The Toronto Raptors have reached an unprecedented point in their development.
The team has blown past any previous franchise standards for a good start and now, 15 games into what is shaping up to be a remarkable 20th anniversary season, the Raptors have to engage in collective group think to pretend it’s not happening.
If you can imagine a group of grown men running around with their fingers in their ears shouting, "Don’t jinx us!" — you get the picture.
When you go 13-2 and routinely blow out opponents at home, on the road, elite or also-ran, you’re going to get some attention. Toronto’s strategy for dealing with this early-season success is to pretend it’s not happening.
Metaphorically, the players are spending a lot of time trying not to look at their phones.
"It’s different for us," shrugged Lou Williams, a second-unit scoring machine that general manager Masai Ujiri picked up for some contract ballast when no one was looking this past summer. "It’s just work for us. Like y’all know what people are talking about, the Twitters and the Instagrams, but we just come in and do our job every day. Our focus is taking it one game at a time, come in every day and try to get better every day and take it serious every time. "
The Raptors cover was blown this week, algorithmically, when the playoff odds calculator at ESPN.com pegged the team’s chances of making the playoffs at 100 percent, gave them a 95.5 percent shot at winning the Eastern Conference, a 72 percent chance of making it to the NBA Finals and a 43.3 percent chance to win the NBA title.
It also projected the Raptors could finish as strong as 77-5, proving that math does have its limit — at least in head coach Dwane Casey’s mind.
"That’s good for fans and whoever else … I live in reality and all I know is we have a tough game [Friday] night."
Yes. Friday night the Dallas Mavericks come to the Air Canada Centre where the Raptors have lost just once in 10 starts. The Mavericks boast the NBA’s most potent offence — the Raptors are second — and many of the same pieces that were in place when Casey was the assistant coach on a Mavs team that started 24-5 and won the NBA title in 2011.
Does this team feel like that Dallas squad?
"The season is still young," Casey said. "And we’re such a young team, that’s why it’s hard to accept all the accolades. We have to be business as usual, because we are a young team and in this league a two or three game winning streak can easily turn into a two or three losing streak. That’s why it’s important to keep an even keel."
Meanwhile, national U.S. writers are taking numbers to write their "Here come the Raptors" take outs, while here at home The National — as in Peter Mansbridge’s show — was on hand to document what appears to be a winning team. From Toronto. The item ran Thursday night under the heading "The Toronto Raptors: From Loveable Losers to Championship Contenders."
That’s what 13-2 does. Peter Mansbridge notices. It’s a remarkable start. I combed through the records of the NBA finalists for the last 20 years — so 40 teams — and it’s only been matched five times and bettered just three times. On average, those eight teams have won 63 games, with a high of 72 (1995-96 Chicago Bulls) and a low of 52 (2001-02 New Jersey Nets).
The temptation is to pluck apart the Raptors’ franchise-record start, and it’s not that hard to do: Friday night’s game against the visiting Mavericks will be their 11th home game, tops in the NBA. Prior to their last two games, they had enjoyed the easiest schedule in the league and keep seeming to catch teams on their back foot: whether it’s the Memphis Grizzlies missing five regulars with the flu, the Milwaukee Bucks playing their third game in four nights and coming off a triple-overtime win, the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz coming to Toronto at the end of long, winding road trips or the Raptors resting in Atlanta while the Hawks played on the road prior to hosting Toronto the next night.
Then you look at their 4-1 road record, their NBA-best 6-2 mark against winning teams, an NBA-best plus-11.5 point differential and their 54-23 record dating back to the Rudy Gay trade and wonder if maybe, just maybe…
Is the 13-2 start for real? What about having the NBA’s second-most efficient offence or its sixth-most efficient defence? Can that get it done?
It’s trending well, let’s put it that way.
In the 20 years of the Raptors’ existence, the average performance of a team that advances to the NBA Finals looks something likes this:
Offensive efficiency ranking: 8th
Defensive efficiency ranking: 6th
Record through 15 games: 11-4
Season record: 58-24
Against that backdrop, it doesn’t seem all that crazy to talk about the Raptors as a team that should have an eye on advancing to the NBA Finals. They meet or exceed all of those standards. Toronto is the only Eastern Conference team that ranks in the top 10 both offensively and defensively.
If that seems a bit over-enthusiastic, don’t blame me. I’ve only covered the Raptors for most of the past 20 years. I don’t really know first-hand what a championship contender looks like up close.
For those kinds of insights turn to Chuck Hayes, the oldest head on the club and a man who broke in playing with Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady on Houston Rockets clubs that won an average of 53 games a season from 2006-07 to 2008-09, including the 2007-08 Rockets that won 55 games and 22 straight at one point.
"It does feel like those teams a little bit," said Hayes after playing some one-on-one with his son, Dorian, Thursday. "We’re in sync right now, we know how we want to play, how we want to run our offence and how we want to defend, and we’re executing. One thing you try to sustain the whole season is you want to play hard and for the first 15 games we’ve played hard.
"We can do something special here, we’re not getting overly excited, but we do have a confidence to us right now about what we want to do."
There are many miles to go before the Raptors can think realistically about playing for a conference championship or the NBA title.
But after 15 mostly glorious games, it’s a start.