The Raptors need to make a trade! The Raptors need to sign Joe Johnson! The Raptors are DOOMED if they enter the Playoffs as is!
We’re entering the home stretch of the 2015-16 season. There are 50 days until the Playoffs start, and this has always been a precarious time for the Toronto Raptors. So much so, in fact, that many long time fans and pundits are entering into a kind of ‘panic mode’, a reflex brought on by years of postseason disappointment and underachievement.
The Raptors have only made it out of the first round once, back in 2001. Since that time, the Raptors have been the higher seed in three of their five match ups, and they lost each one. When asked on ESPN this week if the Raptors have a chance of unseating the Cavaliers atop the east, Chris Broussard said the biggest reason that no one would pick the Raptors is because their lack of historical success eradicates even the possibility in most minds. That’s why so many were shocked when the Raptors didn’t make a move at the deadline, and it’s why so many want them to claim someone off of the waiver wire: people feel that they need a reason to believe that the Raptors can escape their own history. People want to believe in them, but too many past failures make it to difficult for many to get there.
I sort of get it (since I’m as susceptible to it as anyone). The human brain is wired to recognize patterns, and when it comes to the Raptors there is no greater pattern in the postseason than disappointment. Even when they would appear to have the upper hand in enough areas, the advantages of the other team always win the day. So, forgive those that think that the Raptors can’t win without some sort of Hail Mary in the last weeks of the season, it’s an honest reaction to twenty-one years of experience.
That said, this Raptors team is not those Raptors teams. We may be wired to look for patterns, but that doesn’t always mean that the pattern always applies. This year’s squad has been hurdling the organization’s history all season. They had their longest-ever winning streak. They have their best record ever at this point in the season. They have two legitimate All-Stars for the first time ever (yes, they had two All-Stars in 2001, but Antonio Davis was an injury replacement in an centre-deleted east, so…). They may have the same team name emblazoned across their chest, but these are not yesterday’s Raptors, and they shouldn’t be expected to falter like their forebears have.
This Raptors team has been near-dominant all season. They hew closer to the east -leading Cavaliers than they do to the third-seed Boston Celtics. Their point-differential is fifth-best in the entire NBA, just like their win-loss record. They’ve only lost six games at home all year, which makes it hard to see them losing four in the span of two weeks against the lower rungs of the playoff bracket. They’ve done this in spite of not having Jonas Valanciunas for thirty-percent of their games, and not having DeMarre Carroll for sixty-percent! This year’s Raptors have shown they can weather the storm, and there is no logical reason to assume that stops on April 16 just because a misapplied historical precedent says it will.
The Raptors didn’t make a move at the deadline. Oh well. They will probably not sign a free agent this week, either. Oh well. The trade deadline came down to outrageous asking prices for imperfect assets, and the market for waived veterans comes down to the questionable group of guys wouldn’t actually see the floor for these Raptors. This club isn’t perfect, we know that, but they have enough to make it to the eastern conference finals as-is, and if they don’t then it will be a failure of execution more than it will be a failure of roster construction that makes it so.
What you’re really seeing right now is something that is terribly familiar in NCAA basketball at this time of year, and that’s over-familiarity. Like with NCAA stars, people have had enough time to watch them that the lustre of ‘new’ was faded, and now people begin to obsess over the flaws. These Raptors have been more or less this good all season, and the narratives begin to shift from all of the things that they do well (like closing-out games or weathering scoring droughts with defence) to things that they don’t do as well (like the nitpicking over Luis Scola starting games). Eventually you just get used to the exceptional and can’t see past the flaws. It happens, but it also perverts one’s ability to cogently evaluate the team’s ceiling. Masai Ujiri did a fine job building this team in the summer, and tinkering now isn’t essential. If the Raptors could have landed a difference-maker at the deadline, would it have made a difference? Yes, that’s why that player would have been a difference-maker (think Al Horford), but nipping-and-tucking at the edges seems needlessly finicky to me, and carries more risk than the possible reward when you think of chemistry and locker room harmony.
That won’t make the next 50 days any easier for fans to sit through, though. The only question that remains on the season is how this team is going to do in the postseason, and the answer to that is still nearly two months away. Every lost game between now and then will bring to mind all the ways the Raptors fell to their opponents in playoffs past (smothering defence on Chris Bosh, endless Jameer-to-Howard pick-and-rolls and, of course, Paul Pierce). Every miscue will appear to be a portend to the woes to come. In those moments, just breathe. Not a single playoff game is going to be won or lost in the next six weeks.
Your ‘panic mode’ is well-earned. This organization has done little in their history to make you think that they’ll ever do any good in their future. However, this team is different. Let all of the ways that they’ve been better this season push the panic out of your brain. Let it ease your tension in the handful of games that this team will lose between now and the postseason, and focus instead on the larger quantity of games that they are likely to win. You can be haunted by their past, but they are learning from it. The Raptors have never gone to a third-consecutive Playoffs stronger than they were the year before, until this year. This Raptors team is taking what they need from their past and ditching the rest, and they haven’t needed an in-season move to do it. They’ll be fine. Just enjoy these last 50 days of the team’s best-ever regular season. Let the playoffs happen when the playoffs happen.
