If only Chris Bosh had made that last-second shot in a 113-112 loss to the Golden State Warriors on April 4, things might have been different for the Toronto Raptors.

Or if only someone had kept Kobe Bryant from making that jumper with 1.9 seconds left in a 109-107 Los Angeles Lakers win March 9.

Or if only the rebound was scooped up in the moments before Carmelo Anthony gave the Denver Nuggets a 97-96 victory on March 26 with a buzzer-beating jumper.

One win short of the playoffs, the Raptors have no shortage of heartbreaking losses to lament as they look back upon the ashes of a once-promising season. Thoughts of "what if" and "if only" await.

"We look at different games, for sure," head coach Jay Triano said Wednesday after a too-little, too-late 131-113 win over the New York Knicks. "We got the ball slipping out of hands with Carmelo hitting a shot (against) Denver, you can look back at single games throughout the whole thing."

The losses to the Warriors, Lakers and Nuggets are among their most heartbreaking, but they're not alone.

There was a one-point loss at Phoenix back in November; a three-point defeat at Miami on March 28 in which they were outscored 30-17 in the fourth quarter; and of course the gut-wrenching 104-88 loss to the Chicago Bulls last Sunday that buried Toronto.

Had the Raptors won that game, they would have controlled their own destiny. Instead, they barely showed up and were left needing the help of others to overtake Chicago and it never came.

"It was very disappointing," rookie DeMar DeRozan said of the loss to the Bulls. "I think we left everything on the line, I think we wanted it, but you can't take away from Chicago. They did the same thing and they got the better end of the stick."

It's all fodder for the looming post-mortem, with what happened to the Raptors after they climbed a season-high seven games over .500 at 31-24 following a 109-104 win over Washington on Feb. 20.

They went 9-18 the rest of the way, wasting a stretch that led to questions of whether they could secure the fifth seed or not, rather than wonder if they would get the help they needed to reach the playoffs.

"I think we should be in those playoffs, at least," said point guard Jose Calderon. "We can compete against anybody but we're just now thinking about a lot of games, Phoenix, and L.A., and some we were leading by five or eight points with two minutes to go. It's kind of tough now."

Once their slide began, the Raptors grasped for answers, unable to find any. There are few positives for them to take into next season, with the issue of Chris Bosh's uncertain future with the team front and centre.

Free-agent signing Hedo Turkoglu, who was supposed to be the team's missing piece, never found a groove and struggled badly for the most part. He left without speaking to reporters.

Centre Andrea Bargnani showed flashes of brilliance, like Wednesday when he led the Raptors with 24 points, but didn't do it consistently enough.

Unsettled is whether their surge up the standings from mid-December to mid-February was the team playing to form, or an aberration.

"We have a lot of regrets," said Bargnani. "We just started playing bad, I don't know why. Nobody knows otherwise we wouldn't do that."