Ask the Raptors, though, and they won’t …

Ask the Raptors, though, and they won’t tell you that they are surprised about their success, despite the loss of Leonard or the amount of games they’ve been forced to play without their full complement of talent. Instead, they chalk it up to the symbiotic nature of their group. “The strength of the team, the beauty of basketball, [is that] this is not tennis,” Gasol said. “We’re not talking about Rafa Nadal or [Novak] Djokovic or Roger Federer — or [Canadian Milos] Raonic. We’re talking about basketball. It’s a team sport. It’s how well you work as a team. It’s a team effort. It always will be. Doesn’t matter how much we try to singularize the game.”