With the Raptors schedule having ramped up over recent weeks, it almost never feels like there’s really time to just stop and appreciate the season that’s happening. It’s too easy to get caught up in what went wrong in the last game, what they have to correct for the next one, and the races, first for first in the East, and now, more recently, for 60 wins. That’s all definitely part of the fun of a season like this, especially for a franchise that’s never seen this type of success before, but the ride itself is also worth enjoying and taking a look at.
It doesn’t feel like that long ago in this season that the talk around the Raptors was that they were a good team with a surprising young bench that was better than expected, but they weren’t quite on the tier of Boston or Cleveland for true contenders in the East, and they couldn’t get it done against good teams or in close games. Those criticisms weren’t entirely unfair, the Raptors had, at that point, a concerning record against the best in the league and frequently struggled when games came down to clutch minutes. Those trends, combined with a playoff reputation for making things harder for themselves than they had to be, definitely opened the door for criticism.
Since then, however, the story should’ve changed, at least a little bit. Since February 2nd, the Raptors have lost just twice, an overtime defeat to a Milwaukee Bucks team that had gone 9-3 since firing Jason Kidd and was one of the hottest teams in the league at the time, and last night’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, another streaking playoff team who picked up their 6th straight win in Toronto. A skeptic could certainly look at those games and say that perhaps, the Raptors not finding a way in the clutch to pick up wins against tough, playoff tested rosters indicates future playoff struggles, but that feels like a narrow scope to take, when the same stretch of games includes close victories over the Indiana Pacers, Washington Wizards, Miami Heat, and Houston Rockets, all of whom project to be playoff teams, and blowout wins over the Boston Celtics and Portland Trailblazers.
The truth is, no one really knows how these Raptors will perform in the playoffs at this point. The history exists, and it’s not completely unfair to bring up the past struggles of DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, even if those struggles are at times overstated. This is frequently stated when the Raptors notch a signature victory, in the context that you “can’t trust the Raptors until they do it in the playoffs”. It’s really hard to dispute that, because the playoffs can be unpredictable. At the same time, this is the best Raptors team ever assembled, it’s a deep squad where the starters looked like themselves again against Oklahoma City, with OG Anunoby returning from injury and looking like himself again, and the bench, despite a few rough games in recent weeks, being the best in the Association and showing their mettle against teams that increasingly keep their stars on the floor to match up with them.
It’s always easier to look at the next test up, whether that’s finally winning a playoff game 1, getting those 60 wins, or getting past Cleveland. But if your focus is always there, it’s sometimes hard to see the incremental growth along the way, and that’s been fun to watch this season. The Raptors rebuilt their offense when almost no one, including me, expected it to stick. They built a bench of young, unproven guys, and they’ve held up to the pressure of first replacing solid veterans, then proving their success wasn’t a short-term fluke, and now playing against teams who know they’re coming. They’ve won in different ways, dominating lottery teams all season long, holding serve on the best home-court record in the league, blowing out good playoff squads, and finding ways to solve tough tests in clutch minutes. They’ve also, now, lost just twice in the past six weeks, despite playing some of the league’s best, and they’re the only team to beat the Houston Rockets since the beginning of February, the team that will in all likelihood finish the season with the best record and some tough expectations.
The Thunder loss was a tough one, and there were definitely some things on display that the team will need to work on going forward. If Dwane Casey has shown us one thing this year though, it’s a willingness to look for solutions to the problems his team has shown.
If you go into each Raptors game looking for reasons to worry about this team going forward, reasons to think they might not find new levels of success in the postseason like they have during the regular season, you’ll almost certainly find them. At the same time, that approach will have you missing out on one of the best experiences in the league, a team that has routinely delivered some of the most entertaining basketball this season, and a team that’s shown resiliency in finding new ways to win as different challenges appeared. That resiliency is something that should pay off when we get to the playoffs.
