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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - It may seem like the perfect way to cap off what will almost certainly be their best season ever, to leapfrog LeBron James and the mighty Cavaliers for top spot in the Eastern Conference.

With the Raptors nipping at Cleveland's heels, narrowing the gap to one game following Sunday's win, they have first place in their crosshairs. The question is, how badly do they want it or, better yet, how badly should they want it?

First, let's identify what's at stake. The top-seeded team faces eighth place in the opening round of next month’s playoffs, which, if the season ended on Sunday, would be the dreaded Chicago Bulls. However, with over three weeks to go, that can and will be fluid. 

Going into Monday's action, Chicago was in a virtual tie with Detroit for the final playoff spot, both of them just a half game behind Indiana for seventh. The Bulls, like any of the other teams they're bunched up with, are a winning streak away from shooting up the standings or a losing skid away from falling out of the postseason picture altogether. In other words, it's far too early to be playing basketball God in orchestrating their ideal first-round matchup.

Outside of bragging rights and perhaps some company for their division-winning banners in the rafters of the Air Canada Centre, the lone benefit of having the East's best record is securing home-court advantage should you reach the conference finals.

For Cleveland, that's something worth fighting for. Barring an epic collapse, they know they're going to get there. For the Raptors, a team that has failed to advance past the first round in each of the last two years and a franchise that has never won a seven-game series, looking ahead to round three would be presumptuous. 

An important thing to remember, and something they haven't forgotten despite their recent success, is that they're not the Cavaliers. After winning the East and making it to the finals last year, it's championship or bust for James and company. Internally, the Raptors' expectations are different and, as a result, so are their priorities. 

The Raptors’ season has gone better than anyone could have imagined, especially when you consider the injuries they've been forced to endure. With 13 games to go, they're one win shy of matching last year's franchise-best mark and two away from reaching 50 for the first time in franchise history. Still, they know better than to get ahead of themselves. Their goal hasn't changed: win a round and go from there.

To do that, from wherever they finish in the standings, they'll need all hands on deck. They'll need DeMarre Carroll, who has missed 11 weeks following knee surgery; they'll need Jonas Valanciunas, who's been out after re-injuring the hand he broke earlier this season; but, more than anything else, they'll need Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan - third and fifth in minutes played, respectively. They need their all-star backcourt healthy and as fresh as possible going into the playoffs or they're toast. So that is the mandate going forward. Health is the priority first and foremost. Everything else, including first place, is secondary.

"[First place] is [important] but still, our overall health [is more important]," Dwane Casey said after his team's latest victory over Orlando. "I'd rather have health than anything else and freshness, I think that's so important. Believe me, nobody wants to win more than me but the overall health of your players and the mileage and the minutes on your players' bodies is something that we've got to watch, we've got to be smart with. It's a double-edged sword."

That's the challenge for Casey and his staff over these last three and a half weeks. Like his players, Lowry in particular, the Raptors head coach is fiercely competitive, meaning the concept of taking a step backward in order to take a big step forward may be a hard sell. On Sunday, against the 29-40 Magic, he sat out a third of his roster, including Cory Joseph, who he joked he was tempted to put into the game with Orlando on a run in the third quarter.

Joseph, who had appeared in every game, finally got his night off. Lowry sat out a game late last month while DeRozan was rested in Milwaukee last week. Casey indicated that Valanciunas would be out there if these were playoff games, as would Patrick Patterson, who missed Sunday's game with a sore ankle. Instead, the Raptors are playing it safe and it sounds like they will continue to do so.

That doesn't mean you should expect to see Lowry, or anyone else, get a week off just for the sake of it. As you might expect, the only significant drop off came when Lowry sat out in Detroit, a 114-101 loss, just one of three over Toronto's last 16 games. Although they've got a pretty comfortable cushion in the standings right now — 7.5 games ahead of third-place Atlanta — those are the type of performances that concern Casey, as infrequent as they've been. That's where they'll have to find a balance between finding opportunities to rest their stars and competing at the level they're accustomed to.

"We're going to try to be strategic," Casey said. "And no disrespect to any team we're playing. Believe me, we're going into these games to win. It's not vacation time, it's just giving guys' bodies time to recover from a stressful season and make sure we have them fresh because what I don't want to do is be holding everybody out the last two weeks and be out of rhythm once the playoffs start."

"It's definitely a tough thing," DeRozan added. "Because it's a long season and you don't want to lose any momentum that you have, but at the same time your health is the most important thing going into the playoffs."

At least on paper, their remaining schedule appears much tougher than Cleveland’s. The Raptors will play just five of their final 13 games at home, compared to seven for the Cavs. They'll face nine winning teams over the next 10 games before closing the season against the Knicks, 76ers and Nets. Meanwhile, Cleveland will see just seven winnings teams the rest of the way, including one in its next six contests.

The Cavs haven't exactly looked like the consensus Eastern Conference favourites they're supposed to be and if they continue to stumble, or if Toronto continues to win, the Raptors would be happy to swoop in and snag the top seed. It's just not at the top of their wish list.

"I really don't look at it like we're chasing Cleveland," DeRozan said. "At the end of the day we're going to have home-court advantage [in the first round] regardless. I think our biggest focus is just coming together, especially defensively as a team, and if it comes down to whatever place we're in, if it's first, second, whatever it may be, we're just going to go from there."