Well, that was a notable victory.
The Toronto Raptors beat the Indiana Pacers at the Air Canada Centre on Friday night and, in the process, achieved a number of things. Let’s quickly go over them.
Franchise record for wins
The victory moves Toronto to 57-22 on the year, setting a new franchise record for wins in a season.
“(It’s) a record, something that hasn’t been accomplished here,” DeMar DeRozan said at shootaround. “So whenever you do something that hasn’t been done, it’s always an accomplishment that speaks volumes to the work that’s been put in, the sacrifices, the fails and what you work for when nobody’s watching.”
The Raptors had previously won 56 games in 2015-16. There have only been 143 instances of an NBA team winning 57 games or more, and the Raptors become the 25th different franchise to accomplish the arbitrary feat.
This is the Raptors’ third consecutive 50-plus win season overall, and they rank third in the NBA in total wins over that span with 164. Golden State is the only other team to win 50 or more in each of the last three seasons.
Franchise record for home wins
This win was the Raptors’ 33rd at the Air Canada Centre this year, topping their 2015-16 mark of 32-9. They’ll have a chance to push that to 34 on Sunday.
The Raptors have outscored visitors by 417 this season, the seventh best mark of any individual team season in the last five years and the best mark in the NBA this season. No Eastern Conference team has a better home record or home plus-minus than the Raptors over the last five seasons.
Atlantic Division Champions
The Raptors are once again Atlantic Division champions, the fifth time they’ve accomplished the feat. Divisions don’t mean as much as they used to, of course, but locking up a division banner four times in the last five years has put Toronto on par with New York and Philadelphia for most Atlantic Division wins, and both of those teams have been in the division since it was created 1970 (Boston has won it 22 times; almost there). The Raptors are going to run out of space for their banners at this rate.
Clinched the 1-seed
For the first time ever, the Raptors will enter the playoffs as the 1-seed in the Eastern Conference. Their win keeps them three games up in the East (Boston won Friday as well) with only three games to play for each team, and the Raptors own the tie-breaker scenario against the Celtics.
“You want to keep trying to build on it, build on it and use that as confidence of understanding that we did this, we can do even more, something else that hasn’t been done,” DeRozan said.
They’ll now wait to see who lands in the No. 8 seed between Miami, Washington, and Milwaukee to find out their first-round opponent (Washington somehow lost to Atlanta, by the way). Philadelphia beat Cleveland on Friday, so they’re now in control of the third-seed (and by extension, the four-seed).
Respect Dwane Casey
Per RaptorsMR, the win also makes Dwane Casey just the third coach in NBA history to improve his team’s win total in six out of seven seasons.
“The level of confidence, the level of work that our coaches and management and everybody’s put in to building to where we are now,” Casey said Friday. “It’s a growth process, so the achievement of growing, developing, seeing guys like DeMar DeRozan grow, a guy like Jonas Valanciunas grow and continue to grow, a guy like Kyle Lowry grow into the All-Star he is, is a compliment to our entire organization…In the days of instant everything, we want instant yesterday, we want to be a champion yesterday instead of growing and watching guys develop, that’s the bit of gratification we get as an organization and as a coaching staff, to watch our program grow. And the beautiful thing about it is these young guys are going to be even better next year.”
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Yes, some of this is a little random, and some of the franchise-best marks are attainable because the Raptors were never good for long until recently. It’s worth reflecting on just how incredibly this half-decade run has been, in terms relative to the team’s history and to the rest of the league during this stretch. It says a lot about this year’s team that they’ve been able to one-up some of their previous heights, too, and while everything that matters will be measured by the postseason, don’t lost sight of just how entertaining and successful the road to get there has been. This is the best Raptors team of all time.
