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Toronto Raptors (Projected Record: 48-34)

Canada’s only basketball team lost two important contributors in Patrick Patterson and P.J. Tucker this offseason. Patterson had been a plus-minus stud for years as a member of Toronto’s bench units, while Tucker was acquired for the Raps’ playoff run that fizzled and was a good, tough wing defender.

Kyle Lowry is still around and projects as somewhere around the 10th best player in the league in the RPM framework, so he drives a good portion of the Raptors’ rosy win expectation.

Another reason the Raptors only figure to lose an additional three games off their pace from last year and figure to finish second in the East, is that Toronto’s head personnel man, Masai Ujiri, has built up a solid cadre of young players through the draft who look ready to take larger roles this season.

Norman Powell, Delon Wright, and Jakob Poeltl are all recent draftees who look like solid to good rotation pieces. Pairing those young guys with Toronto’s starting five of Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, C.J. Miles, Serge Ibaka, and Jonas Valanciunas you get a very good eight-man rotation.