Title: How the Raptors have fared against elite opponents this season
Date: March 8, 2019
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I wrote about the Raptors’ performance against the league’s best teams and what it might suggest about their playoff potential.
The Toronto Raptors feel quite a bit different than a year ago.
Change is not inherently good or bad in and of itself, and to date it feels like mileage with the shifting identity of the 2018-19 Raptors has varied based on individual perspective. They are, in purely objective terms, not quite as good as they were last season, their ceiling largely theoretical to date.
But they are better on paper, their flaws easier to minimize or anticipate growth for. That ceiling is real, it just has not been brushed up against with regularity, while past iterations revved in their highest gear more or less constantly.
And still, the Raptors are second in the Eastern Conference. The year so far has been an exercise in evaluating the team through a different lens than in prior years.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 