Raps are Good But CAUTIOUSLY optimistic thread

[nikster]

Oh team has gotten lucky with some Injuries, and despite the recent cupcake schedule still somehow has one of the hardest SOS schedules..

And still we've been largely beating sub-.500 teams and squads without key players, so I can understand the criticism, is all I'm saying.

Guy was just trying to compare a raptors fan who listed off the last 10 year records to the magics and they responded saying we're like Celtics fans caught up in the distant past.

They haven't even gotten past the first round in over a decade..

Yeah, it's weird. Orlando has had a rough go in the post-Dwight era. Not as rough as, say, Washington, but it certainly hasn't been a banner stretch for them. Definitely not enough to where they want to be crowing at other squads about... anything.

Making fun of this year? Yup no problem. Quite possible this all goes to **** when the west coast hits.

The trying to bring down Raptors fans as "living in the past" when they still have one of the most successful 10+ years in the league is my issue.

Magic got the NBA hipster media bump last year.

Also they literally should be better, coming off a playoff appearance they just traded for a key piece with 4 first round picks and a pick swap, depleting them of most of their draft capital. They've traded away or given swap rights for nearly all their first round picks, while Raptors still own all of theirs and have the ability for a. Ig move.

[DG88]

The Raptors have definitely exceeded my expectations to start the season. I thought it would take them longer to gel, but they've impressed with how they've played. To start they were hyper aggressive on defense and that hurt them. After scaling back they've got a nice balance on defense now. On offense they really move the ball and without the ball. I had them as either a Play-In at minimum or a low Playoff seed. Now they have a easy schedule so far but the real tests will be against the best teams in the league. How they fair against those teams will give me an idea as to where they could finish at the end of the season. Still so far so good!

[PushDaRock]

This team does a lot of things really well and it makes them tough on any night because they can win in various ways. I don't think we are truly awful in any one category. The rebounding and rim protection are a bit below average but not dreadful and we don't get up a lot of volume on 3's but we take high quality ones and make a high %. Other than that, we also foul too much but that's really about all there is to complain about.

[anotherhomer]

The Raptors have definitely exceeded my expectations to start the season. I thought it would take them longer to gel, but they've impressed with how they've played. To start they were hyper aggressive on defense and that hurt them. After scaling back they've got a nice balance on defense now. On offense they really move the ball and without the ball. I had them as either a Play-In at minimum or a low Playoff seed. Now they have a easy schedule so far but the real tests will be against the best teams in the league. How they fair against those teams will give me an idea as to where they could finish at the end of the season. Still so far so good!

Agree they could be a play in team once they rack up losses against the west or injuries pile up but I will think good chance they are a 5th or 6th place team

The key is keeping this team together when shead, BI, RH are free agents in 2027

[I_Like_Dirt]

The Raptors have definitely exceeded my expectations to start the season. I thought it would take them longer to gel, but they've impressed with how they've played. To start they were hyper aggressive on defense and that hurt them. After scaling back they've got a nice balance on defense now. On offense they really move the ball and without the ball. I had them as either a Play-In at minimum or a low Playoff seed. Now they have a easy schedule so far but the real tests will be against the best teams in the league. How they fair against those teams will give me an idea as to where they could finish at the end of the season. Still so far so good!

There are a LOT of bad teams out there, especially in the east. Being able to reliable win those games rather than taking the night off and giving up wins you have no business giving up says more about where a team will finish in the standings than how a team plays against bad teams.

I don't think this team is a playoff powerhouse because they haven't shown that yet and they rely a bit more on depth than traditional playoff powerhouses (though the Pacers were an exception the past couple seasons). The Raps have shown enough for me to believe that, barring some outrageous string of injuries, they're going to win between 45 and 52 games this season which is pretty damn good.

[tsherkin]

Making fun of this year? Yup no problem. Quite possible this all goes to **** when the west coast hits.

The trying to bring down Raptors fans as "living in the past" when they still have one of the most successful 10+ years in the league is my issue.

Magic got the NBA hipster media bump last year.

Yeah, it's a little weird and not super sensible to be griefing us. If you go back the decade, we'd missed the playoffs 4 of the past 5 seasons and got knocked out in the first round the other year, BUT... 3 semis, a Conference Finals appearance and a title in the 5 years before that (and a bunch of seasons in the high 50s for wins, including 58 and 59 consecutively), to your point. We'd been doing quite well for a long time.

It's certainly just being a dick to another fanbase for no reason, and just isn't necessary for sure.

