Toronto Raptors: From Doormat To Greatness?

Both Masai Ujiri and Dwane Casey are unwilling to make public predictions for the season at hand, but that doesn’t have to stop the rest of us from doing so.

Fall brings with it the opportunity for fans to breakdown what the season could look like for their team and to hope anew, even for franchises that have historically had little to cheer about.

So what might this year look like for the Toronto Raptors?

The Raptors are in an enviable position as their primary competition is with the other members of the Atlantic Division: the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, and the Philadelphia 76ers.  Although analysts are divided upon what to expect from either New York team, both the Celtics and Sixers are expected to be terrible as each team’s front office has visions toward the 2015 NBA Draft.

Last season, the Nets eliminated the Raptors in a hotly contested seven-game series, as Toronto had a tough time keeping Joe Johnson seven-time NBA All-Star Joe Johnson out of the paint and had particular difficulty will smallball lineups that featured Paul Pierce at power forward.

In fact, it was Pierce’s transition to power forward earlier last season that changed the fortunes of the most expensive team in NBA history.  This was after a season-ending injury to Brook Lopez forced Brooklyn to reevaluate their strategy on the season.

Now another year older as a team, and with Lopez returning from injury, Brooklyn still appears to be the toughest competition that Toronto will face within their division.  But how will the loss of Pierce impact what the Nets do on the court?

For the Knicks, having Carmelo Anthony in the lineup will mean few troubles scoring, but New York will also be relying heavily on defensive turnstiles Jose Calderon and Andrea Bargnani within their starting lineup.

That video may be an over-exaggeration rather than the norm, but it isn’t far from the truth.  Bargnani is regularly lost on the court and isn’t helped by the fact that Calderon provides little resistance at the initial point of attack.

Simply put, a second straight Atlantic Division championship is well within Toronto’s grasp, which would once again give the Raptors home-court advantage during the opening round of the playoffs.

What about the rest of the East?

With LeBron James and Kevin Love joining forces for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Paul Gasol going to the Chicago Bulls to play with who we all hope will be a healthy Derrick Rose, the Toronto Raptors have been publicly relegated to the status of third banana in the Eastern Conference…and that is considered a best-case scenario. But is that all that Toronto can aim for?

Prior to their trade of Rudy Gay on Dec. 8 last year, the Raptors had a record of 6-12.  But after acquiring Patrick Patterson, Greivis Vasquez, Chuck Hayes, and John Salmons, the Raptors won over 65 percent of their remaining games. Extrapolated over an entire season, this winning percentage would put Toronto among the elite that the league has to offer.

The Raptors accomplished all of this this despite starting two second-year players in Terrence Ross and Jonas Valanciunas.  Both improved significantly as the season progressed, and both are expected to continue making incremental improvements at a bare minimum, with many expecting Valanciunas to take a big step as one of the game’s best young centers.

Valanciunas spent part of the summer training alongside of Hakeem Olajuwon, while Ross trained heavily alongside of his notoriously hard working teammate, DeRozan. Both also trained with an elite running coach in Oregon in order to learn how to expend less energy while on the court.

Toronto also added bench scoring in the form of Lou Williams, and a large wing defender in James Johnson to help handle players like Pierce and Joe Johnson.

All of this and Toronto still has room on their bench to develop two promising rookies in Bruno Caboclo and Lucas Nogueira.

Much of the worry surrounding Toronto this summer was centered around fears that Kyle Lowry would regress after a magnificent breakout season within a contract year.  Instead, Lowry has come into training camp in magnificent shape and with a clear edge against anyone who doubts him or his team.

"“Those people who thought I’d (be out of shape), they’re idiots,” Lowry told Thestar.com. “The people who were expecting me to come back in shape, they’re smart.”"

And make no mistake, the Raptors’ players believe fully that they are a team to be reckoned with.

Above all though, the Raptors are entering the season with one thing that no other Eastern Conference contender can match…continuity. Which, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe pointed out in his piece from earlier this week, is an underrated piece of team building:

"“Teams are unsure how to create continuity, a renewed NBA buzzword, in a world where half the roster can switch teams every year.‘If you’ve played basketball, you know there is a hard-to-quantify element of continuity,’ says Bob Myers, the Warriors GM and a former player at UCLA. ‘Playing together with the same group of people for a long time makes you better. It just does.'”"

Cleveland will be using what is an almost entirely new roster, accompanied by a brand new NBA coach in David Blatt.  The Bulls have the similar foundation as last year (notably Joakim Noah and Tom Thibodeau), but they will also be attempting to work Rose and Gasol into the mix, along with newcomers Doug McDermott, Nikola Mirotic, and Aaron Brooks.

The Raptors have opportunity for significant internal growth due to the youth of their roster, but if Toronto is going to take a big step in the year to come, their continuity in comparison with other Eastern Conference might be their biggest weapon.

In the past, Toronto has far too often been the doormat to the rest of the NBA, but 2014-15 might just be the year that a sleeping giant could emerge from the North.