They don’t bludgeon people with brilliant and beautiful, fascinating and delightful offence all the time.
They don’t smother teams with man-to-man, in-your-chest, no-space-to-move defence every night.
All the Raptors do is a bit of everything extremely well. And they win. They win a lot.
“To me, the reason they’re on the winning streak is because they play very hard,” Chicago Bulls coach Jim Boylen was saying early Sunday afternoon. “Their speed and quickness is dominating. Their multi-(ball)handlers are very difficult to guard, and they have a team that realizes after winning (the NBA championship) that the only way you’re going to win it is if you play defence.