The Raptors are tied for the best record in the NBA.
They possess the third-best offence in the league at 109.4 points per 100 possessions and have leaped up to seventh in defence at 99.9 points per 100 possessions against. They are best in the NBA at taking care of the ball, they are second-best at getting to the line (using free throw attempt rate as a metric) and their club’s starting five has the fifth-best plus-minus rating in the NBA (for what it’s worth, their five-man bench unit is sixth-best).
It’s tempting to dismiss all of this since we’re only beginning the third week of the season, but that would be overly cynical in this context. Any NBA observer worth his or her salt knows that a seven-game stretch hardly represents a large enough chunk of a season to draw meaningful conclusions from, and if we were talking about a team with a history opening seasons like this I’d be quick to dismiss it — but we’re not. What these Raptors are doing is unprecedented in their history. They are tied for the best record in the NBA. If you’ve been suffering through most of the last 20 years of Raptors basketball, you know that’s worth something.
Expectations can do funny things to teams. The Raptors have fallen victim to the pressures of expectations many times before. Usually they spend summers after successful seasons overplaying their hand — and overextending their resources — trying to prove they belong by importing expensive new talent. The pressure to make it all work has, historically, crumbled the foundation of the team rather than reinforced it. So to watch a Raptors team, coming off of one of their most successful seasons ever, jump out of the starting gates on the way to a 6-1 record is meaningful, even if it has only been two weeks.
When the club was struggling on defence in that first week, and guys like Patrick Patterson, Lou Williams and Terrence Ross were struggling to make an impact on the court, the team still took care of business and won games. Sure, it was generally against bottom-feeders like Orlando, Boston and the injury-ravaged Oklahoma City Thunder, but it’s not like this team has a history of consistently dispatching clubs below them in the standings (Charlotte, anyone?). When teams can struggle and still win games, that’s meaningful, too.
Dwane Casey talks a lot about disposition. He came to Toronto talking about changing the club’s disposition back in 2011. Just about every coach that preceded him said the same stuff with different words, and so really there was no reason to expect that Casey would actually be able to do what he set out to accomplish. It’s hard to articulate exactly how pervasive the malaise that surrounded this team was. Perhaps the best way is to point to the fact that it is only now, in his fifth season with the organization, that can one start to accept the fact that he may have actually succeeded. He made a point of singling-out the focus the team executed with after last night’s thwacking of the Sixers. They are the ultimate cellar dweller in the NBA, but the Raptors got up for them, buried them early and kept them down. They weren’t distracted by Philly’s horrid record or D-League-calibre roster, they came to play and treated them as though they were any other team in the NBA. Disposition.
Now, of course, the club has to do it over a longer period of time. They have to maintain the attacking style that’s seeing them live at the free throw line. They have to ensure that the tight defensive rotations that allowed them to pummel Washington and Philadelphia are a nightly occurrence. They have to continue taking care of the ball, because this team will never be a killer assist team (they just don’t have the passers for that). They have to find a way to improve on the glass, because they are just getting beat there too consistently (they are ranked 18th in the league in allowing offensive boards). They can get away with that against the clubs they’ve been playing but elite teams will obliterate them there. The Raptors also need to start hitting their three-point shots with more consistency. They’re down at 31.5% right now, good for fifth-worst in the league, and that’s going to need to improve because they can’t always count on officials giving them friendly whistles (nor can they expect that team’s won’t adjust to their attacking style) to prop up their offensive attack.
All of that is for the weeks and months to come, though. Right now, the Raptors are tied for the best record in the NBA. They’ve lost only once since the season started back in October and they are in a great position to give themselves an early cushion with this seven-game home stand the league gifted them with. There will be plenty of time then to pick through the minutiae of Valanciunas’ wonky around-the-basket percentages or James Johnson’s impact off of the bench. Right now, the Raptors re tied for the best record in the NBA.
Take time to pause. It’s worth acknowledging.
