This season is quickly becoming unlike any other in the history of the Toronto Raptors.

Unlike any other in the recent history of Toronto sports, really.

We read and hear, you see, about these teams in other cities that are playing only for the post-season, teams for whom the regular season and the number of victories they can rack up is far outweighed by the truly important questions that can only be answered in the post-season.

Now we’ve got one of our own.

The 19-8 Raptors, as of Monday, sat three games back of first-place Cleveland in the conference, and four games up on third-place Boston. Nobody frets about whether Dwane Casey’s club will make the playoffs. Other than Casey, that is. Of course, a series of killer injuries could still derail the season, but otherwise we can confidently say Toronto will be part of the NBA post-season as one of the higher seeds in the East.

So this becomes more of a wait-and-see campaign. It’s fun and all to watch them wipe out Orlando on Sunday night, but there’s not much drama in that for a club that was in the NBA final four last season and is imagining a season in which they can progress even further.

The debate, really, is whether they can develop a team over the course of this season that can challenge the Cavaliers or the Golden State Warriors, if the NBA final was to come to Toronto. Based on the evidence so far this season, the answer is no, they can’t. But we won’t really know the full answer for a while yet.

For starters, once Jared Sullinger gets healthy, we’ll see if the former Celtic can add an element to the Raptors they currently lack. The bulky power forward may only be here for a short time, not a long time, so the answer he brings could be a temporary one.

Second, we don’t know the moves team president Masai Ujiri might make to strengthen his roster before the trade deadline. Maybe none. Maybe something big. There’s no shortage of folks, for instance, who daydream about what DeMarcus Cousins might look like in Huskies blue and white.

Finally, we’re still learning about how a variety of players on the Raptors bench may be able to contribute as the season rolls along, and that’s one of the elements that makes this team intriguing to watch, even if the standings aren’t necessarily filled with drama.

For a team with an eye on a championship sometime in the near future, the Raps are interesting because they’re seemingly trying to develop players at the same time.

Fred VanVleet is the latest piece of noteworthy evidence. With Cory Joseph unavailable, the former Wichita State Shocker played 22 minutes against the Magic on Sunday night, and then, as a reward, was shuffled back to the D-League Raptors 905 on Monday morning. He and Bruno Caboclo have been riding the D-League shuttle all season as Toronto continues to try and take advantage of the way in which NBA development systems have changed in recent years, from the days when young players incapable of starting just rotted on the end of the bench.

Three years ago, the Raptors didn’t have this kind of option. Along with 13 other clubs, they shared an affiliation with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. Caboclo spent some time there, as did Lucas Nogueira, but it didn’t benefit either player much. Players aren’t guaranteed minutes or a particular style of basketball. You just hope they pick up things via osmosis.

That changed last season, and Norman Powell was the most obvious beneficiary. He was assigned to the 905 and recalled seven times, and ended up starting a playoff game. Now, he gives the Raptors the kind of depth many NBA teams would die for.

Ditto for Nogueira, who arguably might have vanished from the NBA scene entirely had the Raps not had a D-League affiliate to work with him, help him improve his conditioning and give him playing time.

The D-league has been around for 15 years or so, but only in recently years have teams really started to focus on using it as a true farm system. A team like Toronto is using the opportunity of having their affiliate in the same city to move players back and forth, with no limit to the number of times players with three years experience or less can be demoted and promoted.

The Raps weren’t on the cutting edge of this D-League wave, but they’re riding it now, and it could be vital to the success of the team over the next few years.

They have a star guard combination in Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan and lots of other very good pieces. History, however, tells us they’re going to be challenged to lure the very best talent through free agency.

So they’ll have to draft and develop and win at the same time, and in players like Powell and Pascal Siakam, they’re starting to do very well in the lower parts of the draft where many teams assume there’s little gold to be mined. VanVleet, undrafted, could become another such asset.

The importance of the Raptors 905 operation to MLSE was underlined this season when Raps assistant coach Jerry Stackhouse was re-assigned to be the head coach of the minor-league squad.

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Delon Wright, a former first-round pick sidelined by off-season shoulder surgery for the entire season so far, is likely to get some D-League time as he recovers, and the organization can have some confidence that it can chart his progress carefully under Stackhouse.

The Raptors, it’s clear, are playing the long game, both in terms of this season and this decade. Something sustainable is something this market hasn’t seen in a long time in any sport.