After last night’s convincing 102-91 win over the Dallas Mavericks, the Toronto Raptors are 4-0 for the first time in franchise history. Luis Scola went 9-for-13 and pulled down 12 boards in a breakout performance, Jonas Valanciunas bounced back from an off shooting night in Boston to post 16 and 21 in consecutive games, and regular-season Kyle Lowry is looking suspiciously like pre-season Kyle Lowry after slapping Dallas with an all-star calibre 27-and-10 that saw him go 4-for-5 from behind the arc and throw in a pair of blocks just for giggles.

Could there be better time to get a little ahead of ourselves? Sure, maybe. But now’s good, too.

The two major knocks against last season’s Raps—apart from a shortage of “It”—were the lack of ball movement on offence and the all-around poor showing on D. A healthy 13.6 percent of Toronto’s shots in 2014-15 came from a shooter who’d had the ball in his hands for at least six seconds, the third-highest percentage in the league and a nice indicator of the team’s tendency to stop the ball and hoist shots in isolation. On the other end, Toronto allowed 104.8 points per 100 possessions, ranking their defence 23rd in the NBA.

Through the first four games of 2015-16, the Raptors have fielded the league’s fifth-best defence, allowing a stingy 93.3 points per 100 possessions. They’re holding opponents to 38.7 percent shooting from the field and they’ve cleaned up their interior D, allowing just 34.5 points-in-the-paint per game compared to last season’s 43.7.

Even better, that improvement hasn’t cost them on the offensive end. Sure, they’re scoring 103.2 points per 100 possessions to last year’s 108.1, but that number’s still good for eighth in the league and the attack is considerably more balanced.

Through four games last season, four Raptors had turned in a 15-point performance. This season, that number’s up to seven (JV, DeRozan, Lowry, Ross, Carroll, Patterson and Scola, for those curious), and five players have notched 20-point games. The percentage of the team’s shots that come after a player has touched the ball for six or more seconds has fallen, too—down to 11.4 percent. Lowry and DeRozan have both seen two-percent drops in their usage rates, meaning the weight born by the team’s star pairing has lessened. And better-sharing the load could mean DeRozan stays healthy and Lowry still has energy in the second half of the season. You know, both pretty good things.

In light of Toronto’s improvement, tonight’s matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder will be an interesting one.

First, there’s the impossible defensive task of shutting down Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, the league’s second- and third-ranked scorers at present. In recent years, Toronto has struggled against dynamic, slashing point guards. They haven’t faced a tough test in that regard yet this year, but Westbrook is about as dynamic and slashing as any NBA PG ever. The Raptors’ ability to hold the back line against that assault will say a lot about how much the team’s D has really improved.

Then there’s the fact that OKC plays the exact kind of lean-heavily-on-your-stars offence the Raptors look to be shifting away from. The Thunder have seen 16.1 percent of their shots this season come from a player who’d had the ball for that iso-indicating six-or-more seconds, and Russell Westbrook has scored 84.8 percent of his buckets unassisted.

Both Westbrook and Durant boast top-20 usage rates (among players who’ve played at least 20 mpg), while DeRozan and Lowry rank 30th and 62nd, respectively (with DeMar falling from 13th last season).

If DeRozan and Lowry can avoid being pulled into a superstar shootout, Toronto should have a solid-if-still-demanding shot at upping the franchise-best start to 5-0.