How the Raptors Match Up Against Potential First-Round Playoff Opponents

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

Reeling from one of their worst losses of the season on Thursday, the Toronto Raptors laid the gauntlet down to each other in a players-only meeting. The effort level against the Oklahoma City Thunder was unacceptable, and the team strongly felt its better than what it showed that game. As newfound voice of the locker room P.J. Tucker told media afterward, though, the time for talking was over, with the schedule dwindling and the Raptors losing runway to get things sorted out before the postseason.

Would you argue with Tucker? It appears the Raptors don't want to, either, responding with a gutty win in Detroit on Friday and then one of their most complete victories of the year on Sunday, a 116-91 drubbing of a solid Indiana Pacers outfit. Two games later, the Thunder seem like a thing of the distant past. The Raptors have won two in a row, they've done it with defense—they're up to third in defensive efficiency since the All-Star break—and they've snapped out of their cold shooting stretch, at least for now.

Those are important wins, too. The Raptors' schedule is easier by raw strength of schedule the rest of the way, but they face a steady stream of teams fighting for their playoff lives. Meanwhile, the Raptors themselves are focused not just on securing home-court advantage in the first round, but potentially catching up with Washington for the third seed and the chance to avoid the Cavaliers until the Eastern Conference finals, should all go well in the postseason.

The Raptors remain in fourth, and they've now built a four-game cushion for home court. The Hawks own the tiebreaker but just lost Paul Millsap and Kent Bazemore to what they hope are short-term injuries, and the Raptors are in good shape to finish in the top four. More notably for the Raptors, they're just a single game back of the Wizards after Boston did them a favor on Monday, with Washington set to face one of the toughest schedules in the conference from here, including an impossible five-game road trip later this month. (Boston has likely put the Atlantic Division out of reach with a 3.5-game lead despite Toronto owning the tiebreaker, as the Celtics have a remarkably easy schedule down the stretch).

Toronto has more upward mobility than downward right now (it owns the tiebreaker against Washington, too), even if Kyle Lowry is still set to miss another week or two (or three; the team's been very quiet on timeline details). The Raptors finish fourth in 42 percent of InPredictable simulations and third in 50 percent. It's a coin-toss, one the Raptors are surely hoping they win so long as Cleveland holds on to the top spot (76 percent).

With 12 games to go, it's still difficult to get a handle on potential playoff scenarios. Only a few games separate each seed in the conference, and only four separate fifth and tenth. A lot could change, or very little could change. Here's a quick look at how the Raptors match up with some potential playoff opponents.

37-33, -1.1 net rating, 32-38 Pythagorean record, 2-1 vs. Raptors, 80% chance of 5th-6th finish

There are few teams who have over-performed their point differential to the degree that Atlanta has, and with Sunday's news that Millsap will miss at least two games and Bazemore will miss upwards of a week, the Hawks can no longer be considered a lock to hold on to the five-seed (Mike Dunleavy remains out, too). InPredictable has them missing the playoffs entirely in two percent of simulations, though fifth or sixth remains their most likely landing place. That creates two scenarios in which Toronto could draw Atlanta—the 4-5 matchup, or the 3-6.

Even assuming a return to health for Millsap, a terrific player and matchup-proof defender, the Raptors would probably be fine with this outcome, assuming home court.

The Dennis-Schroder-Dwight Howard pick-and-roll poses some problems with Schroder's downhill speed and Howard's potential to bully non-Jonas Valanciunas centers, plus JV has been inconsistent in the Howard matchup in the past. The Hawks also possess multiple big, quality defenders—namely Millsap and Thabo Sefolosha—to throw at DeMar DeRozan, and they're among the best in the league at being aggressive (second in turnover rate) without fouling (fourth in opponent free-throw rate), two keys to Toronto's offense.

Still, the Hawks are only average on the glass, they turn the ball over a ton (third), and they're one of the few teams Toronto could probably keep pace with from the 3-point line (they're 25th in 3-point percentage and shoot only a moderate chunk of their shots from long range). Even with Schroder's scoring ability, the Raptors would hold an edge at the point with Lowry anything close to full strength, and their new-found defense would threaten to severely limit Atlanta's 26th-ranked offense.

There are better matchups for Toronto, but Atlanta being the most likely one isn't all that terrifying.

36-34, -0.7 net rating, 33-37 Pythagorean record, 0-1 vs. Raptors, 45% chance of 5th-6th finish

Like with the Hawks, the Raptors could draw the Pacers in the first round for a second year in a row in the 4-5 or 3-6 matchups. Indiana only has a 91-percent chance of making the playoffs, but it finishes in fifth or sixth in nearly half of simulations despite a moderately tough schedule from here. The Pacers are healthier than anyone, but their over-performance in terms of record has models skeptical (ESPN is even lower on their playoff chances) they can make up the two games rather than sliding.

