Toronto Raptors: Can They Avoid a Second Half Slump?

The Toronto Raptors have established themselves as a team to beat this season, but can they avoid a second half meltdown like they went through last year?

After winning 14 of their last 16 games, you could make a case that the All-Star break might have come at a bad time for the Toronto Raptors.

The team’s All-Star backcourt of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan had been exceptional leading up to the break as both players averaged over 20 points per game (24.3 points per game for DeRozan and 21.5 points per game for Lowry) and have fueled much of the team’s success since the start of the calendar year.

The break gives players time to re-energize and in this special case, it gave the city of Toronto its time to shine as the host of this year’s All-Star weekend.

However, a true test lies ahead for the Raptors and they only have to look at what happened to them last season to see why that’s the case.

The Raptors were in a very similar spot as they are now, standing as the second seed in the Eastern Conference behind the blazing Atlanta Hawks with a 36-17 record (a franchise-best, by the way) when the All-Star break rolled around. Also like this year, the team was without a major player in their rotation as DeMar DeRozan missed a month and a half of action due to suffering a left leg injury.

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That increased the workload of Kyle Lowry and his terrific play leading up to the break earned him his first All-Star selection.

However, the second half of the season was a different story.

While DeRozan started to show signs of the player he’s been this year, Lowry’s play took a turn as it was rumored that he was dealing with a number of nagging injuries leading up to the playoffs last year.

Additionally, the Raptors’ defense, which had been their Achilles’ heel for much of the season already, collapsed even further as they were ranked 24th in defensive rating (105.8 points per 100 possessions) after the All-Star break.

Of course, all of this led to a completely disastrous playoff series against the Washington Wizards where the Raptors were swept in the first round of the playoffs, which later fueled the team’s decisions over the course of the offseason.

So even with the changes made over the offseason and the growth of both Lowry and DeRozan, the question still remains — are the Raptors built to last this season?