CLEVELAND — For the first time since October, the Toronto Raptors won’t be about the process. Won’t be about the work. There will be no opportunity to get better.

Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic has always stressed that his team isn’t about outcomes. Not about the scoreboard or the standings. Instead, the focus is on the often-tedious step-by-step path — often uphill and rarely linear — towards getting better.

It took them a great distance this season. Farther than most anticipated and with contributions from corners of the roster few expected.

“We’re not focusing on a win, ever,” Rajakovic said earlier in the Raptors first-round series with the heavily favoured Cleveland Cavaliers, echoing a theme he has returned to repeatedly over the three years since he took over a rebuilding team as first-time NBA head coach. “Because we don't control (the) win. There are so many things that go along the way that you can control and then outcome of the game is you win or lose. We cannot think about, 'Oh, we want to win,' and then we’re lazy and we’re not rebounding and we’re not running and we're not doing what we're supposed to do. We’ve just got to be focused… to execute what we have envisioned. I have absolute trust in this group and the character of all of our players that they’re going to go out there and give all they got, and they're going to try to control everything that's in our power. And if that's enough for the win, and I think it is, if you do that, you win tonight.”

But not Sunday night. Not in Game 7 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. After fighting for six games and pushing through injuries and fatigue and against expectations, the Raptors had a chance to see if they could outpace their development timeline a little bit more, to see if they could will themselves to the second round.

Instead they lost. Their charming season is over.

It will be the fourth-seeded Cavaliers advancing to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, with the first-seeded Detroit Pistons waiting for them there. It’s what most would have expected before the series started.

Turns out the other team has a process and a plan and is trying to control the controllables too.

And on Sunday night, the Cavaliers and their league-high payroll were better than the........

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