As the Raptors showed Sunday, another meeting with Indiana would probably be fine.

Paul George being custom-built in a lab as a DeRozan stopper is a concern, and he did an excellent job bottling the Raptors' top scorer up a year ago. At the same time, George's impact has waned at times this year, and the Pacers swapping out Solomon Hill for Thad Young doesn't give George a ton of help. Even if George did lock down DeRozan, the other key to that series was George Hill doing a similar job on Lowry, and Jeff Teague, while a quality point guard, isn't in Hill's class as a Lowry defender.

If Toronto can beat Indiana at the first line of attack, the very intriguing Myles Turner becomes a very important piece at the rim. He has the type of offensive profile that can challenge Valanciunas, but the Lithuanian and his Austrian understudy Jakob Poeltl answered the call exceptionally well in the first meeting, and the option to downsize with Serge Ibaka at the five is a terrific failsafe. Outside of George, Turner, and a likely 3-point barrage from C.J. Miles at some point, there isn't a clear area where Indiana would have an advantage throughout the series.

The Raptors struggled through a seven-game series with the Pacers a year ago, and they may have only broke through thanks to Frank Vogel. The Raptors are a better team now, and the Pacers may be a degree worse.

34-36, 0.8 net rating, 37-33 Pythagorean record, 1-0 vs. Raptors, 27% chance of 5th-6th finish

Just throw season-long information out for the Heat. They've been a completely different team in 2017, steamrolling the league to go from 11-30 to knocking on the door of the playoffs. It wouldn't be this Heat team, though, if more adversity weren't placed in front of them—Dion Waiters may be done for the season now, joining Justise Winslow and Josh McRoberts on the sidelines and pushing the limits of "next man up." That probably makes the projection here a little more optimistic than the reality.

Still, it's hard to bet too heavily against a team playing this well, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if Miami continues pushing forward. More than any strength or weakness, the key to a Raptors-Heat series would be this philosophical question: After sitting on Dwane Casey's bench #UnderUtilized in back-to-back postseasons, just how much would James Johnson go off in a seven-game set? That might be an even bigger challenge than the vaunted Goran Dragic-Hassan Whiteside pick-and-roll or Miami's stifling defense.

34-35, 0.8 net rating, 35-34 Pythagorean record, 1-3 vs. Raptors, 22% chance of 5th-6th finish

The Bucks have kept rolling through injuries to Jabari Parker and Michael Beasley, with the return of Khris Middleton helping make up the difference. Their playoff life is hardly certain, but of the teams fighting for the final spots, they're the most likely to surge forward.

Considering the Bucks' length and Jason Kidd's track record using it against the Raptors, that might scare some. They can throw a lot of arms and size at Kidd's aggressive traps for ball-handlers, and their defense is designed to make supporting pieces beat them. The Raptors are better-equipped for that now than earlier in the year, even if memories of Lowry and DeRozan fighting through forests of blitzing arms are worrisome.

The Bucks have improved offensively, too, with Giannis Antetokounmpo standing as a major challenge and the team shooting well on their somewhat small number of threes. But they can't rebound at either end of the floor, they're a little turnover prone, and they struggle to keep opponents off the line—a Raptor specialty—which is the price of all that aggression on defense.

The Bucks wouldn't go down easily—they'll almost surely be one of the pluckier first-round outs this year—but it's probably a year too early for them to make serious postseason noise.

34-36, -1.3 net rating, 34-36 Pythagorean record, 1-2 vs. Raptors, 16% chance of 5th-6th finish

Unlikely though it is, somehow drawing Detroit would be a dream scenario for Toronto. Not only do the Raptors match up fairly well—Lowry and DeRozan would be the two best players in the series by an appreciable margin, Valanciunas has usually played Andre Drummond well, and Detroit is equally light on shooting—but it would essentially make for an entire series at home. Raptors fans have a reputation for traveling well, especially in the postseason, and if Friday was any indication, The Palace would become ACC West. (The Pistons also just aren't particularly good.)

33-37, -1.8 net rating, 32-38 Pythagorean record, 2-0 vs. Raptors, 6% chance of 5th-6th finish

The season-ending injury to Dwyane Wade might keep Chicago from the playoffs altogether, but even if the Bulls got in, there's only a small chance they could push as high as the sixth seed. If they did, and matched up with Toronto in the first round, the Bulls would be a safe bet to sweep the series on the back of Joffrey Lauvergne averaging 30 points. Weird things happen in Toronto-Chicago games (the Bulls have won 11 straight), and it wouldn't matter that the Raptors are objectively a better team.

It's almost completely unlikely Toronto would meet any of these teams in the first round at this point. If they do, something has gone awry for one of them, or for the Raptors. The first three are the most likely second-round opponents, though, and Toronto's chase for the No. 3 seed is far more about avoiding Cleveland in round two as it is about round-one matchups.