It was eight months ago this week that the basketball world left the Toronto Raptors for dead. In those disappointment-soaked days of July, when the L.A. Clippers celebrated the arrival of Kawhi Leonard and the L.A. Lakers plucked Danny Green, it was easy enough to buy into the pessimism.
Even Toronto’s keen-eyed front office pondered the long-range possibility of a sell-off of expiring contracts. To some eyes, the title defence was over before the championship banner was hung. The conventional wisdom, after all, is that the NBA championship was effectively won via soap opera — that the power of star-player movement trumps the best-laid organizational design.