Let me tell you a tale of two teams.
Team A outscored its opponents by 6.0 points per game en route to a 58-win season that earned it the No. 2 seed in its conference. Team B outscored its opponents by 6.2 points per game en route to a 58-win season and, yes, the second-best record in its conference. No difference, right?
If it isn’t obvious by now, Team A is last season’s Toronto Raptors … and Team B is this season’s Toronto Raptors, pro-rated to 82 games. Sans Kawhi Leonard, one of the low-key biggest surprises of the season is how much this year’s Raptors season looks like the four Raptors seasons that preceded it. What it means for what happens next is a topic of much league-wide conjecture.
The Raptors were one of the league’s most interesting teams heading into this season because of their unusual initial conditions — a defending champion operating without the player who led it to the title. As a result, the speculation league-wide was…
