Toronto

Dwane Casey looks at the NBA standings some mornings, sees the lofty place the Toronto Raptors inhabit and wonders if it isn’t all some kind of mirage.

They are second in the Eastern Conference at the all-star break with seven more wins than any Raptors team before them, playing six-seventy-nine-freakin’ basketball.

That is rare air in this place that has never known success.

That’s better right now than the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, better than what the Miami Heat and the Big Three managed a year ago, better than LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers right now. And, somehow, it’s real, it’s tangible, it’s Bill Parcells saying you are what your record says you are, and it’s slightly confusing and conflicting to the Raptors’ salt-of-the-earth coach.

Casey is worried, because that’s what coaches do by nature and, in particular, it’s that’s what he does. He worries. He pushes. He prods. He plots. He strategizes. He sees .679 basketball — that’s a 55-win pace for a franchise that has never won 50 — and realizes there is something slightly lost in translation here, just how far they still have to go.

“Some nights, it looks like we can’t stop a runny nose,” said Casey in a private talk away from his usual podium.

This is the basketball pendulum he talks about at the all-star break. He is, for all intents and purposes, a defensive coach first. That’s his way. That’s his calling card. The Raptors were a pretty sound defensive team last season, top 10 in the NBA.

This year, they’ve fallen back while winning more.

This year, they’ve become a basketball teeter-totter and, while that may be fun in a playground, that isn’t what Casey wants or demands. His team’s record surprises him, but not as much as how they’ve gotten here.

“I’m surprised by how much we’ve gotten better offensively, and how much we’ve dropped off defensively,” he said. “It’s like a pendulum. We’ve got to find a balance. When our ‘D’ drops, our offence seems to pick up, and when our offence drops, our ‘D’ has picked up.

“I still think defence has to be our calling card in the playoffs. If we learned anything last year, it was once the playoffs start, it’s a different game. To get to 50-plus wins is the hardest step to take in basketball. I don’t know if our guys realize how hard it is. We have a lot of work to do in the second half.”

He sounds like a coach fighting for a playoff spot, not one that has a 14.5 game lead in the Atlantic Division. There are 29 games to play in this somewhat spectacular season. To stay at their .679 winning clip, which is unlikely, that means winning 19 of their final 29 games. That would be 55 wins and, considering the schedule, seems next to impossible.

But should they fall off and finish ’14-15 in the final 29 games, also unlikely, the 14 wins would still take them to that elusive 50-game mark this franchise has never known before. The Raptors have never won more than 29 games by the break before and it’s been 13 years since they’ve been anywhere near that.

“We’re not upper-echelon,” said Casey the realist, not being the coaching Eeyore, even though the standings have them tied for fourth in the NBA.

“We’re still a growing team. These kids have played their hearts out. They’ve overachieved. They’re still developing.”

The matter for Casey is the old coaching juggling act. How do you teach, grow, develop and win all at the same time? Often, one precludes the other.

“Look at San Antonio the other night. People forget how young we are,” he said. “They had (Manu) Ginobili on the floor. What’s he, 38 (actually 37)? And (Tim) Duncan out there (who is 38), a Hall of Famer. To win in this league, you have to have those veteran players. People don’t realize this. It takes time to win.”

Kyle Lowry is the old man on the Raptors court. He turns 29 next month. DeMar DeRozan is only 25. Jonas Valanciunas is 22. The forever-perplexing Terrence Ross is 24. Of their 15 players, only one, Chuck Hayes, is over 30.

“If you look at our team, DeMar has grown a lot, but there’s still a lot of growth to go in his game. Definitely Valanciunas and T-Ross are just starting out. Kyle’s been incredible for us, but you can even see his game growing. We have a ways to go to be consistent, to be smarter, to find the kind of balance between offence and defence I’m talking about.”

One thing he does like — and the NBA talks about: “Our guys play hard and our guys play together. That’s a characteristic you can’t replace. People around the league tell me that. We’re a tight-knit team.”

And the kids are still kids. A day doesn’t go by when he isn’t asked about Valanciunas and his playing time, especially his lack of play in the final quarter of games. A day doesn’t go by when he isn’t asked about the athlete Ross, who has yet to become the basketball-player Ross. The next step for the Raptors, if there is to be a next step forward, will come from either an outside transaction or from further development from Valanciunas or Ross.

“I’m glad J.V. is on our team,” said Casey. “You don’t find big guys who have his size, skill, strength, willingness to work. But understand this: He’s a young guy learning the NBA. He’s still growing, he’s still adjusting to the speed and quickness of the NBA, not just in how to defend, but how quick to get to a rebound, that kind of thing.

“He’s better this year than last year. Is this where he’s going to be? No. But that’s where fans are impatient. My job is to be patient. I know everybody wants him to play the whole fourth quarter. He’s not ready for that. And when teams go small, you’re putting that young man at a disadvantage, the same disadvantage guys like (Roy) Hibbert and Tyson Chandler face regularly.

“What I like about J.V.— he’s coachable, he’s a team guy, he wants to get better, he understands what we’re doing with him. There are no issues with him whatsoever.”

There are issues with Ross. There are always performance issues with Ross.

Casey chooses his words carefully.

“He’s been up-and-down,” said the coach. “He’s one of the best athletes in the league. But he needs to take advantage of that. Defensively, first, that’s where we need him to be top-notch. That’s the first thing. And I think, offensively, I’ve opened the reins up too much. He doesn’t distinguish between good shots and bad shots or whether to drive it.

Decision-making takes time.

“But we need defence from him first. If he does that, that one thing, he can help us.”

The question is: Is he willing or able to do that on any kind of consistent basis?

One thing Casey won’t do, even when relaxing at home in Toronto over the all-star break, is bang on general manager Masai Ujiri’s door and demand change of any kind.

Coaches have been known to do that. To say, “I can’t coach this kid.” Or, “We need that player.” Or, “You have to make a deal.”

“My job is to coach the guys I have,” he said. “I’ve seen it go the other way, where coaches knock on the door and say you’ve got to get me this guy or you’ve got to trade that guy away. That doesn’t work. Then you get friction between the coach and the GM. You don’t need that.

“Masai is a good basketball man. He knows what we have, he knows what we need. I trust that our staff is looking out for our best interests. I have total faith in what they do.”

In the summer, with little fanfare, Ujiri brought in bench players Lou Williams and James Johnson, which is part of the reason the Raptors have 36 wins. In a season-and-a-half on the job, he’s traded for Williams, Patrick Patterson, Greivis Vasquez, Hayes and, more importantly, traded away Andrea Bargnani and Rudy Gay. Everything Ujiri has touched of importance has worked out, including signing up the all-star Lowry long-term.

The franchise is building and developing at the very same time — a contender based on their record, but not necessarily a ready-for-prime-time player. That’s the challenge of a complicated second half, with the schedule not working in the Raptors’ favour.

How ready are they? Just how far away are they?

“We play too fast for playoff-style of basketball,” said Casey, talking of his offence. “That’s something we’re going to have to work on, second half. One thing I love about this team is we take on challenges. We don’t run from adversity. If we stub our toe, we just keep on going.

“That’s our personality.”

It starts with the bulldog, Lowry, on the court.

It comes daily from the coach with the quiet voice, who never stops, just like his team, and doesn’t really know how to slow down.

steve.simmons@sunmedia.ca