The Toronto Raptors are on their way to their first ever season on top of the Eastern Conference, and with a victory over the Miami Heat tonight could win 60 games, the first time a team in the East has done so since 2014-15. It’ll be their third straight season as a top-3 seed in the East, and there’s a solid chance that DeMar DeRozan will be an All-NBA player for the second straight season. This isn’t how most expected this season to play out in Toronto, though.
ESPN’s RPM preseason projections had the Raptors at 43 wins this season, and their preseason player rankings had DeRozan himself at 36th, just behind Jae Crowder. Raptors fans know these things well though, and it’s becoming a sort of Raptors tradition to love the team delivering vindication against the low expectations that the team comes with every season, and leaves far behind with where they finish. Yet, despite this happening with regularity, the Raptors continue to be under-estimated. Tune into any discussion of the Eastern Conference playoffs and you’ll hear two tunes, either that the Cleveland Cavaliers will easily pace themselves to yet another NBA Finals, or that the Eastern Conference is wide open.
Perhaps these takes shouldn’t be that surprising, after all, the Raptors haven’t yet truly delivered in the postseason, not getting out of a series in less than six games yet, losing game ones consistently, and with both of their All-Stars having frequent struggles. Yet, despite those flaws, in the last two years they’ve won more playoff series than any team in the East aside from Cleveland, and only lost to them each of those years.
Here’s the thing, all of this we already know. We know, going into next season, that there’ll be talk that it’ll once again be the year the Raptors will finally regress. Those expectations never adjusted for Kyle Lowry becoming one of the most impactful players in the league, for Masai Ujiri continually building depth into the team that kept the second unit strong year after year, for DeMar DeRozan finding new ways to improve his arsenal of offensive weapons and bring more to the table each season to help the Raptors stay near the top of the East. While the fans love the redemption from these storylines that the team continues to deliver, the organization itself seems to thrive on the lowered expectations.
DeMar DeRozan responded in annoyed fashion to both the expectations for himself and the team that ESPN posted prior to the season, and instead focused on delivering the best season of his career, in which he lowered his scoring totals, which had been his calling card up until this point, and introduced new versatility, becoming one of the best on the wing at creating for teammates and helping them get their offensive games going each night. He also, to start the season, was playing some of the best defense of his career, and while that slipped during the second half somewhat, seems to have found his renewed interest there again to close the year.
Kyle Lowry has played virtually his entire career with a chip on his shoulder, being one of the smallest guys on the court and yet playing above his size on a nightly basis, always willing to take the biggest shots and defend the toughest assignments. It’s not an unusual sight to see a player with a massive height advantage struggling to post him up, or see him knock down the biggest shots in games against some of the best players in the league. He’ll finish this season again in the top-10 in the league in RPM and RPM Wins, and ranked 22nd in the league in Player-Impact Plus-Minus. There’s a real case that this has been the fourth season in a row where Lowry has been one of the most impactful players in the league, and his name still gets left out of discussions for the best at his position, because those expectations never quite adjusted to account for the player he’s become and been, and now, with him into his 30s, the expectation has become that age will take him out of that prime before he ever gets the credit he’s due for being there.
Yet, despite these slights against the roster and organization, from Fred Van Vleet going undrafted to Jakob Poeltl being said to be the ninth player drafted in an eight-player draft, to the group of players who fell to the back half of the first round of the draft who have become solid members of the rotation, the team wears it all as a badge of honor. The Raptors are at their best when underestimated. When the doubts peak, so too do these Raptors. On the other hand, when that media attention that the fans clamor for so desperately finally shines on the team, it seems like they always regress, just a little.
LeBron James is an incredible hurdle, he’s one of the greatest players the game of basketball has ever seen and he will undoubtedly find new ways to cause problems for this most talented Raptors team ever should they run into him in the postseason. The Raptors will need every tool available to get past that test, and maybe the chip on their shoulders is something they can weaponize to get there.
Maybe they need it, maybe what makes this franchise thrive is those doubts. Perhaps the fuel that helped build DeRozan and Lowry into the leaders that they’ve become, and the team behind them into the right supporting cast to have the regular season of a true contender is the idea that they couldn’t do this. If that’s the case, then my plea to the media as a whole heading into the postseason is this, keep doubting them. Keep calling the Eastern Conference wide open and the Raptors ripe for a playoff upset. Tell them that the bench can’t be effective against playoff rotations, that the offense will stall when it faces a focused defense, and that they won’t make the adjustments necessary to win playoff series against tough opponents. Maybe, in the process, you’ll turn them into exactly the team they need to be to finally overcome those postseason hurdles. Maybe they can leverage the chip they carry to chase a Chip of an entirely different sort.
