The Toronto Raptors are ready

The Toronto Raptors have, somewhat quietly, crept up the Eastern Conference ladder. They’ve opened up a fairly wide-margin between themselves and the third-place Atlanta Hawks  (currently four games) and are within striking distance of the Cleveland Cavaliers (two and a half games as I write this). Adjust their point differential for strength of schedule and they’re about a half-point behind the Cavs, better than any team in the Western Conference, except the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, and the Oklahoma City Thunder. By that adjusted point differential measure they are, to this point, the best Raptors team in franchise history.

And yet, for all the impending success those numbers imply, they don’t seem ready to transcend the NBA’s mundane middle tier just yet.

In a statistical sense, Toronto will likely improve a lot over the next few weeks. Of their 11 games in February, just three are against teams that currently have a positive point differential — two against the Detroit Pistons and one against the Chicago Bulls. Their record and point differential are going to keep climbing and it’s not hard to imagine them surpassing the Cavaliers sometime soon, as they muddle through the transition to a new head coach. However, improvements in those indicators aren’t necessarily the same thing as getting better, which is important. What’s appealing about the Raptors is not so much where they are in the standings right now, but what their recent surge suggests about their near future.

As good as the Raptors have been, they will need to be even better to make this regular season into something. The Cavaliers have lost more production to injury, battled through more chaos, and looked more disjointed. All that has worked in Toronto’s favor in the standings so far but it also highlights several fairly obvious paths to the Cavaliers quickly and dramatically improving between now and the playoffs. Those paths for the Raptors are a little more difficult to find.

DeMar DeRozan is having a phenomenal season, easily his best as a pro, and one that is pushing back against the idea that outside shooting is an essential component of efficient offensive production. However, he’s gotten there by being essentially perfect in all the complementary components — taking care of the ball, finding teammates, smart off-ball movement, a matchup-exploiting post-game, prodigious free throw totals. DeRozan has been respectable from the corners this season but he’s now taken 662 three-pointers in his career and made just 27.6 percent of them. Short of developing his outside shot into a fully formed threat, it’s hard to see how he could possibly squeeze more out of his talent. Which is sort of a fitting analogy for this entire team.

They have played terrific basketball this season, but it does feel like the entire roster is maxing out what’s available. Kyle Lowry and DeRozan have been exquisite, alternately and in collaboration, but it’s hard to see how they could do more, or do the same more efficiently. The Raptors is system is not as iso-heavy as it once was, but it’s not a living, breathing, entity that can separately elevate the quality or pull brilliance from the supporting cast. It is powered almost exclusively by Lowry and DeRozan. The bench has been destroying opponents but that advantage shrinks in the playoffs when rotations tighten. The team has plenty of youth, but no one that screams future star. Realistic developmental paths for players like Cory Joseph, Bismack Biyombo, Terrence Ross and Jonas Valanciunas seem like just incremental improvements towards above average role players. No one is sitting appears to be sitting on a breakout.

If there were any places were mean progression might help the team it would be in the return of Patrick Patterson’s three-point shot (currently at 33.9 percent against a career average of 36.2 percent) and a fully healthy DeMarre Carroll. But neither of those developments seem to offer the juice the Raptors would really need to get over the hump. And, as rosy as things look now, there is a giant hump in front of them. To get to a potential Eastern Conference Finals with Cleveland, as currently seeded, the Raptors would have to win series against the Detroit Pistons, and then either the Atlanta Hawks or Miami Heat. They may be ahead of those teams in the standings but have they really separated themselves enough to feel completely confident about winning a two playoff series against that group.

This sense that the Raptors don’t have another gear is somewhat rooted in recent history. Toronto won 59 percent of their games over the past two seasons and twice entered the playoffs with home court advantage and a top-four seed. They lost both first round series, including a sweep last year at the hands of the Washington Wizards. Admittedly, this is a different and better team. But there is an established track record of losing battles of adjustment. It’s a perceptual conundrum, really. The Raptors seem to be playing about as well as they can right now, which is the theoretical goal for any team in any situation. But when that best isn’t enough to fully separate from a pack of teams who aren’t necessarily playing their best, it takes off a little of the shine.

Maybe there is enough there on the margins to make it work. Maybe a healthy DeMarre Carroll is the battery that supercharges everything else. Maybe an unexpected playoff breakout from Valanciunas or Ross or Joseph is coming our way. Maybe there is another plane of collaborative synergy to ascend to. For the past few seasons, the Raptors have struggled to get the most out of their collective talent. They appear to have solved that problem for now. The challenge now is how to take it even further.