Is It Time To Start Believing In The Toronto Raptors?

With this year’s team on pace to have the best season in franchise history, it’s time every NBA fan starts taking the Toronto Raptors seriously this year.

It’s been a great 2016 so far for the Toronto Raptors.

They’ve won 14 out of their last 15 games, have the second-best winning percentage (83.3 percent) in the NBA since the turn of the year (just behind the Golden State Warriors) and the city of Toronto is about to be in the International spotlight as it hosts All-Star weekend in a couple of days.

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While currently slotted as the second seed in the Eastern Conference, the Raptors have arguably been as stable a team that you will come across in the East, especially when considering the semi-recent turmoil that’s been going on with the East-leading Cleveland Cavaliers.

The team’s All-Star backcourt of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan have never been better as both players are posting career highs in points per game (23.2 points per game for DeRozan, 21.1 points per game for Lowry), which collectively makes up for 44 percent of the team’s overall output (101.6).

However, the team’s biggest point of success this year has been the overhauling of the team’s defense.

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Thanks to the acquisitions the Raptors made last offseason as well as the rebuilding of the team’s defensive scheme, the Raptors currently rank ninth in the association with a defensive rating of 101 per 100 possessions, per NBA.com/stats.  By comparison, the Raptors were ranked 19th this time last year with a defensive rating 104.4 per 100 possessions.

All of this is leading up to one question: is it time to start believing in the Toronto Raptors as legitimate NBA Championship contenders?

This is something every NBA fan should be asking themselves and considering we’ve just seen this story from the Raptors the last two years, it’s understandable why some may not be fully bought based on what we’ve seen from the team this year.

That’s obviously due to how the team collapsed at the end of last year, as they finished 13-16 after the All-Star break and got swept by the Washington Wizards in the first round of the playoffs.

Yet all the changes made last offseason as well as the growth from both Lowry and DeRozan have turned this Toronto Raptors team into a legitimate championship contender.

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Some of that is due to the state of the East as it lacks legitimate championship threats to the Cavaliers while being much improved overall and that leaves the door open for the Raptors to sit comfortably above those middling East teams.

However, the Cavaliers are still the overwhelming favorite and that won’t change regardless of the Raptors being able to keep playing at the pace they’re playing.

There’s still plenty of basketball left to be played and it’ll be curious to see if this Raptors team can avoid the same pitfalls that last year’s team went through at the end of last season.

But with the impending return of DeMarre Carroll, the team’s big free agent acquisition, as well as how active the team’s front office reportedly is ahead of the trade deadline, the Raptors may be deserving of more respect than they’re currently getting if things hold up.

There’s a good thing going in Toronto and while we’ll have to wait and see if it continues, it’s time to stop overlooking this Raptors team.