Toronto Raptors Could Make 2015 NBA Finals Without a True Star
If the NBA were a mythological cannon, the 2004 Detroit Pistons would be perhaps its rarest of beasts, a team whose template—champion without a star, balance without equal—many contend might never again be duplicated.
The Toronto Raptors might have something to say about that.
Sturdy but starless, solid but unspectacular, these Raptors have scratched and clawed their way to an Eastern Conference-best 24-8 record.
More impressive still, Toronto has staked and held its claim largely without the services of sixth-year guard DeMar Derozan, elected last season to his first-ever All-Star appearance.
Sidelined in late November with a groin injury, DeRozan registered seventh among East guards for the first-round of All-Star voting. Unless he returns sooner than later, however, he's likely wind up on the outside looking in.
Point guard Kyle Lowry, on the other hand, was polling at a respectable fourth. More than good enough, should it hold, to yield the fiery floor general the first All-Star nod of his nine-year career.
Following a stellar 2013-14 campaign in which Lowry couldn't even crack the top 10 (thus surpassing the tired likes of Deron Williams and George Hill), such a coup would be validation indeed for the perennially moribund Raptors—as singular a sign as any that these young, plucky upstarts have officially arrived on the greater NBA radar.
All the while, the numbers have more than spoken for themselves. Per NBA.com (media stats require subscription), Toronto is currently logging the third-highest net rating in the league (7.8), trailing only the Golden State Warriors (11.6) and Dallas Mavericks (7.9). That includes a stellar offensive rating of 111.7, good for second in the NBA and nearly six full points ahead of where the Raptors charted a season ago.
And while the defense has slipped somewhat (down from a ninth-ranked 102.9 last year to a 14th-ranked 103.9 this season), the return of DeRozan—a versatile wing defender capable of checking three positions—should aid that cause significantly.
But the biggest key to the Raptors’ success has been Lowry, who is having a career year punctuated by personal highs in points, assists, field-goal percentage and player efficiency, just to cherry-pick a few statistics.
Indeed, Lowry’s has been something of a unique career trajectory. After years spent bouncing between teams, questions of character often trumping the tangible on-court talent, the former Villanova standout arrived in Toronto as the not-so-apparent heir to Jose Calderon.
Slowly but surely, Lowry earned his court-marshal stripes. By the start of the 2013-14 season, it was clear the Raptors were Lowry’s show to direct—even if DeMar DeRozan remained the spotlight-ready star.
All the while, Lowry’s ever-improving game painted the picture of a player for whom studying the point guard craft was as much about doting over the data as it was dishing dimes and diving to the rim.
From a fantastic March 2014 profile by Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski:
"Through the tribulations playing out in public and private, one thing never changed in those three seasons in Houston: Lowry was such a student of his craft. Perhaps people never saw it with him, but it's always been true. In Houston, he became a devoted pupil of the analytics movement. He watched Shane Battier's habits so closely and still incorporates those lessons into his regimen. ...
Always, too, Lowry loved sitting with GM Daryl Morey and his old assistant, Sam Hinkie, poring over the data revolution that had seeped into the basketball world.
"
Step back just a bit, Lowry’s path looks but a few parquet planks apart from another likewise late-blossoming combo guard—one who cast modern notions of the heady, steady NBA point guard in his own, wholly unspectacular image: Chauncey Billups.
Like Lowry, Billups bounced around for years before finding his true hardwood home. Like Lowry, Billups’ gifts as a scoring point guard often made forging a consistent niche strenuous proposition.
Like Billups, Lowry hopes that humbleness and patience will pay off in a long, accolade-laden prime. With the ultimate goal being the most unlikely of postseason warpaths: good enough to be great, notions of star-studded scripts be damned.
What’s more, Lowry seems to be embracing his place as a kind of Mr. Big Shot redux, albeit with a shoulder chip measures heavier.
“I’m a Chauncey Billups guy off the court,” Lowry told Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams. “You get what I mean? You take something from everybody. I steal something from everybody—not in a bad way, but I will take something from everybody if it’s making me a better person or a better player.”
Not that Toronto is a one-man review—far from it. When healthy, DeRozan is a top-five NBA shooting guard, who, like Lowry, bided his team before stepping forth from the shadows. In terms of two-way tenacity, he’s an even better version of Billuips’ longtime running mate, Richard Hamilton.
At the other wing, you have Terrence Ross: half perimeter marksmen, half aerial acrobat; a project still years away from fully patented product. Tayshaun Prince’s photo negative, sticking with the theme.
Jonas Valanciunas is the bully-ball bruiser. Blossomed though he has, you can’t help but wonder how many more gears Toronto’s burly center has left to throw. If he can author a sustained, incendiary playoff stretch, Toronto’s path to the finals goes far-fetched farce to full-fledged fairy tale.
Amir Johnson? He’s a poor man’s Ben Wallace on defense but with a much richer wealth of offensive moves. “Unsung hero” both capturing and selling his importance short.
Over 213 minutes, the Raptors’ starting give is tallying a net rating of 7.2, making it one of the most formidable first fives in the league.
Meanwhile, Lou Williams, Greivis Vasquez and Patrick Patterson highlight Toronto’s formidable cast of reserves, the league’s fifth-best in terms of pure point production. Shades of Lindsey Hunter, Mehmet Okur and the rest of Larry Brown's sterling reserves ringing all the while.
Despite a stellar 54-win season, the 2004 Pistons—fresh off a conference finals appearance the season before—weren't exactly locks for the long haul. By the time they met the mighty Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals, the talk of mostly of moral victories, midnight having long since struck for the East's gritty Cinderella.
Five games later, Detroit was hoisting its third banner in 16 seasons, along the way laying final waste to the Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O'Neal Lakers.
The West, brim-loaded as it is with legitimate Finals-caliber corps, might not boast the powerhouse apparent of those Lakers. All the more reason not to count out a team like Toronto: Given the right matchup, there's no reason why gestalt lightning can't strike twice.
To be sure, Toronto isn’t without its potential pocks. The team’s relatively soft schedule—the league’s 10th-easiest, to date—being chief among them.
Still, there’s a strategic premium to the idea of core continuity, a concept the Raptors have managed to embrace in recent years.
In Lowry, DeRozan, Ross and Valanciunas, Toronto boasts one of the brightest young quartets in the league. And while general manager Masai Ujiri will have plenty of decisions to make during the next few years, such a conundrum—to turn flexibility into sustainable reality—sure beats the alternative.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are a hardwood house divided against itself. The Chicago Bulls, for all their jaw-dropping potential, are one bad draw away from early elimination. The Washington Wizards and Atlanta Hawks: legitimate upstarts, sure, but with the requisite second-guesses to match.
It’s hard to imagine any Eastern Conference team upending whatever basketball behemoth should emerge from the West. Which, to those who remember how the 2004 playoffs ultimately unfolded, probably sounds familiar.
Even if the Raptors somehow crash the Finals, there’s scant chance the public will give them any chance of their own. Which, as the gestalt Pistons proved a little more than a decade ago, isn't the worst fate to have befall you.
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