Why the Toronto Raptors Will Make the Playoffs Next Season

(Photo by Dave Sandford/Getty Images)

Now we move to the bench. Brian Colangelo deserves a lot of credit for fooling the Sixers into taking Kapono and his ridiculous contract off of our hands. We get a a bruiser, a tough, who will add some steel to this often times spineless team and also will give us a couple baskets and a handful of rebounds and maybe even play defense.

A lot of Raptor players suffer from a rather popular form of I-couldn't-careless-about-defense syndrome which has turned into a pandemic or is it epidemic in the NBA.

Next, we have Pops. Man, I love this guy (no homo). He gets rebounds, runs the floor, finishes at the basket, has size, can defend and the crowd loves him. Can't wait to see him in the lineup for a full season.

Delfino and DeRozen swap time on the bench so that takes care of SG. Center we have O'Bryant and Jawai, hopefully they will contribute just a little bit. And all we have left is Humphries (aka nothing to see here).

I sincerely think that Andrea is going to be absolutely beastly this year. He is the second coming of Dirk, but he is starting to enjoy getting in the paint, he's starting to defend and he drives the lane better than any Raptor currently on the roster. He is the main reason the Raptors will have success next year.

Now even if Colangelo signs Hedo, there will still be salary cap left over to improve this team, right now, without Hedo, Toronto's salary cap is sitting at only $46 million (compare this to $76 million for the Lakers right now).

A front court of Hedo, Andrea, and Bosh can run with anyone in the league in my opinion and we can anticipate 60 to 70 points from that combo. And with Andrea and Hedo draining threes, the offense starts to look a lot like the Magic's last year, which, needless to say, served them very well.

If the defense improves the Raptors suddenly become a very tough team to compete with. This is possible since playing defense is a mentality, not necessarily a physical thing. 

So the Raptors make it to the playoffs at the expense of the Bulls in my view, they won't be cracking the top four unless everyone plays out of their skins but if we can get in at five and avoid the Celtics and Shaq and LeBron (wow that sounds scary) we could very well see this team in the second round of the playoffs.

Yup you heard it here first and this is not a typo and I'm not high or drunk right now, I am predicting second round of playoffs for the Raptors and it is not even the 10th of July.

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