The Raptors Have Never Been in a Better Position to Win the East

All roads go through Cleveland, same as it ever was.

The Toronto Raptors wrapped up their 2016-17 season with a 51-31 record, some positive momentum heading toward the playoffs, and with the same question hanging over them that shaped the discourse around the team both at the start of the season, at their peak, and after the trade deadline: Is this team good enough to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers?

Make no mistake, the Cavaliers are the measuring stick for the Raptors, at least in the present. So long as LeBron James and his ridiculous streak of NBA Finals appearances exists in his pseudo-human form, each Eastern Conference team on the upswing has to ask itself whether now is the time to strike, whether James and the Cavaliers are fallible, and if not, whether there's a conceivable path to defeating them the following year.

The Raptors, for all their growth and success over the last four seasons, still face those same questions now. Kyle Lowry will be a 31-year-old free agent this summer. DeMar DeRozan is theoretically at his peak, though anyone doubting he can get even better hasn't learned their lesson. Lowry will be joined in free agency by Serge Ibaka, P.J. Tucker, and Patrick Patterson, and while the Raptors employ some nice young pieces, none have the upside to push this team to another level on their own.

Team president Masai Ujiri has not been shy about the fact that this postseason could determine a lot about the future of the Raptors. The team's ownership group has green-lighted spending into the luxury tax, a necessity if even most of the core is going to be kept together. But Ujiri warned that such lavish expenditures will, logically, only follow a playoff run in which the core has shown that doing so is worthwhile. Exit swiftly, and there's little sense running it back to see if things break better a fifth time around. Show growth and push Cleveland even harder than last year's six-game Easter Conference finals, and Ujiri will be listening. Land the upset, and no amount of aggression and investment is off the table. In other words, how the Raptors answer the Cavaliers question will dictate a great deal about their future.

So like it was the morning after Game 6 last year, like it was on the eve of training camp, and like it was after Ujiri landed Tucker and Ibaka for a relative pittance, the Raptors are once again asking: Is there enough here to beat James and the Cavaliers?

For the first time since perhaps James' first tenure with his hometown team, the answer appears to be "maybe."

The Cavaliers are flawed, with an aging roster around James and a handful of offense-first supporting pieces. Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love are incredible players, to be sure, and Cleveland's Big Three is an impossible defensive task. Channing Frye and Kyle Korver almost seem like an embarrassment of offensive weapons, J.R. Smith can swing a game with his shooting, and Deron Williams landed in their lap for free. None of those players, though, were plus-defenders down the stretch—Smith is searching for his pre-injury form as the team's best defensive wing, Love's defense is better than his reputation but hardly elite, and Tristan Thompson is their only real rim protector (unless you're a big Edy Tavares fan, and I am). Iman Shumpert is a decent defender against some player types (read: not DeRozan), and a few of the veterans can support James, who may still be the best defensive player in the NBA when engaged. But this was an average rebounding team that forced fewer turnovers than almost anyone and slept on defense through the bulk of the season. They'll be better when the playoffs start, but how much "better" can the No. 22-ranked defense get?

James and Irving's new shoes would suggest it's just a matter of "flipping the switch," and that might be the case. James cares little about regular season accomplishments or seeding, and he's turned it on when the lights get brighter in the past. His teams are an astounding 40-7 in the first round. They didn't lose until their 11th game of the playoffs last year, and this was after a season in which a coach got fired. Their offense is exceptional, and if their defense even gets to average, they'll be ready to roll into a rubber-match with the Golden State Warriors.

Beyond the Cavaliers, there would also be the Boston Celtics or Washington Wizards, teams with as many or more questions as the Raptors but who performed comparably in the regular season. Washington's John Wall-led charge is dangerous, and their lack of depth will be less of an issue with tightened playoff rotations. Boston, for now, is built more for 82-game success than a playoff series, but the best record in the conference deserves at least a modicum of respect, and Isaiah Thomas threatens to swing games on his own.

The Raptors, though, are the best they've ever been. Lowry is back following wrist surgery and, while it's not a certainty he'll rediscover that level, he was playing like a top-10 player before he went down. DeRozan is having the best season of his career, improving as a scorer, playmaker, and even a defender of late (that's always tenuous, but take the positives where you can get them). Handing Dwane Casey defensive options like Tucker and Ibaka has given the coach pieces he's been dreaming on for years, and the Raptors responded with the No. 4 defense after the All-Star break (they were also the league's second-best rebounding team, which stands to be a massive advantage in any East series Toronto finds itself in). Blessed with greater depth than a year ago, a star duo that should conceivably play better once things get going, and legitimate defensive lineups that are versatile, switchy, and don't detract from the offense, the Raptors' ceiling is higher than even a year ago, when they turned in the best season in franchise history.

But a hot start to the year in which they established themselves once again as the class of the East's second tier gave way to a moribund six-week stretch, and that stretch is culpable in the Raptors' inability to take advantage of Cleveland's apathy and nab the No. 1 seed. The team actually outperformed its record by point differential and owned the East's best net rating despite losing the most Value Over Replacement due to injury this year (per ManGamesLost)—they're better than their record suggests, but their record is their record when it comes to the standings. The Raptors slumping for so long may have cost them a top seed, which means seeing Cleveland a round earlier than anticipated and doing so without home-court advantage. Given how last year's series went, that's a blow.

Of course, there's also a first round to get through, and another by-product of finishing third in the conference is drawing what is likely the toughest opponent possible from the five-through-nine jumble at the bottom of the East. The Milwaukee Bucks are not "there" yet, and most teams that are on the rise need a year of playoff experience to learn about themselves and the postseason. But the Bucks are also quite good and quite dangerous, they'll employ maybe the best player in the series, and coaches Jason Kidd and Eric Hughes have schemed well for Lowry and DeRozan in the past. Sleep on Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, and company, and what should be a win in six suddenly turns into a seven-game bloodbath that takes a chunk out of the team for the second round. Or worse.

This is the tough position the Raptors find themselves in, psychologically. They can't afford to look past round one, but the scale on which they'll be measured waits in round two. They have to actually get to the Cavaliers first, but the window to beat them is open just a crack, and it's difficult not to look ahead to it. All the while, the spectre of another loss to James and company, this time one round earlier, threatens to confuse the team's actual growth, should they show it (the mental hurdle of a step backward in a playoff round while still potentially taking a positive step forward is a complicated one).

First, the Raptors need to take care of the Bucks. And winning a playoff series in more decisive fashion would be a nice signal that yes, these Raptors are better, and yes, they're ready to take a mighty swing at the Cavaliers. The East feels more open than it's been in years. If the Raptors aren't at their best, that might not matter.