Time to Bet the Revamped Toronto Raptors is Now

When the Toronto Raptors traded Rudy Gay to the Sacramento Kings earlier this month, most casual Raptors supporters started looked at the deal as one step closer to Tank Nation and drafting Andrew Wiggins.

Down the road, maybe that will turn out to be the case, but for right now, that deal couldn’t have made the Raptors a better bet. Toronto has won three of the four games it has played following the deal, covering the pointspread in each of those victories.

There’s a good chance the Raptors can keep rolling on this cash-collecting run when they face the Charlotte Bobcats Wednesday as 6.5-point favorites. Without Gay, who was the team’s leading scorer, Toronto has topped 100 points in each of those wins with Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, and Amir Johnson all flourishing.

Now that Gay isn’t tossing up one shot after another early in the shot clock, this team is sharing the ball, making the extra pass and generally playing team basketball. Yes Raptors fans, this is what real basketball can look like. Gay might be talented, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to help this team improve moving forward.

“Rudy’s a talented player, he’s a big-time wing player,” coach Dwane Casey told reporters recently. “Just the fit is a different thing. If you were on a different team that needed a wing, you’d definitely have Rudy Gay on your team.”

Of course, this is the only way the Raptors will be profitable moving forward. Their talent will be tested beginning Friday. That’s when they kick off a four-game road swing with stops in Dallas and Oklahoma City, San Antonio before finishing the trip with a MSG date with the Knicks.

The thing is, if you’re going to be the Raptors, you’d better get at it now because word has it Toronto GM Masai Ujiri isn’t done dealing. A trade that was supposed to send Lowry to the Knicks fell through last weekend and it’s said Ujiri wants to deal DeRozan as well. If that happens, the Raps will be counting on a lot of backdoor covers while playing against scrubs as the season progresses.

The Raptors head into Wednesday’s game at 9-13 straight up and 10-12 against the spread. They sit just a single game back of the Boston Celtics in the Atlantic division. Charlotte, which has dropped three of the last four, ranks third in the Southeast division.