Intuit Dome.

And they didn’t, falling 119-94 to the Clippers on Wednesday to drop to 2-3 on their five-game west coast road trip, to 40-32 on the season and a half-game behind the red-hot Atlanta Hawks (overtime winners over Detroit) for fifth place in the Eastern Conference playoff race. The Raptors remain in sixth but are just a half-game up on seventh-place Philadelphia, which had both Joel Embiid and Paul George back in the lineup for a win over Chicago Wednesday night. Things are getting tight.

The Raptors were without Immanuel Quickley, who missed his second straight game with plantar fasciitis, which is concerning. But you can’t blame being not competitive on missing a single starter. Serious teams don’t do that.

The expectations remain: If the Raptors play well, they should be able to control their own destiny, presumably.

That’s where this group might have some problems.

The game was tied 13-13 at the 6:10 mark of the game, but then the Clippers went on a 23-9 run to finish the first quarter and the Raptors never really threatened after that.

But you still have to try, right? The Raptors were trailing 59-45 to start the third. You wouldn’t have bet on them to win it, but it wasn’t an insurmountable lead. They could have made it interesting. But they never really did, and here is a partial list of errors they made when they were trying to get back into a crucial game against a quality opponent on the road. No team is flawless, but keep in mind, this is not an exhaustive list of mistakes and miscalculations at key moments of a vital game:

• The Raptors get a turnover on the Clippers' first possession of the third quarter, but RJ Barrett sails an inexplicable pass over Jakob Poeltl on the ensuing fast break. Even if the pass had been on target, it was a bad place for the seven-foot Poeltl to catch it, 15 feet from the rim and on the move.

• Brandon Ingram dribbles into traffic and gets stripped for one of his three live-ball turnovers — all in similar situations. The Clippers get a three in transition.

• Jamal Shead misses a fairly routine lay-up — or what should be for an NBA guard — on an open diagonal cut from a nice pass by Scottie Barnes. Shead finished with eight points and four assists. He hit a pair of threes (on five attempts) but was 1-of-4 inside the arc in his 31 minutes.

• Barrett and Shead get mixed up in pick-and-roll coverage — if I had to guess, Barrett should have dropped into the paint with Derrick Jones Jr. after Shead went over his screen to stay with........

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