Tipoff time in Toronto

MICHAEL GRANGE

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

October 29, 2007 at 10:53 PM EST

Tomorrow night, it will finally get started, with the Philadelphia 76ers as the appetizer. On Friday, the Toronto Raptors will roll into New Jersey, where it all ended only six months ago, for the main course.

And on Sunday, the Toronto Raptors will play host to the Boston Celtics, whose dramatic off-season renovation is widely expected to blunt whatever momentum the Raptors built last season. That would be one sweet dessert.

The NBA season will start tonight, and for the hoops-hungry, it's a chance to gorge at the feast. For the Raptors, who are just plain hungry, it would be a heck of a time for a 3-0 start.

Maybe that would get someone outside Toronto to take the championship aspirations seriously, because right now they're not.

The tall foreheads at ESPN and Sports Illustrated see the Raptors as a 40-something-win team, scraping to make it into the playoffs. And Bryan Colangelo's rival general managers? Not one cast a vote for the Raptors to defend their Atlantic Division title, though the bloated New York Knicks got a vote.

Of course, Colangelo didn't, either, but why not put a little pressure on Boston?

As for the Eastern Conference, Chicago, Miami, Boston and Detroit are the favourites, though none are without warts. But Orlando? Washington? Cleveland, stripped of two-fifths of its starting lineup from last season? It got votes. Toronto? Zip.

"Does it hurt a little bit? Yeah, but it should hurt," Colangelo said. "It gives us that much more to play for."

It's that time of year. The predictions are in, and they're the usual thin gruel featuring the same old ingredients: a Western Conference dish featuring a main of San Antonio and Dallas and a dash of Phoenix if Grant Hill's ankle holds up and Amare Stoudemire's knee holds up and Steve Nash's everything holds up.

In the East, the main course is a bland serving of parity. This is how the Raptors' widely anticipated failure to build on last season's foundation is explained away. It's not so much that the Raptors are worse; it's that the East is better, heartier.

There are the big bold improvements by Boston, which landed all-stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to play with Paul Pierce; the anticipated return of both health and depth in New Jersey; and the bolstering of also-rans Orlando and New York with Western Conference refugees Rashard Lewis and Zach Randolph, respectively. The Chicago Bulls are deep, experienced, athletic and well-coached; the Detroit Pistons have added youth and vigour around their veteran base. Former dregs such as Milwaukee, Atlanta and Charlotte are poised to make leaps.

Somehow in all this the Raptors have been overlooked. They don't know why.

"We have a championship mentality coming in this year," all-star Chris Bosh said. "We expect to win. I know no one expects us to, but that's our job. We want to play championship-level basketball."

A championship may be a lofty goal, but championship contenders — even those with training wheels — could do worse than crib from the Raptors' list of attributes.

They have gaps, their lack of simple athleticism is the primary one, leaving them vulnerable to strong and athletic teams on nights when their energy is sagging or their ball movement is less than crisp.

But they have proven strengths. They boast arguably the best point-guard tandem in the NBA in T.J. Ford and Jose Calderon, both of whom are just at the cusp of their primes. A team that played 10-deep last season (the Raptors were second to San Antonio in bench scoring with an average output of 36.3 a game) should only be deeper with the addition of preseason standout Carlos Delfino and the improvement of Kris Humphries and Joey Graham. Second-year forward Andrea Bargnani was perhaps the team's best player in October, which bodes well for a breakout year for the former No. 1 pick.

And while the health of the franchise cornerstone will always be a concern until Bosh grinds out a string of 80-game seasons, the reality is he's just now learning to manage the knee and knee problems that cost him 25 games the past two campaigns, compared with last season, when he spent most of the year trying to play through them.

But perhaps the biggest intangible is a tangible sense of chemistry and continuity. The group that trailed only Detroit for the Eastern Conference's best record after Jan. 1 is back, largely intact, with the collective disappointment of last season's first-round playoff loss to New Jersey still fresh.

It's a group of players comfortable with each other and who share meals as readily as they share the ball. If the season unfolds as they expect, they'll be happy to invite their myriad doubters over for some humble pie.

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