The epitaph of the 2014/15 NBA season won’t reflect it, but at one time this year it actually was not clear who would emerge as the league’s elite.
The Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks, as everyone has witnessed night after night over the past few months, surged to the peak of their conferences, with room to spare.
But for a good chunk of time, the Portland Trail Blazers and Memphis Grizzlies were on Golden State’s heels in the West, with teams like the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers not far behind.
In the East, the league was waiting on the Cavaliers to find their footing (they eventually did, just later than expected), and the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards looked like potential threats to Atlanta before injuries and losses of form darkened their outlooks significantly.
Of any team, the Toronto Raptors for the longest looked like a possible Finals contender.
As recently as mid-February, after beating the Hawks on the road to cap a four-game winning streak that also included wins over the Clippers, Spurs and Wizards, Toronto were within shouting distance of Atlanta.
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The Raps were the toast of Canada with their play, which had also seen them start 13-2 with victories against the Hawks (twice), Grizzlies, Cavaliers, Wizards and Oklahoma City Thunder.
Kyle Lowry deservingly started the All-Star Game. He was perhaps the best point guard in the East.
But since that February 20 win at Atlanta, Toronto have fallen into their own malaise. The Raptors are 8-14 in their past 22 games. They have fallen to fourth in the conference and any thought that they might pull a shock and represent the East in the Finals seems fantastical, in retrospect.
Toronto’s travails are an enlightening case study in how precarious title contention, or just the thought of it, can be in the NBA.
“We all walk around thinking we’re geniuses but, in this business, you need that Lady Luck,” Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri told Grantland’s Zach Lowe in an early January profile, in the middle of the team’s run among the elite.
“Not in my wildest dreams,” did Lowry expect Toronto to be as good as they were, as he put it.
The Raptors’ slide can be attributed to several factors. Since February 21 they have scored about two points less per 100 possessions on offence (dipping from 108.9 to 106.7 in their past 22 games). Their decline of defence has been more precipitous, allowing 108.5 points per 100 after posting a 103.8/100 mark through 54 contests.
Most importantly, Kyle Lowry missed 10 of their past 22 games, including all of their last five, and, when he has played, he has been more pedestrian than a fringe MVP candidate.
That, unfortunately for Toronto, is all it takes in basketball to go from long-shot title contender to what a candidate for a first-round dismissal from the play-offs.
No team in the NBA can dream of winning it all without an elite player, or at least one player who can count among the league’s 15 or so best and provide occasional moments of transcendence. The Raptors had that in Lowry, for much of the year.
But in his past 12 games Toronto have scored just 99.0 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor. They are scoring an astonishing 12.6 more points when he is nowhere to be seen.
Lowry is best at his most aggressive, but with a back injury limiting his mobility, his ability to get to the rim and draw fouls has been severely hampered. He isn’t able to create the same kind of looks for teammates when he’s not barrelling into the paint and drawing attention. He has shot more from three at a slightly better rate and yet scored about three less points per game.
Luckily, for the Raptors, Lowry could come back and find his groove in time for the play-offs and they could go on and surprise people.
Their recent struggles and diminished hopes might even be a warning to teams who fancy themselves champions. A tweak of Stephen Curry’s ankle, Al Horford’s injury history coming back to bite him or just a freak accident for LeBron James could torpedo any of the Warriors, Hawks, Cavaliers, or anyone else’s season at any time.
Ujiri in January asked, rhetorically: “Is this a rare time? Is this period … something we have to take advantage of?”
The answer, it should be obvious now, is always “yes”, in the NBA.
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