Why The Raptors Can't Make it Past the First-Round

The stars of Toronto look to make it past the first-round for the second time in franchise history

Every year it seems that the Toronto Raptors are a legitimate title contender and are expected to at least make a deep playoff run, but every year they fall short in the first-round of the Playoffs. They have only made it to the 2nd Round once in the 2000-01 season when Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady ran the show.

Here are my main reasons I think that the Raptors continue to face playoff failure and I will inspect each reason in more detail later.

• They have a lot of pressure to succeed
• Their stars don't play like themselves
• They don't have experience

1.) They have a lot of pressure to succeed:

The Raptors this season finished as the 2nd seed team in the Eastern Conference and it seemed finally time that Toronto could hoist their first ever Championship trophy. However, the pressure that they face every year is far to much to bear. The necessity to make it further into the playoffs by others can have an affect on the game and can change the way they play. Furthermore, knowing how bad their playoff history is and how much is expected out of them this season due to their high ranking in the NBA, the Raptors have unnecessary pressure just to make it past the first-round. 

2.) The stars don't play like themselves

This is probably the biggest issue in Toronto. While they boast two of the league's best players in DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, their regular season success has yet to translate to the postseason. Collectively in this first round match-up with the Pacers, they are shooting 30.8% from the field and are averaging 28.8 PPG together. The All-Stars need to step it up if they want to make a splash in this off-season and can't rely on their role players to carry them every game. 

3.) They don't have experience

On the Raptors roster, there is only one player who has a championship, Cory Joseph, and he wasn't really a big part of the Spurs' championship run. The rest of the players haven't yet to even make it to the conference final round. While DeMar and Lowry have been to the playoffs a couple of times, the failure to make it past the first round hasn't prepared them for what is to come from the rest of the playoffs.

With all this said, I hope that the Raptors can in fact make it past the first round for the sake of Raptors fans. With them being the only team in another country other than the United States, Toronto fans have yet to seen much playoff basketball from them and need some hope for the future.