I was driving to football last week when a friend raised a great point: Fans of Toronto’s sports teams don’t know how to handle success.
The Maple Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, the Raptors have only won one playoff series in their 20 year history and the Blue Jays last won a World Series in 1993.
I’m not counting the Toronto Argos winning a Grey Cup in 2012 because the CFL isn’t a global league like the NHL, NFL, NBA or MLB are.
That’s a long drought waiting for a winner that has left a lot of fans in Toronto starved for a winning team to cheer for.
So when a team like the Raptors burst out of the gate with a 24-7 record to start this season a lot of “fans” jump on the bandwagon. Or, younger fans get excited about their team playing well.
There’s a false sense of optimism that the team will continue at the stretch and it rises expectations higher than they should be.
When the Raptors struggled during a stretch of tough games at the end of December there were some concerns that Toronto’s strong start was due to playing a lot of home games against weaker competition.
Now that Toronto is stuck in a stretch of games where they have gone 4-5 during the midst of a hellacious month, social media and talk radio is exploding with fans and talking heads picking apart the team.
The reality is this will be a challenging month in the schedule and the team is working on things on the defensive end. Through these growing pains the team might only pick up a couple of wins.
A rough month is okay. It won’t sink their chances of winning the Titanic, um, Atlantic Division.
There’s no possibility that Dwane Casey will be fired during this season.
Masai Ujiri was wise to hold his cards and let the trade deadline pass by instead of swinging for he fences.
Yes, blowing a 18 point lead against a New Orleans Pelicans team missing Jrue Holiday, Anthony Davis and Ryan Anderson is something that should make fans cringe.
Losing home games earlier this month to Brooklyn and Milwaukee wasn’t the best start to this month.
But those games are just blips in the marathon that an 82 game season represents; there’s going to be tons of peaks and valleys for any team.
When this season started the goals were to win the division and a playoff series. By winning the division – something that is still a virtual lock even if they don’t win again until February 28th against the Knicks – they will have March and April to continue to work out the kinks on the defensive end prior to the playoffs. The Raptors have home court in the first round of the playoffs and a great chance to win at least one playoff series.
Nobody wants to see Toronto limp February, but, even if happens, there’s no reason to sprain an ankle jumping off the bandwagon. The Raptors currently have a winning percentage (64%) that would mark the highest the franchise has ever had (last season is the current highest at 58%).
NBA seasons have an ebb and flow where teams get hot or cold, but by the end, things tend to even themselves out. A team like the Atlanta Hawks will likely hold onto the top of the Eastern Conference after winning 19-straight games, while a team like the Cleveland Cavaliers can turn around a season after winning 12-straight games shortly after making two trades.
For the most part, teams get hot and cold during different parts of an NBA season, and things even themselves out over the course of a full season.
The reality for the Raptors is their goals of winning the division and a playoff series can and will survive a horrible month where the team only wins one or two games in February. Fans just need to keep those goals in perspective and not get too high with strong stretches or too low when bad months like February hit.
Fans of the Raptors would be wise to apply the advice Aaron Rodgers gave fans of the Packers earlier this season when he told them to R-E-L-A-X.
This month is likely going to be brutal for the Raptors, but that isn’t any reason for fans to panic.
Photo credit: Shaheen Karolla
