Local fans have been spoiled by Raps
With five straight 50-win seasons, defending champs are best team we’ve had in decades
It was early in this interrupted NBA season. Some desultory regular-season game against a drab opponent had long wrapped up and the Raptors had won, but had not played particularly well.
Some fans were grumbling, some in the media were wondering just how good the team was going to be, and a highranking team official — texting long after the game had ended — had a lament.
“We win and it’s not good enough,” he said. “It’s like everyone’s spoiled.”
Truthfully, why wouldn’t they be?
The Raptors are in the midst of one of the very best sports runs in Toronto in decades and decades, a string of success unprecedented in franchise history and among the very elite of the NBA:
Sunday’s victory over the Memphis Grizzlies gave them at least a 50-win season for the fifth year in a row. No other NBA team has a current streak of more than two.
It was also the Raptors’ 274th regular-season triumph in a five-year period. No other NBA team — not even the dynastic Warriors (270) — can match that number.
In the last four playoffs, Toronto has won 30 games. Only the Warriors, with 62 wins and three championships, eclipsed that total.
Spoiled? Oh yeah. Fans around these parts are spoiled, indeed.
It’s foolish to suggest there is any one reason for this stretch of unprecedented success that should make the Raptors the gold standard for Canadian professional sports teams — and makes them the envy of other NBA teams that lurch from season to season, all too often searching for a quick fix that may never come.
A few points make up the franchise star:
Dwane Casey was determined to build a program predicated on defence and selflessness and never wavered from hammering that message home.
Masai Ujiri, Bobby Webster,
Dan Tolzman and, in the early days, Jeff Weltman not only drafted astutely and made tremendously one-sided trades. (How about Greivis Vasquez for what turned out to be Norm Powell and OG Anunoby?) They sought good people as much as good players, took major gambles on trades (DeMar DeRozan for Kawhi Leonard leaps to mind) and always seemed to find the right people, the right personalities, the right bits in seamless moves over the years.
“It’s a consistency,” coach Nick Nurse said.
It has meant something to be a Raptor in this golden era for the team. From Kyle Lowry, DeRozan and Casey to Nurse, Powell, Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam, and from Jonas Valanciunas to Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green — all of whom have their fingerprints on the team’s success — there is now an expectation of how to play, how to act.
This year has been a perfect example. Everyone got hurt, everyone missed games, and someone always stepped up out of the shadows because that’s what Raptors do. No excuses. No hanging of heads. Figure it out and get on with business. Be a Raptor. “This year, I think it’s impressive — with all the injuries — that guys we weren’t quite sure of stepped in and really contributed,” Nurse said after the Raptors sewed up their seventh straight playoff appearance, which will begin early next week against the Brooklyn Nets.
“Give them credit, (but) I think some of that is the culture and the winning and you kind of have to fill big shoes, and they do it with a lot of energy and effort.”
And at the heart of this exhilarating run — which is not over, mind you — is the toughminded, tough-playing point guard and leader.
“I think Kyle’s toughness and leadership has really set the tone for this organization for this kind of run.,” Nurse said of Lowry, the one constant in this five-year stretch.
Said Serge Ibaka: “Kyle is our leader. He does more than just score. Sometimes he gets criticized when he scores less points, but the things he does for our team are more than that — things you don’t see on papers. He’s big for us. His impact on both ends of the floor is huge.”
The hope, of course, is that everyone enjoys all this success, all these wins, all these great seasons to the hilt. There are storied franchises — we’re looking at you New York Knicks, Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Bills — that have seldom lived through such successful times.
Winning is fun, but it’s not easy and consistent winning must never be taken for granted.
Those who see seasons as zero-sum entities — where a championship not won is a season lost — are simply missing the point.
The vagaries that come into play during title-winning seasons — good fortune for you, bad luck for opponents; a fourbouncer that goes in, a fivebouncer that misses; Kawhi Leonard plays for you, LeBron James plays for them — make winning it all a crapshoot many years in many sports.
No one knows what fate awaits the Raptors when these NBA playoffs begin, but there can be no denying that the five-year run to get here has been enjoyable.
Don’t be spoiled. Enjoy it for what it is. It beats the alternative.