Welcome to the Weekly Rap, a resource for getting you caught up on what went down in the past week and what’s on the docket in Raptorland.
Since training camp the Toronto Raptors and head coach Dwane Casey have talked about how the team’s true test will come when it must face adversity.
With the team about to start a six-game road trip that includes five West coast destinations, this may be the adversity that Casey has been talking about all along.
The Raptors lead the Eastern Conference with a 22-6 record and have done an excellent job beating the teams their supposed to (15-2 against teams below .500), but now, according to Raptors guard Greivis Vasquez, it’s time to see just how good the club actually is.
“It’s important that we play good teams because it’s really going to test our character,” Vasquez told reporters Sunday. “We haven’t really faced adversity and everything right now is great, but I think we’re ready for a couple of premium tests.”
This season, the Raptors are a respectable 7-4 against teams above .500, but have faltered more often than not when the conversation has turned to “litmus tests” and “measuring sticks,” particularly in losses to the Chicago Bulls, Dallas Mavericks and Cleveland Cavaliers.
On Monday, against the Bulls again, and through the next six games while they’re out on the road, those questions about just how good this Toronto team actually is will continue to dog the team on an almost daily basis. Can Toronto respond in kind and silence its critics?
The Raptors aren’t wrong in saying that only adversity can truly test the limits of what they can do. However, understanding the value of a little conflict and asking for it are completely different things, and at the moment they seem to be inviting it in. As the old adage goes, be careful what you wish for because it just might come true.
Record
22-6 (1st in Atlantic Division, 1st in Eastern Conference)
What happened?
This James Johnson dunk:
What was learned?
Raptors fans may actually be the best in the NBA: The phrase “best fans in the NBA” usually runs hollow as no team is going to say its supporters are inferior to another team’s batch, but the Raptors’ fan base just may have a legitimate claim.
Case in point: last Friday’s game in Detroit, when Raptors fans got on a bus and invaded the Palace at Auburn Hills. Even cooler than that though is that Raptors GM Masai Ujiri actually boarded the bus for the trip.
And if that wasn’t cool enough for you, before the team boarded their plane to Chicago on Sunday, airport security broke out into “Let’s go Raptors” chants.
It seems no one likes the team’s new logo: A big part of the renewed fan support for the Raptors this season has been the club’s excellent “We The North” marketing campaign. On Friday, the re-branded logo was unveiled and, unlike the new team slogan, the “shield” was met with nearly universal revulsion from fans. Not even the team showing off what some of the merchandise will look like has changed many minds.
The purple dinosaur was also met with much distain and now it’s being celebrated, so maybe people’s minds can change given enough time.
Upcoming slate
- Monday 8:00 p.m., TOR at CHI
- Saturday 3:30 p.m., TOR at LAC
- Sunday 9:00 p.m., TOR at DEN
Storylines to follow
MVP watch: If the NBA divvied up its awards the way Major League Baseball does and had separate awards for each conference then Kyle Lowry would be the frontrunner for Eastern Conference MVP. This season, Lowry is averaging 19.5 points and 7.8 assists per game on 44-percent shooting and has seen his numbers spike ever since DeMar DeRozan was forced out of the lineup by injury (20.8 points, 9.7 assists per game).
As things stand now, Lowry is only a fringe MVP candidate but could really help his own cause on this road trip as he’ll be going toe-to-toe with some of the NBA’s elite point guards in Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, Damian Lillard and Steph Curry. If Lowry puts up big numbers against them and leads the Raptors to some wins in the process then an MVP in Toronto may not be so farfetched.
Landry Fields’s health: Landry Fields was forced to miss Sunday’s game after failing to pass a pre-game concussion test, a result of his scary-looking fall onto his head during Friday’s game. This is a situation that should definitely be monitored as Fields has had a tangible effect on the Raptors’ defence ever since being inserted into the starting lineup. With Fields starting, Toronto has given up 98.7 points per 100 possessions. In the early days of DeRozan’s injury absence before Casey moved Fields into the starting five, the Raptors were allowing a horrific 117.2 points per 100 possessions.