Raps know better than to tempt basketball fate With several potential first-round opponents possible for the Toronto Raptors, nobody from the club will be hinting at who their preferred match-up might be. That's because the team remembers what happened two playoffs ago.

Josh Lewenberg TSN Raptors Reporter Follow|Archive

TORONTO - Nobody will admit it publicly, even now, and none of them would say it on the record then, but there was a contingent of Raptors players that had hoped to fall in the standings down the stretch of the 2014-15 season.

With Atlanta and Cleveland locked in as the Eastern Conference's first and second seeds, respectively, Toronto and Chicago bounced back and forth between third and fourth over the last couple weeks of that campaign. The stakes were clear by that point. Whoever finished in third would face the sixth-place Milwaukee Bucks in the opening round of the playoffs, the team that ended up in fourth would host the fifth-place Washington Wizards.

Those Bucks possessed several of the qualities you might hope for in an ideal playoff matchup. They were a .500 team. They had a young core with almost no post-season experience. However, several of Toronto's most prominent players were confident they could beat the Wizards, who they had swept during the regular season. Most of all, they were looking ahead to the second round, where - if they went through Washington - they would avoid LeBron James and the conference-favourite Cavaliers.

On the second last night of the season Toronto rested DeMar DeRozan in Boston, a game they would end up losing by two points. That was ultimately the difference between finishing third and fourth. The sense in the locker room afterwards: maybe it was for the best.

It wasn't.

"There is a karma," Jonas Valanciunas noted Friday morning. "And when you're trying to get a [certain] opponent, like somebody who you think you're going to beat, they come out swinging and [expletive] happens. You can't pick the opponents."

If you watched them get swept in the opening round that year, if you remember all the red flags that had popped up after the All-Star break, you know there was more at play there than simply upsetting the basketball gods. The Raptors were broken. They backed into the playoffs with their best player, Kyle Lowry, hurt and their defence in shambles.

Would they have beaten the Bucks? Impossible to say, but they couldn't have fared worse than they did against a battle-tested and, as it turned out, superior Wizards team. The lesson, at least as the Raptors remember it: be careful what you wish for.

Two years later, they find themselves in a similar predicament. They will almost certainly finish as the East's third or fourth seed. Through one of those doors they could end up playing the reigning NBA champion Cavaliers in round two, assuming they get that far. Through the other they would be in line to face the Celtics, a talented team but one that has failed to make it past the first round in each of the past two seasons. The primary difference this time around: we still don't know which door leads where or who might be blocking their path when the playoffs open two weeks from Saturday.

The East standings are as wide open as they've been in recent memory. With just a handful of games remaining (six for the Raptors), only one of the conference's 15 teams is locked in anywhere: the last-place Brooklyn Nets. Everybody else is still jockeying for position.

With their decisive 111-100 win over Indiana and Washington's loss in Utah on Friday, the Raptors overtook the Wizards for third, via the tie-breaker. Boston and Cleveland remain neck and neck for first, with the Celtics up by a half-game. Meanwhile, three-and-a-half games are all that separate fifth-place Milwaukee from ninth-place Chicago with Atlanta, Miami and Indiana all bunched up in between.

Although they may finish with the same record (49-33), this is a better team than the one that got swept a couple years back, and could even be better than the one that made it to the Conference Finals last season, so - theoretically - it shouldn't really matter who they see in round one.

The one team in the mix that Toronto - and just about everyone else in the East - would probably prefer to avoid is Miami. One of the hottest clubs in the league since mid-January, the Heat are well coached, play hard and rank in the top five in defence, all of which could make them a dangerous playoff opponent.

Should the Raptors have a preference between the other three of their most likely match-ups, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Indiana? No, not a strong one anyway. All three have been up and down this season, all three will go into the playoffs banged up. Assuming the Raptors are doing what they need to do and have Lowry back at somewhere close to 100 per cent - and probably even if they don't - they would be heavy favourites in a series against any of them.

For that reason, and especially without knowing for sure where Cleveland will finish, the best thing they can do to control their own fate is win and let the chips fall where they may. Whether going into the playoffs with momentum matters or not is debatable but every team - young or experienced - would tell you they would prefer to be playing their best basketball by the time mid-April rolls around.

"[Valanciunas is] right," Dwane Casey said. "One thing we have to be concerned about more than standings - we watch it, I'm a fan of the NBA, as a coach, I watch what's going on - but more important for our team is how we're playing and making sure we're consistent on both ends of the floor and getting everybody integrated."

“For sure [momentum makes a difference]," DeMarre Carroll said following Friday's win, Toronto's seventh in its last eight games. "You know you have momentum [when] you are feeling good about yourself. Basketball is a lot about confidence and I feel if you have a good mental state and your confidence is high, you are only going to keep playing better. That’s what I feel we are doing right now. We are playing at a high level."

For Casey and his team, the next two weeks will be about getting ready for what's to come. In the past it has meant giving guys nights off and finding opportunities for rest ahead of the post-season, but that doesn't seem to be on this year's agenda. While Casey did indicate he could look to cut DeRozan's minutes some, he said they don't intend to sit him - or anyone else - out entirely, assuming good health. The player who is usually in need of a game or two off most has missed the last 19 but, at some point before the playoffs, they hope to add Lowry to a team that is already playing its best two-way ball of the season. Lowry has progressed to shooting with his strong hand for the first time since undergoing surgery on his right wrist four and a half weeks ago and could begin practicing with the team as early as Saturday or Monday. From there it will be about getting guys on the same page, continuing to find a rhythm offensively and - according to Casey - even starting to tighten the rotation.

All of that is to say, they have enough to worry about without fretting over things they can't and probably shouldn't try to control. The Raptors are older now and with age and experience comes wisdom. They know better than to get ahead of themselves. If they have a preferred match-up they're keeping it quiet. This time, they're letting their play do all the talking.