The Toronto Raptors? Gone till November.

It may not feel like much right now, with the Cleveland Cavaliers having moved on with the East’s title and two potential champions from Oakland and Oklahoma City looking a giant step removed from the comparatively lacking Toronto Raptors, but one does have to consider where we were six weeks ago with these Raps.

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Or, 13 months ago. Or two years, and a month ago.

On April 16 the Raptors dropped Game 1 of their opening round series to the Indiana Pacers, a harmless team led by a president that was tapping his foot in anticipation of firing the team’s coach. Toronto played mostly undistinguished ball and needed seven games to dispatch a Pacer team that needed until the final days of the regular season to even assure its placement in the postseason.

That Game 1 loss came on the heels of a massively disappointing 2015 first round sweep at the hands of the Washington Wizards, a team that couldn’t even make the playoffs this season. Toronto entered that postseason with the Atlantic Division title, same as the year before, but went out far too early. As was the case in 2014, when it fell in the first round to the Brooklyn Nets, a team that (say it with me) failed to make the playoffs this year.

Toronto needed seven games to make it to its first Eastern Conference semifinal in 15 years, the franchise’s only second round showing in a two-decade history, and it needed seven games to beat a Miami team playing without Chris Bosh and mostly without Hassan Whiteside to make its first Conference final. It was then greeted to the third round by a Cavs team that proceeded to beat them by a combined 50 points in the first two games of that series.

That run, however, was followed by two convincing wins in Toronto, and at one point a series evened at 2-2. Sure, Cleveland’s four wins in its eventual series conquest were by an average of a whopping 28.5 points per game, but for all the “here we go again” hand-wringing from all the way back on April 16, this was progress, right?

Sure? Sure. Yes.

The Raptors won 56 games and yet another division title with the NBA’s 24th-ranked payroll, and a coach that was soon to enter the lame duck year of his contract in 2016-17. On Monday, Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri assured fans that he would see to it that coach Dwane Casey – a coach Ujiri inherited, which is never a good thing for any head coach – would be receiving a contract extension soon enough.

DeMar DeRozan’s $10.5 million yearly deal that once looked like a millstone’s worth of pay for a middling player, played like a bargain. DeMarre Carroll barely played due to injury, but his eight-figure deal still seems reasonable enough. Kyle Lowry had the best season of his career . Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross provided excellent value on the final year of their rookie contracts.

And that’s it. For the honeymoon, at least.

Ross and Valanciunas’ second deals spark up next season, to the tune of nearly $24.4 million combined. Lowry stays stead at $12 million, but he’ll have a player option he’ll likely opt out of next June, putting the Raptors in a bind as they consider whether or not they want to commit over $20 million a year for a point guard that at that point will have just turned 31. Carroll has $44.4 owed to him following this season, and he’ll turn 30 in July.

That’s an ungodly amount of money to begin with, even for a team playing in one of the league’s biggest markets, and even for a team that took in three rounds’ worth of revenue this season. And we’re not done yet.

Forward Luis Scola started for most of the year and for part of the playoffs, and while the Raptors might not re-sign the free agent, at the very least they’ll need to sign or acquire either his replacement as starter or Patrick Patterson’s replacement as the first forward off the bench. Patterson, meanwhile, is a free agent next summer. The team will also need to either re-sign or find a replacement for the spot minutes provided by hybrid forward James Johnson – you might not be the biggest fan of his game and inconsistent play, but a rotation-level minutes-sopper needs to be found if he splits, as youngster Bruno Cabolclo gave no indication that he was any closer to contributing in 2015-16.

Then, the big free agents hit.

DeMar DeRozan indicated that he’d like to stay with the Raptors rather than heading back to Los Angeles this summer (and the Lakers, reportedly, have lukewarm interest), but that is the sort of things you say after emerging from an afternoon spent cleaning out your locker amongst all your friendly teammates. To say little of the fact that DeRozan can make more money as a Raptor than with any other team.

DeRozan can play, but he’s yet another player that Ujiri inherited, and does the GM want to commit over a quarter of the salary cap to a very good player at the NBA’s least-important position? A massive contract on top of the ones listed above? The fifth, for now, eight-figure deal starting at over twice what Kyle Lowry will make next season?

Then you have Bismack Biyombo, a former lottery pick that has grown into a starter-level center that can play big minutes, and play them well.

Biyombo is not a playoff sensation, the next Marvin Webster or Jerome James in-waiting. The big man contributed darn good ball as both a starter and reserve for Toronto consistently in 2015-16, and though he won’t be worth the $20 million a year some team will possibly offer him for next season, that figure can be argued away considering his youth and the paucity of attractive options at the hardest position to fill.

Would Toronto want to pay so much for two centers in an era that can’t wait to go small by the first TV timeout? Would they even be able to compete for Biyombo’s services, as the team is barred from going into the luxury tax to re-sign the pivotman? Would they consider moving an asset to clear payroll?

Would any of it be worth it? There aren’t many teams nipping at Toronto and Cleveland’s heels – Atlanta is in flux, Detroit and Charlotte seem limited, Chicago is a mess, Indiana is a question mark, Boston has yet to hit home runs with all its assets – but is this the payroll sheet you want to commit to moving forward?

Especially, and we can’t stress this enough, a payroll featuring player after player that Masai Ujiri did not draft nor trade for?

It was a fun, if nervous, few weeks for the Raptors. The team is in a very good position, but there is always a risk in committing to a very good, and not great, position.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops