Who will rattle Raptors’ cage?

Watching LeBron James rattle cages in Cleveland this week, questioning his franchise’s financial commitment to repeating as NBA champions, at least a couple of things became clear.

For one, the Cavaliers, losers of six of their past eight games, are a surprisingly vulnerable team that’s alarmingly reliant on their best players.

“Top heavy as s---,” was James’s memorable description of his team’s roster construction in a recent spleen venting with Cleveland reporters.

James is leading the NBA in playing time at age 32, this despite the fact he’s already logged more minutes than Charles Barkley, Larry Bird and Steve Nash played in their respective careers. The Cavaliers are playing a perilous game of injury roulette by overplaying their late-career star.

And it suggests a smart rival — ahem, such as a certain franchise based in Canada — needs to be ready if and when Cleveland finds itself on the wrong side of health-related luck.

Still, healthy or not, getting past the Cavaliers won’t be easy for the Raptors, or for anyone, and not simply because James is the best player of his generation. It’s also because he has emerged as one of the most maniacally uncompromising athletes on the planet.

James’ urgings, if you’re betting, will most likely spur the Cavaliers to get even better and deeper before the Feb. 23 trade deadline.

“I just hope that we’re not satisfied as an organization,” James told reporters this week.

On Thursday ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that James and owner Dan Gilbert are at odds over payroll spending, of all things. Now, it’s easy to frame James as an entitled nitpicker in such a public showdown. Gilbert’s franchise, after all, has spent more money in salary and luxury-tax penalties than any NBA team since James rejoined the club in 2014-15.

Then again, James is only asking for what every great player ought to demand: his best chance at maximizing his career. He’s pushing for excellence and wondering aloud if the Cavaliers, in the glow of their first championship, have lost some of their win-at-all-costs edge. If you’re a Cleveland fan, you should be grateful.

And if you’re a Raptors fan, it’s worth wondering: Who’s playing that role in Toronto?

We know who used to play it. It was Tim Leiweke, the bulldog of a MLSE CEO who arrived in town back in 2013 and almost immediately pulled a version of what James pulled this week. Leiweke would tell anyone who asked that the way Toronto’s sports teams had been operating was unacceptable. Piling up profits wasn’t enough. Being happy with modest successes and accepting of sub-mediocrity — none of it was worthy of a market this rich and this massive.

“We’ve got to be like New York and L.A., where we do not tolerate losing,” Leiweke said. “We’ve got to go for it here . . . Why be in this business if you’re not trying to win championships?”

He was dead right for calling out his organization for its reluctance to go for broke in the pursuit of trophies. A couple of years later, he was out.

And now that Leiweke is gone — well, you can make an argument the Raptors are in danger of becoming too comfortable. They’ve been to the playoffs three straight years. They’ve come through the 41-game mark at franchise-record pace, playing to nightly full houses at the Air Canada Centre. Yet there are holes in the lineup that need filling — a long-sought power forward, for starters. And who, exactly, is advocating for team president Masai Ujiri to exhaust every option and spend what it takes to fill them?

It’s probably not Leiweke’s successor, Michael Friisdahl, whose resume includes the creation of Air Canada Rouge, the no-frills, lesslegroom discount airline. Let’s just say the man who created Canada’s preeminent winged torture chamber isn’t a likely candidate to endorse breaking the bank for the benefit of tall people.

It’s probably not Larry Tanenbaum, the MLSE chairman, who seems positively delighted by the recent sniff of success. And it probably won’t be Toronto’s best players, DeMar DeRozan and Lowry, even if Ujiri owes it to both to maximize the soon-to-be-closing window of their overlapping primes. The Raptors, to be fair, haven’t been financial slouches. Their current payroll for 2016-17 sits in the league’s top 10. Still, last season they were the only franchise among the post-season final four that didn’t spend into the luxury tax.

For years Toronto GMs, including Ujiri, have parried suggestions of profit mongering by insisting there’s an organizational green light to spend into the luxury tax if it makes sense. The fact remains no Toronto GM has ever crossed the proverbial intersection.

As Windhorst was saying on TSN radio this week, the Raptors are floating the impression around the league that they see no urgent need to make a move. Maybe that’s just Ujiri in stealth mode.

Still, there’s a certain feeling of resignation when you talk to NBA executives and coaches. A Cleveland-Golden State final can seem inevitable. The other day San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich pronounced the Warriors “in a different league than the rest of us.”

So what’s the point of the rest of the league trying to compete?

“The challenge is what makes it exciting,” Popovich said. “If you’re of the mindset . . . of ‘What’s the point?’ — then you’re in the wrong business.”

That’s something Leiweke might have shouted across a Bay Street boardroom to the horror of the bean counters. Who’ll shout it now?