On Wednesday night, DeMar DeRozan became the Toronto Raptors’ all-time leading scorer.

The 27-year-old needed 15 points to overtake Chris Bosh as the franchise’s most prolific scorer and he did so in the second quarter with a pull-up shot from just inside the free throw line that lifted him to 10,276 points in a Toronto uniform.

Debate raged a season ago – the club’s 20th in the league – as to who the greatest Toronto Raptor of all-time was, so does DeRozan now eclipsing the team’s all-time scoring mark sew up that mantle for the Compton, California native?

DeRozan benefits from both a recency bias and a much better team. Now, that’s not to discount the leading role that DeRozan has played in the Raptors’ recent success, but for much of both Vince Carter and Bosh’s tenures with the club, the team was mired in mediocrity or worse. Is it, then, possible to look at any of the three in a vacuum without considering the team’s circumstances at the time? Sure, but it hardly paints a full picture.

Still, let’s look at the trio’s numbers without context:
 

Best of Best - Regular season

 
Player GP PTS PPG AST REB
Vince Carter 403 9420 23.4 1553 2091
Chris Bosh 509 10275 20.2 1115 4776
DeMar DeRozan 552 10290 18.6 1499 2201
 

Okay, now how about the playoffs?
 

Best of Best - Playoffs

 
Player GP PTS PPG AST REB
Vince Carter 15 385 25.7 75 96
Chris Bosh 11 225 20.5 33 72
DeMar DeRozan 31 666 21.5 102 137
 

What we see here is three players who have had fine individual careers for the Raptors, each of whom has a claim to the "best ever" title if you want to cherry pick stats. And that's the problem with looking at them in a vaccum - it tells us nothing of circumstance.

It was Carter's Raptors of whom the rest of the league took notice. It was Carter, himself, who inspired a generation of kids - not just Canadian ones - with his athleticism and gravity-defying dunks. It was with Carter that the team picked up its first modicum of success with its first playoff appearance in 2000 and the Raptors' first series win the following year. But Carter forced himself out of Toronto, and admitted to not giving his all as a member of the Raptors. The divorce was very ugly and very public. One of the great "What ifs" in Toronto sports is what if Carter and Tracy McGrady never left the Raptors for greener pastures. As great as Carter was for the team, you can't consider what was without thinking about what could have been.

A young Bosh in his second season became the franchise talisman after Carter's abrupt absence. Thrust into the spotlight, Bosh was comfortable in it. Bosh was the first star player to re-sign with the team, providing a needed buoyancy for a franchise and fan base still smarting from being spurned by Carter and Damon Stoudamire before that. It was Bosh - in the midst of five straight seasons of 22-plus PPG - who spearheaded the team's first division title in 2007. When Bosh signed with the Miami Heat in 2010, it stung for fans (and perhaps some still hold a grudge), but there wasn't the sense of betrayal that accompanied Carter's exit.

Like Bosh before him, DeRozan became the team's focal point after the departure of a Raptors icon. While DeRozan scored at a respectable clip over his first four seasons, it was his jump in play that coincided with the team's ascent to Eastern Conference power with three straight Atlantic Division titles. While arguments can be made over which is the most talented Raptors teams ever, DeRozan's current version has undoubtedly sustained the most success. A season after reaching the Eastern Conference finals for the first time, the Raps are again in the rarefied air of the top teams in the NBA. A fourth straight division title looks likely and fans are anticipating another deep playoff run.

While DeRozan's Raptors have found on-court success, the player has endeared himself to fans off the court. DeRozan is unabashedly proud of his adopted city. Upon his free agency in the summer of 2016, he held no meetings with other clubs. He only intended to stay in Toronto.

"If I knew where I wanted to be from the beginning … I didn’t want to waste anybody’s time and just hear somebody else talk or say something when I know in the back of my mind that I want to do something else," he told Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated last month. "As long as that something else was mutual, there was no point of me doing anything else. I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. I didn’t want to give false hope if I knew what I felt inside was right. And that was me going back."

It's difficult to divorce perception of a player with his on-court play, so if there's growing sentiment to crown DeRozan as the franchise's greatest ever, it's understandable.

If it's not already, it will very soon be fully merited.