Raptors enter with the playoffs with a wealth of experience

Had Kawhi Leonard returned to Toronto this year the Raptors would have begun the season with a bullseye on their backs. They would have been right in that top tier of teams along with the Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks.

But when Leonard left in July 2019, the Raptors were expected to drop off precipitately. It changed the way the league viewed the Raptors, according to Raptors head coach Nick Nurse.

"The championship didn’t seem and still doesn’t seem like a huge burden to carry around," Nurse said. "I thought maybe it was going to. I don’t know, maybe it’s just because nobody really expects much from us, ever."

Yet the Raptors finished their 2019-20 regular season with a better record than ever before in franchise history. They went 53-19 with a 73.6% win percentage, the highest in team history.

Now, they enter the playoffs one as one of the most experienced teams in the NBA with a group that knows what it takes to reach the NBA summit.

"I think we always had confidence in what we created, what we'd done, but I think the opportunity that when we won it, we know what it takes, we know how hard it is, we understand that it is going to take every little bit of effort that you have to get to that point and to actually win it," Raptors guard Kyle Lowry said. "I think that just helped us with our ability to know, like, yo we can do this, and this is how hard it is, and we've gotta continue to try to work on it and keep building on it."

The biggest trick to managing the playoffs is just having an appreciation for the amount of work that goes into winning a title. It's not like the regular season where you can take breaks against weaker opponents or rest here and there.

"It’s a long journey that is just getting started and you kind of gotta acknowledge that fact and you’ve gotta acknowledge that not everything is going to go perfectly and you’ve gotta kind of keep a level playing field with yourself and your team and your staff and just do the best you can," Nurse said Saturday. "But it’s going to be a long, tough grind and it should be, the result at the end of it if you can get there is certainly worth it."

With all that experience, it's probably time for the rest of the NBA to remember who the reigning champions are.