Toronto Raptors: Stock Take, plus Norman Powell lights it up

The Toronto Raptors are on a hot streak, winning five games in a row. Whose stock has rose and who fell over the last week?

Now, that’s more like it. The Toronto Raptors are finally at full health and are beginning to flex their muscles. That’s exactly what we all wanted to see, right? For the last five games, the Raptors have found their groove and are undefeated in that stretch of time.

Just past the midway mark – 44 games into the season – the Toronto Raptors sit with a promising record of 30-14. I wonder how many people predicted that record for the Leonard-less Raptors at the start of the season. Instead, here we are, the Raptors are just one game back from the Miami Heat in the second seed.

The chase is on.

This past week put that chase firmly in motion with three wins – all in different manners – setting the tone for the perfect 3-0 record. It started with a laboured win against the Minnesota Timberwolves before we saw an incredibly strange game in Atlanta.

Faced with one of the highest scorers in the NBA, Trae Young, the Toronto Raptors had to pull out all of the stops to take down the Atlanta Hawks on the road. Those stops included 27 points from Norman Powell – 17 of which came in the fourth quarter on 4-of-6 from the field and 5-of-5 from the line.

As expected, Powell is the headliner of this week, so not much more will be said about him at the moment.

Wednesday night ended with the Toronto Raptors taking down the Philadelphia 76ers at Scotiabank Arena, and provided a refresher course on just how good their defense can be. The Raptors gave up 35 points in the first quarter but then held the Sixers to 30-percent shooting from the field over the next 36 minutes.

Over the next four slides, we’ll, as always, dissect the stock of certain members of the Raptors roster; some good, some bad. And, per usual, we’ll start with the bad.