[everdiso]

Far far too much talk about our supposedly "weak" sked imo.

Compared to the other top teams:

TOR Vs: Top-10 4gms (2-2) / Mid-10 6gms (4-2) / Bot-10 7gms (6-1)
OKC Vs: Top-10 2gms (2-0) / Mid-10 4gms (3-1) / Bot-10 12gms (12-0)
DET Vs: Top-10 2gms (1-1) / Mid-10 8gms (7-1) / Bot-10 6gms (6-0)
LAL Vs: Top-10 3gms (2-1) / Mid-10 7gms (4-3) / Bot-10 6gms (6-0)
DEN Vs: Top-10 3gms (3-0) / Mid-10 6gms (3-3) / Bot-10 7gms (6-1)
HOU Vs: Top-10 6gms (2-4) / Mid-10 4gms (4-0) / Bot-10 4gms (4-0)
SAS Vs: Top-10 6gms (3-3) / Mid-10 4gms (2-2) / Bot-10 6gms (6-0)
CLE Vs: Top-10 6gms (2-4) / Mid-10 7gms (5-2) / Bot-10 5gms (5-0)

nobody's had an easier sked than OKC. DET LAL DEN have probably had easier skeds than us too.

The only team with a significantly tougher sked there has been Houston and maybe Cleveland to a lesser degree.

[ciueli]

The big thing I didn't see happening is the 3 point shooting, right now they are third in the league in 3 point percentage. it's early days and they will probably cool off a bit but Ingram is actually shooting well below his career numbers and Ochai has been out for a bunch of games and can't hit anything so there's even some room to improve if guys who are shooting hot like Scottie and Ja'Kobe fall off.

They are still very low in overall attempts from 3 point range per game (27th in the league) but as long as they are making them at a high rate like this to punish teams that think they can't shoot this could easily be real.

[TorontoBarneys]

Ja'kobe and Gradey are improving and starting to show up. It's a big deal and our depth is increasing.

[tsherkin]

Far far too much talk about our supposedly "weak" sked imo.

Compared to the other top teams:

I mean, it's not about comparison to others. We can say similar teams about some other squads, but that doesn't change the fact that we've been beating up on mostly bad teams or squads missing key guys and stuff. That is what it is. Of course, it does also mean that we're taking care of business which we are supposed to be managing, which itself is a sign of us playing at a given level, too. That's the other side of that equation.

[everdiso]

Far far too much talk about our supposedly "weak" sked imo.

Compared to the other top teams:

I mean, it's not about comparison to others. We can say similar teams about some other squads, but that doesn't change the fact that we've been beating up on mostly bad teams or squads missing key guys and stuff. That is what it is. Of course, it does also mean that we're taking care of business which we are supposed to be managing, which itself is a sign of us playing at a given level, too. That's the other side of that equation.

we haven't been though.

our sked has been pretty mid.

[anotherhomer]

Far far too much talk about our supposedly "weak" sked imo.

Compared to the other top teams:

I mean, it's not about comparison to others. We can say similar teams about some other squads, but that doesn't change the fact that we've been beating up on mostly bad teams or squads missing key guys and stuff. That is what it is. Of course, it does also mean that we're taking care of business which we are supposed to be managing, which itself is a sign of us playing at a given level, too. That's the other side of that equation.

we haven't been though.

our sked has been pretty mid.

i think if you read online, like raptors republic, tsn, tim botemps, the truth of matter, is we haven't been tested by the upper echelon teams....i don't see us beating any of the top 6 teams in the west let along the top 8, out of the 16 games (8 teams x 2 games each), i see maybe us winning 3-4 games

and honestly, there's nothing wrong with it....Darko's done a fantastic job, just our roster does have some limitations

[everdiso]

I mean, it's not about comparison to others. We can say similar teams about some other squads, but that doesn't change the fact that we've been beating up on mostly bad teams or squads missing key guys and stuff. That is what it is. Of course, it does also mean that we're taking care of business which we are supposed to be managing, which itself is a sign of us playing at a given level, too. That's the other side of that equation.

we haven't been though.

our sked has been pretty mid.

i think if you read online, like raptors republic, tsn, tim botemps, the truth of matter, is we haven't been tested by the upper echelon teams....i don't see us beating any of the top 6 teams in the west let along the top 8, out of the 16 games (8 teams x 2 games each), i see maybe us winning 3-4 games

and honestly, there's nothing wrong with it....Darko's done a fantastic job, just our roster does have some limitations

Might find out that their rosters also have limitations.