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As most Raptors' fans know, our heroes have had 2 distinct seasons. The first part started opening night with the win against Cleveland and ended with the debacle at Atlanta. In that Atlanta game, the team completely capitulated, both offensively and defensively. Following the debacle, the team held a closed-door meeting where grievances were aired out, and the coaching staff decided to implement a new defensive scheme which kicked off the second part of the season. After going 7-13 (0.350) in the first part, the Raptors went on a tear and posted a very good record of 24-12 (0.666).
So how did the Raptors' offence and defence fare in those 2 parts. In the first part (20 games), the Raptors surrendered what was, at the time, the worst Defensive Rating (DRTG) in modern NBA history (118.80 points per 100 possessions), while having the best Offensive Rating (ORTG) in the league (112.75 points per 100 possessions).
In the second part of the season, the Raptors held a good DRTG of 107.27 (which would have tied them at Denver as 16th best), while sporting a still decent ORTG of 109.87. Basically, the Raptors sacrificed a little offence to get a huge improvement of close to 12 points per 100 possessions on the defensive side of the court. That is a huge improvement!
But what if these numbers are deceiving? We haven't looked at the quality of the opponent to figure out if they've actually improved or if they've played creampuffs to pad their defensive stats. To make the sample size big enough without sacrificing the intent of the calculations, I divided the season into chunks of 5 games, except for the last chunk ending with the Portland game, which has 6 games. Basically, I wanted to see how the Raptors' DRTG fared when compared to the opponents in each chunk of games. Here are the numbers:
The Raptors have been able to hold each chunk of 5 opponents to lower than their average only once in the entire season so far. They were close in a couple of other times (especially the last chunk of 6 games), but have been far from stellar in all the other instances.
How about the offence? Well, things definitely look rosier in this department:
The Raptors have been held to lower than their average only twice in the entire season, while blowing out the opponent's DRTG in all other instances. So how many times has the offence bailed out the defence?
In the second part of the season, the Raptors have had to rely on their offence to bail them out in 5 of the 7 chunks of games. Except for games 31-35, where the offence and defence were stellar, the Raptors have been mediocre to downright awful defensively.
At this point of the season, there's no hope for an internal improvement on defence. It is what it is. Let's just hope that the offence can carry the team into the playoffs. 
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