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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - While some seem surprised by their slow start to the season, expecting them to be further along than they are a quarter of the way in, the 6-16 Timberwolves are a reminder of something Dwane Casey has been preaching since he took over at the helm of the Raptors' bench.

For all the talent Minnesota has accumulated, including emerging Canadian star Andrew Wiggins, there's just no cheating time and experience - essential ingredients for real, sustainable success in an unforgiving league.

It's something Toronto, and its coach, can attest to firsthand.

"My first year here, it was difficult," said Casey, the NBA's fourth-longest tenured head coach, who has been with the Raptors since the lockout-shortened 2011-12 campaign. "You have to be creative in the ways you structure practice, creative in your ways of presenting game plans when you go in knowing the odds are against you.

"Guys learn, they pick it up, they develop and it takes time. I wish there was a magic wand where you could wave it over a young player and just say 'Shazam, you’re a solid NBA player'. It doesn’t happen overnight, even with the best of college prospects coming in."

In Casey's first two seasons with the team they began to show improvement in spurts, particularly on the defensive end, but their record didn't exactly reflect it - they went 45-103. That's where the comparison sort of goes off track. In many ways Toronto's turnaround did manifest suddenly, or at least over a 2-3 week span - the result of a trade that was (Rudy Gay to Sacramento), a trade that wasn't (Kyle Lowry to New York) and some divine intervention that is still hard to explain, even now, three years after that fateful, franchise-altering night in Los Angeles.

The Raptors were on their way to Staples Center, hours before a Sunday evening game against the Lakers on Dec. 8, 2013 when the news broke. Toronto had sent Gay to the Kings in exchange for four players, including Patrick Patterson, the team's only holdover from that deal. It was believed to be the first step in a plan to tank for Wiggins, coincidently.

Instead, they came together in a way nobody could have predicted, including Masai Ujiri and the Raptors' brass. Lowry took ownership over the team and blossomed into its heart and soul, DeRozan stepped out of Gay's shadow to become a first-time all-star and, immediately after the trade was consummated, the fortunes of a long-suffering franchise turned. They were 7-12 before that night and 41-22 after it, en route to their first playoff berth in six years.

The lesson here, if there is a lesson at all, is not trade for Gay, trade him away and let the good times roll, although it couldn't hurt for the Kings to give that a try. There's no blueprint for building a winner, no magic elixir or get-rich-quick scheme - if there were everybody would be doing it. There are different ways to skin a cat, as Casey says - a somewhat horrifying figure of speech. Players develop at different rates and, as a result, so do teams.

While it may seem that way in hindsight, the Raptors improbable ascension to Conference Finalists didn't happen overnight. Lowry was 27 at the time of the trade, in his eighth NBA season. He had bounced around the league and had been knocked down enough to know how to get back up, and - for the first time in his career - stay up. DeRozan was an old 24, if there is such a thing, coming off four losing seasons in Toronto. They paid their dues, learned from adversity and figured out how to walk, so that when the opportunity arose, they were ready to run.

"It’s tough," said DeRozan, whose team knocked off the Timberwolves 124-110 Thursday to improve to 15-7 on the season. "You gotta go through the tough times to really understand how to win.

"That’s the toughest part that people don’t understand. Every night you are going out there and giving your all and some kind of doubt or question comes in when you are doing everything that you are supposed to do [and not getting results]. You just don’t have that experience of knowing how to win a game or win in the last three or four minutes of a game. Times like this you do your best to take heed, watch a lot of film and learn what it takes to win."

They haven't stopped growing since. Many of the Raptors' players that were here for it credit the humbling feeling of getting swept by Washington in the first round of the 2014-15 playoffs for helping them take the next step, and now last year's postseason run should, in theory, do the same. Perhaps we're already starting to see the fruits of that experience. For the first time, maybe ever, Toronto has started to put away inferior opponents instead of letting them hang around.

On Thursday that sense of urgency came through as they outscored the young Wolves - who led by one point going into the fourth quarter - 36-21 over the final 12 minutes. Lowry had 10 of his 25 points in the frame, DeRozan had nine of his 27. In winning time, the Raptors were in complete control, they didn't blink. Minnesota, on the other hand, was overwhelmed, an ongoing theme for them late in games.

While the Wolves continue to show glimpses of what they could become - mostly in the first half, where they're the NBA's fourth-best team in point differential (plus-92) - they have struggled to string it together for 48 minutes, the mark of an inexperienced club. Only the Nets and 76ers have been outscored by more points than Minnesota in the second half this season.

"We’re a work in progress," said Tom Thibodeau, Minnesota's first-year head coach. "It’s a compilation of things. We’re striving to be a 48-minute team, I think in this league that the good teams do that. It’s something we’re working on correcting."

They haven't qualified for the postseason in 12 years, the longest active drought in the NBA. Who knows what will spark their eventual turnaround, or when it'll come, but with a young talented core of Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns and Zach LaVine it's only a matter of time.