The Big Question: Which Raptors team is the real one?

It’s only been five games, but the Toronto Raptors have proven themselves to be equal parts awful and awfully good to begin the season.

There’s been no greater example of this than what they've shown in their last two games.

On Monday, against an almost-certainly lottery-bound Portland Trail Blazers team coming into Scotiabank Arena on the second night of a back-to-back, Toronto laid an egg, falling 99-91 in a game that saw it shoot 40.4 percent from the field, including an abysmal 4-for-29 from deep.

That stinker of a performance led to quite a fair bit of rightful angst from the Raptors faithful, but was then followed up with Wednesday’s brilliant performance against a championship favourite in the Milwaukee Bucks with a 130-111 win that saw them shoot a scorching 46 percent from the field and 15-for-38 from three-point range.

Two games against vastly different levels of competition with drastically different results and a good indication of where the Raptors (2-3) are at to start the season. Which is to say, nobody seems to have any idea where the Raptors are at to begin the season at all.

So then, which Raptors team is the real one?

It’s a difficult question to answer and one that likely isn’t going to be decided definitively until we're much closer to the midway point of the season, but considering how radically different the Raptors have played game-to-game, it’s worth exploring.

Going just by the numbers, the real Raptors would more likely be the team that couldn’t make a shot to save their lives on Monday against Portland. Wednesday’s game looks more like the outlier because of how offensively adept Toronto looked in that game compared to its first four contests.

Before Wednesday’s barnburner, the Raptors were the worst offensive team in the league — only managing a measly 101 points per 100 possessions — and were so dreadful in the halfcourt that there’s a compelling argument to be made that your local high school team could probably run more effect sets than whatever they were doing there.

On the other hand, if you want to make the argument that the Raptors are, actually, a pretty good team, all you need to do is look at what they’re doing defensively. Entering Thursday night, the Raptors boast the ninth-ranked defence in the league, allowing just 105.5 points per 100 possessions. Better yet, before Wednesday’s game, Toronto looked even better on the defensive end, allowing only 103.5 points per 100 possessions.

The offence has been the problem in the early goings of the season for Toronto with the team still adjusting to coach Darko Rajakovic’s new egalitarian offence. Players like Scottie Barnes and newcomer Dennis Schroder have caught on quickly to the new style, but Raptors stalwarts like Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby and Gary Trent Jr. have struggled to adjust.

There’s hope that the growing pains of implementing a new offence will be dispelled, however, as both Siakam (26 points, seven assists, six rebounds, 9-of-13 shooting) and Anunoby (16 points, 7-for-7 shooting) had strong games Wednesday, a sign, for the optimist, that two linchpin pieces of the team are beginning to figure out how to get their games going in this new offensive system.

Essentially, if you’re of the mindset that the Raptors are a good team, then Wednesday was the turning point for them and, with a top-end defence supplementing it, the offence will work itself out and get rolling sooner than later.

That’s certainly a possibility, but it’s not guaranteed to happen. There’s a good chance that the Raptors merely caught a Bucks team going through some growing pains of their own with a new superstar and coach integrating early in the season. The 130 points Toronto hung on Milwaukee looks great, and yes, the defence was also stout, but it’s unrealistic to think that the Raptors are going to have an all-cylinders-firing performance like they had Wednesday every night.

The offence is still a major concern, and until it’s proven to be more consistently effective, winning games just on the strength of defence is a tough way to make a living in the modern NBA.

With a four-game road trip against some tough competition beginning Thursday night against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Raptors will yet another good opportunity to demonstrate who they really are.