If the Golden State Warriors' recent blowouts of the Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs felt bad for those teams, imagine how the rest of the NBA feel.
It can be easy to start to see where the Philadelphia 76ers are coming from. Why embark on a fool’s errand that only conceivably ends with empty hands?
What, even, is the point of all the work to construct a merely good team when those great teams are getting dusted by a team that may well be the greatest?
The point may just be the Toronto Raptors.
As the 76ers’ near-nihilistic future-building project must look more and more attractive to wide swathes of the NBA in this stratified season, Toronto have firmly established themselves in the league’s most pyrrhic position: fifth best.
If the San Antonio Spurs (No 2) are chief antagonists, with a seeming reasonable chance to beat Golden State at some point but a 30-point loss nearby in their rearview mirror; If the Cleveland Cavaliers (No 3) at least have LeBron James but have to be wondering if they are not doomed to a repeat of last season’s losing NBA Finals effort; If the Oklahoma City Thunder (No 4) can pin their hopes on Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, and even those hopes look staggeringly longer and longer as the season goes on; If all that is true of the three teams above the Raptors, then surely Toronto’s case at No 5 is insanity.
But, here is the thing: the Raptors are really quite good, and weird stuff happens sometimes. And when weird stuff happens, one sure thing is it will not be the Philadelphia 76ers who stand to benefit.
Toronto won their 10th straight game on Thursday night, casually beating the New York Knicks by 10.
They have beaten teams such as the LA Clippers, Miami Heat and Boston Celtics in that stretch. Good teams.
Of course, they began their streak following a 22-point loss to the Cavaliers, so where exactly is this virtue in being good but not nearly good enough to count among real title contenders?
When the Houston Rockets won back-to-back NBA titles in 1994-95, they arrived at the summit after reaching the play-offs eight of the previous nine years with nothing to show for it.
They had reached the NBA Finals once in that time and were wasting the peak of one of the great players of all-time, Hakeem Olajuwon. And then, suddenly, they were champions.
As suddenly as it took for Michael Jordan to go through a personal crisis and decide to play baseball, interrupting the middle of the Chicago Bulls’ 90s dynasty.
Weird stuff happens.
That is not to say these Raptors are particularly analogous to those Rockets. For one, they do not have anyone like Olajuwon. But it is to say there is virtue in being good, even not-quite-title-worthy-good, because it is hard to either predict or discount that it will surprisingly and suddenly become title-worthy-good.
And these Raptors are, indeed, good. They have the NBA’s sixth-best offence and ninth-best defence by points and points allowed per 100 possessions. They are well-rounded.
Kyle Lowry has been, by some measures, a top-10 player and the third-best point guard in the game this season. DeMar DeRozan has blossomed into a two-way force.
They have good scoring and passing bigs like Jonas Valanciunas, Luis Scola and Patrick Patterson, who is doing a nice Draymond Green impersonation (the Raptors outscore opponents by nine points per 100 when he’s on court, he’s playing very solid D and he’s began hitting more threes than ever the last two seasons). They have found some very successful three-guard line-ups that offer their vision of small ball with Lowry and DeRozan bolstered by Terrence Ross and Cory Joseph, as Patterson and Biyombo hold things down defensively (some of those sets are insanely successful: Lowry/Joseph/Ross/Patterson is plus-25.1 points per 100 in 210 minutes; Lowry/Joseph/Ross/Biyombo plus-26.5 in 168 minutes; Lowry/Joseph/DeRozan/Patterson plus-15.3 in 146). Valanciunas can play around in those sets, too, juicing their offence without too much drop-off. They are deep in their quality with the likes of DeMarre Carroll and James Johnson also in the mix.
And as the East’s second-best team, they are just one presumed step from the NBA Finals.
Maybe the Cavaliers combust. Maybe then they get to the Finals, and a key Warrior like Stephen Curry or Green gets hurt. All it takes is a break or two like that.
Maybe long shot breaks. But how is it not a good place to be?
How is it not enviable, to be within a break or two?
jraymond@thenational.ae
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