Every year since 2015 has been an exercise in talking one’s self back into the Raptors. After getting swept by the Wizards, it was merely a question of whether the team was actually good or not that dominated the 2015-16 season. The success of the that year stopped at the foot of a LeBron-sized wall — but hey, P.J. Tucker was gonna take care of that in 2017, no problem. After he didn’t, and belief slunk to an all-time low, along came the Culture Reset™, a killer bench, and advanced metrics so sexy you simply had to think the third hack at the Cavs couldn’t possibly end in another soul-zapping sweep.
Finally, a Raptors team worth being obnoxiously confident about
