The Toronto Raptors are the number one team in the Eastern Conference and could be the closest team to end a part four NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors, yet head coach Dwane Casey and even the Canadian media believe that the Americans are not taking them seriously still.
Friday’s night game against the Houston Rockets pitted the top two teams in the NBA. It was the most most-watched Raptors regular season game ever in Canada. Yet it wasn’t nationally televised. So why not?
Perhaps it’s their subpar playoff run. In 2016-17, they put up 51 wins but got swept in the second-round of the playoffs by the Cleveland Cavaliers. The year before they scored 56 wins. However, the Raptors lost in six games in the conference finals to LeBron James and the Cavaliers.
But the story of the Raptors being a poor playoff team because they get bounced each year is becoming boring. It’s how Casey sees it.
“But what bothers me more than anything else is, you know you hear the narrative and the stories about how Toronto plays great during the regular season and then they flame out in the playoffs. Well, guess who we flamed out against? It’s No. 23 in Cleveland,” Casey said to Sportsnet Canada.
“That’s the lazy narrative of a lot of the media in the U.S. [from] some of the people who don’t follow Toronto enough and the only thing they’ve heard is they got beat two years in a row by Cleveland.
“I think it’s just something that we just gotta keep doing what we’re doing, doing it at a high level and they’ll finally get the picture amongst the so-called U.S. media.”
