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With the Raptors' frenzy of off-season activity, I can't help but be reminded of Bryan Colangelo's first off-season with the team in the summer of 2006. After the Raptors completed a dismal 27-win season in 2005-06, Colangelo engaged a massive overhaul of the roster. The following season, six of the team's top nine players in minutes played were new Raptors.
The end result was a 20-win improvement, the Raptors' first division title, Bryan Colangelo's second Executive of the Year Award and Sam Mitchell's first Coach of the Year Award. OK, let's not kid ourselves — that will be Smitch's only Coach of the Year Award.
The great differentiator between the lousy 2005-06 Raptors and the competitive 2006-07 version was defence. The 27-win Raptors were a surprising fifth in the league in Offensive Rating (109.5 points scored per 100 possessions) but a horrible 29th in Defensive Rating (112.7 points allowed per 100 possessions). As new Raptors and above-average defenders Anthony Parker, Jorge Garbajosa and Rasho Nesterovic each played at least 1,500 minutes in 2006-07, the team improved to 12th in Defensive Rating (and fell slightly to 11th in Offensive Rating) and made a surprising return to the playoffs.
It's worth noting that the 2007-08 Raptors actually had the ninth-best offence and the 13th-best defence, and yet they still declined by six wins to finish at .500. If you look at the Pythagorean Wins of those two teams (a measurement of how many wins a team should have based on their total points scored and allowed), the '06-07 squad had 44 wins while the '07-08 team had 49 wins. Arguably, the '07-08 Raptors were a better team but they simply couldn't get it done in close games.
Last season, the Raptors fell off a cliff on both ends of the court — finishing 22nd in both Offensive and Defensive Rating. What happened? Well, they lost Rasho and Carlos Delfino, and Anthony Parker lost a step (I don't mention Garbo because they didn't have him in '07-08, either, and the Raptors' defence remained in the top half of the league). That would account for the defensive dropoff. Offensively, they replaced T.J. Ford with the two-headed garbage pile of Will Solomon and Roko Ukic while Jose Calderon missed 14 games and played hurt much of the time in the other 68. Incidentally, their Pythagorean Wins last season equalled their actual wins: 33. They really were that bad.
Can we make the case that the 2009-10 Raptors could finish in the top half of the league in both Offensive and Defensive Rating, thus virtually assuring a playoff spot? With the addition of Hedo Turkoglu, a full season of Andrea Bargnani 2.0, and hopefully healthy seasons from Chris Bosh and Jose Calderon, it seems almost impossible that this team won't be at least a Top 15 offence if the starters are relatively injury-free. The other side of the court is where it gets murky.
It would seem the Raptors are at a defensive disadvantage with Bargnani, Bosh and Turkoglu all in the starting lineup. None of those guys are above average defenders, and Calderon's defensive deficiencies are well-documented. So if the 2009-10 Raptors are going to be even middle-of-the-road defensively, the other new guys are going to have to pick up their slack.
That's where Jarrett Jack, Antoine Wright, Reggie Evans, and the potential return of Delfino and Rasho come in. All five of those guys are decent-to-good defenders. While only one of them is likely to be in the starting lineup (probably Delfino at SG if he returns), the rest of them will need to play significant minutes off the bench in order to establish a solid team identity on defence.
I think Rasho Nesterovic could be the key here. If he still has sufficient life in those legs, I'd like to see him get 20 minutes per game at center for the 2009-10 Raptors. It's difficult to prove this by stats, but I maintain that Rasho was the primary reason the Raptors' defence improved so drastically in the season after his arrival. He's a solid, smart post defender and even when he's not playing, hopefully he can impart some of his wisdom onto Bargnani.
This is assuming, of course, that we can still sign Rasho after most of the Raptors' mid-level exception goes to Jarrett Jack. I have no idea what Rasho's worth is on the open market, so I guess I'm counting on everybody sleeping on the big lug so that Colangelo can sign him for the veteran's minimum or close to it. In terms of value for the money, he could prove to be the Raptors' "quiet MVP" next season. 
Note: You'll notice I didn't mention DeMar DeRozan in this post. He's a wild card and, realistically, I don't think any of us can predict what we're going to get out of him in his rookie season.
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