Well beyond providing the bulk or potentially all of the Raptors second unit for the upcoming season, the Raptors young guns have set this team up for years to come.

The expectation, perhaps most likely the reality, is that there will be bumps in the road but this young contingent of Raptors is already well on its way to playing winning-type basketball. But clearly this team is planning for the now with a definite look towards the future.

Team president Masai Ujiri talked about putting a bigger emphasis on development when he obtained a G-League franchise for the organization a few summers ago. He reiterated further emphasis on development following last year’s quick ouster in the second round of last year’s playoffs.

Then this past summer every Raptor not named Kyle Lowry, DeMar Derozan, Jonas Valanciunas, C.J. Miles or Serge Ibaka spent significant portions of their off-season working together with other members of the young posse of Raptors under contract.

The early dividends are a young core that arrived in camp ahead of even the veteran starters in terms of knowing which direction this offence was taking — far more ball movement, far more emphasis on three-point shooting.

The youngsters know the system so well they are often asked to run it first in practice before the veteran starters.

There was a three-week period this summer where every young guy on the roster, including Norm Powell, who has played with the Raptors’ starters by times already in his young career worked out together a minimum of four hours a day.

To hear Wright tell it, the expectation was they were just there honing their individual skillsets, but what resulted was a group that found chemistry together on the court that now has the team at least considering the possibility of running a second unit out there, 80% of which is comprised of NBA players with three years or less experience.

The unit that caught everyone’s attention Tuesday in the Detroit game also had C.J. Miles playing in it and for now that is the group that appears poised to get a long look in this final week before the season opens next Thursday.

Wright said the young Raptors which included himself, Powell, Jakob Poeltl, Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet, all products of the 2015 or 2016 draft classes spent one week in Toronto together and two more in Los Angeles. Some of his teammates who played in summer league got even more acquainted with one another in the lead-up to and the actual play of the annual NBA summer festival in Las Vegas, although Wright was not part of that.

“The good thing about it is the fact that they have spent that quality time together working together and got a kind of cohesion,” Casey said. “Like a young posse so to speak. It’s no surprise that they’re sharing the ball, that they’re playing together, that they know where each other are as far as spacing is concerned, timing, that type of thing. Now we just gotta see it in real NBA time and NBA games.”

Normally Casey would pare back minutes in the final game of the pre-season in advance of the meaningful games but the shortened NBA pre-season schedule down to just five games has altered that approach.

“We gotta make sure we get those guys as many game minutes as we possibly can to play,” Casey said. “So it does shorten it. I think in the long run, it’s gonna help us as the season goes on, because you have more days between games, but it does cramp your style a little bit in the pre-season, exhibition, as far as how fast you work on things. Everybody’s in the same boat, we’re not any different.”

How that affects the composition of his second unit to being the season, only Casey knows for sure and he’s not saying. But every indication he has given to date is that he’s willing to live with whatever issues a trial and error period brings in order to get to the best possible lineup.

“I’m excited to see what that young group does because by this time next year, it’s gonna pay off huge dividends for the future,” Casey said. “It may be ugly a little bit early in the year but I think as the year goes on, this group will obtain a personality, a playing personality, an identity, an air of confidence that will win in the NBA. Again, we’ve gotta see. They did a great job the other night, and they’ve just gotta stay hungry and stay together. That group is gonna be together a lot.”

Miles obviously wasn’t part of those summer sessions but he certainly looked comfortable with the young Raptors on Tuesday.

Ironically he was brought in to provide spacing and a three-point threat to the starting unit and that may still be the case when the season opens. But playing with the second unit that emphasizes a drive-and-kick game with Wright and VanVleet providing a lot of the driving, Miles is almost a perfect fit there too.

“We are working on that a lot and it’s very hard to guard,” Wright said of the drive and kick game. “We have to keep that going. Having CJ in the corner or spaced out, that’s just the cherry on top.”

But regardless of who winds up playing which role heading into this season, the Raptors have a plethora of young talent that appears to be on the fast track development program and that can only strengthen the organization for years to come.

NO TRUMP HOTELS FOR RAPTORS

In a poll of every professional sports team that constitutes the big four in North American sport — NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB — the Raptors were identified as one of 11 NBA teams who have decided to find forgo the Trump hotels this season they previously patronized.

The Raptors previously used the Trump SoHo when visiting New York for games with either the Knicks or Brooklyn Nets but that practice has ended as it has for all but perhaps one team that refused to say what they planned for 2017-18 season.

Following practice at the BioSteel Center on Thursday, Raptors’ head coach Dwane Casey confirmed the team would no longer be patronizing the N.Y. hotel owned by Trump but refused to get into the reasons why the decision was made.

The Blue Jays failed to respond to the survey conducted by members of the Washington Post staff while the Toronto Maple Leafs offered no comment with regards to patonizing Trump-owned hotels.

mganter@postmedia.com