"I've been wrestling more than I usually do," said Bosh.

Wrestling is what he called it, he and his teammates' ultimately futile stabs at containing Dwight Howard, the Orlando Magic 7-footer whose 21 points and 21 rebounds – Howard's third 20-20 game in four Orlando wins – helped put the Raptors out of their misery last night. You can pick apart the Raptors' faults in the wake of a season that stumbled in the face of lofty expectations. You can scoff at on-the-ball defence that turned last night's 102-92 Game 5 loss into a drive-and-dish clinic for the Magic.

But maybe Toronto's biggest downfall as a franchise, in the grand scheme, was not lucking into a No.1 overall draft pick in the mould of Howard, who, since arriving in Orlando in 2004, has established himself as the league's most physically dominating force since Shaquille O'Neal. Bosh, who had 16 points and nine rebounds en route to elimination, didn't bring his best game last night, but he outscored Howard in the series, averaging 24 points to the Magic man's 22.6.

Howard, though, pulled down an astounding 18.2 rebounds a game against Toronto , which was more than the combined average of Raptor frontliners Bosh (9.0), Andrea Bargnani (1.4), Jamario Moon (4.8) and Rasho Nesterovic (2.6). Last night Howard had more offensive rebounds (10) than the entire Raptor lineup (9). And Howard blocked 19 shots in the five-game closeout, seven more than the entire opposing team.

The dominance, at times, made it seem as though Howard, all 265 pounds of him, was playing with a foam ball on a toy rim. And it was enough to at least mildly impress the most dominant athlete on the planet, one Eldrick T. Woods of the nearby Isleworth gated community, who offered some polite clapping from his courtside perch when Howard and his mates clinched the Magic's first playoff series win in a dozen years.

"He's a phenom. He's probably the best centre in the league. He's the strongest guy in the league," said Bosh. "There were a couple of times when I boxed him out the correct way and he got the rebound still."

Maybe you never could have imagined it ending this way during those giddy days in Italy , when the Raptors, coming off a 47-win regular-season and a Game 6 loss to the Nets a year ago, seemed so much more flush with promise. Back then, mind you, Bryan Colangelo, the Toronto GM, would have told you that his best three players were Bosh, T.J. Ford and Bargnani, the latter the No.1 pick in a 2006 draft that wasn't graced by a no-brain pick a la Howard. And this season two-thirds of that triumvirate, Ford and Bargnani, under-delivered for a raft of reasons.

Suddenly, the Raptors' self-adhered label as a young and promising club doesn't seem so fitting. Howard, all of 22 years old, is a month and a bit younger than Bargnani. In the end the season was encapsulated in a few game-turning minutes. Down the stretch the Raptors and Magic traded jump shots, but Toronto 's never seemed as open as Orlando 's. The Raptors, powerless to defend penetration, over-helped on the dribblers and left the marksmen wide open – Howard a scary enough decoy to exacerbate the gaps. Toronto gave up dunks. They gave up layups. They gave up wide-open, dagger-in-the-season threes and you can scold them for missing those assignments. But the best player on the floor won.

"We tried everything in the book against Dwight, but he's a man, man," said Moon. "That boy's gonna be something. He's something to be reckoned with."

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