Raptors will defend crown

In an ad currently running on ESPN, Stephen A. Smith, the talking head, makes the case for the NBA's Eastern renaissance.

"The West is not dominant anymore, man!" exclaims Smith. "There's parity in the NBA right now! You look at Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Orlando, New Jersey, Cleveland – the New York Knicks!"

That's seven teams Smith rattles off – seven – and not one of them Toronto's. Meanwhile, none of the respondents to the NBA's annual general manager survey picks the Raptors to repeat as Atlantic Division champs. Sports Illustrated has Canada's team heading into the playoffs as the eighth seed. Even the folks in Vegas have six teams as shorter-odds selections than Toronto to win the Eastern title.

Considering the Raptors are young and improving and coming into tonight's season opener against the 76ers on the heels of a 47-win season, you're entitled to ask what gives. It is, like Smith's blather, not particularly sophisticated. Despite compelling evidence, many Americans don't seem convinced that basketball is a game won by teams, not by collections of stars. It's the only way to explain the fuss surrounding, say, the thinly concocted Boston Celtics, who are more shallow than the political discourse in many of the red states but are Eastern favourites in many well-read spaces.

"When you do those pre-season polls, it's whoever has the most stars on their team," said Chris Bosh, Toronto's lone all-star. "We're more of a unit ... we know things can go really wrong when you get individual egos everywhere."

Bosh is both sincere and correct in his assessment, which is why these Raptors, no matter the skepticism south of the 49th, will win north of 50 games this season, along with their first playoff series since 2001. The Celtics, the pre-season darlings who brought in Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to join Paul Pierce (and who else?), aren't congealed enough or deep enough to win as many – not in their first year together, not in an age in which withstanding injuries has become one of the unsung strengths of good teams.

Not much has changed on the Euro-tinged big-smoke roster, of course (although Jason Kapono, the designated shooter, is a fine pickup). So for Toronto to win the Atlantic again (and they will) their one player with significant unleashed potential, Italy's Andrea Bargnani, must assert himself as Bosh's sous-star. That's inevitable, to these eyes. And though he'll have to kick his foul trouble habit, he's smart enough to figure it out.

Health is the obvious wild card. Nobody really knows how Bosh's left foot or Jorge Garbajosa's left fibula will hold up. But almost every team is one popped ligament from doom. And the Raptors weathered Bosh's 12-game absence last year with six wins.

The truth is, Vegas gets it wrong sometimes (last year they had the over-under on Raptors wins at around 30). And the media gets it wrong a lot. Yesterday, Bryan Colangelo, the architect of the Raptors roster, was heard deriding the forecasters – the "so-called experts," he called them.

It irks him, and he acknowledged it motivates him and his players, that big-name acquisitions are still valued more highly than Toronto's chemistry and continuity. No matter that considerable doses of the latter have been the building blocks for model franchises like San Antonio. No matter that the U.S. has seen its all-star-laden Olympic and world championship representatives drilled by more seamless teams of relative nobodies for years now. But what's history to the teeming masses below?

"The continuity ... the chemistry, you can't overlook that," said Colangelo. "It's something that might not show up in those pre-season (predictions) but it's certainly something that's going to help us find the success we need to find."