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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO - After taking full advantage of a friendly early-season schedule, the Raptors are set to embark on a daunting six-game road trip, their longest of the campaign and a stretch that should go a long way in determining what they're really made of.

It's been a historic start to the franchise's 20th season. Sitting atop the Eastern Conference for a team-record 49 consecutive days, they'll enter the Christmas break with at least 22 wins for the first time in their existence.

The caveat, if there is one, has been the degree of difficulty.

"It's important that we play good teams because it's really going to test our character," said Greivis Vasquez following the Raptors' 118-108 wire-to-wire win over the Knicks, their sixth straight victory. "We haven't really faced adversity and everything right now is great, but I think we're ready for a couple of premium tests."

A third of the way through the season, Toronto has played 17 home games - winning 14 of them - which tops any team in the NBA. They've seen the Western Conference's top seven teams just twice - defeating the undermanned Grizzlies and falling to Dallas.

At times, the modest level of competition has allowed them to get away with some bad habits, primarily on defence, where their effort has been sporadic. Unexpectedly, Toronto features the league's second-most efficient offensive attack but they've fallen to 11th in that same category on the other end of the floor.

While their defence tends to pick up in the second half, saving them from slow starts against inferior opponents, they know they'll need to put together more complete outings over the next couple weeks to come up victorious away from the comforts of the Air Canada Centre.

"It's going to be a challenge," Vasquez said. "We're looking forward to this challenge. Anytime you go to the West, it's not easy but I think we're good enough to come out with a couple of wins and do our job. We've got to remain humble and hungry and continue to work."

"I'm ready for it," Dwane Casey insisted. "We should be ready because we've been preaching it. Everyone's all excited but reality is real and we have to be ready for adversity, whenever it hits. You go into it with positive vibes, ready to kick some behind but when adversity hits that's when you find out how close we are and how we have to stick together."

The trip begins with a visit to Chicago - their only Eastern Conference stop - in the second game of a back-to-back Monday. They'll have three days off for Christmas before heading out West, where they'll face the Clippers, Nuggets, Trail Blazers, Warriors and Suns as the ACC hosts the world junior hockey championship.

Toronto's opponents during their most recent six-game winning streak entered Sunday's games with a combined record of 43-123 (.259). The six teams they'll face on this coming road trip are 106-55 (.658), while the Raptors have an all-time record of 42-80 (.344) in the buildings they'll be visiting.

"Tomorrow will be a game that lets us know where we are in the league," Casey said of Monday's match-up with the Bulls, a team that defeated Toronto 100-93 last month. "We're one of the top teams, we are in that group but tomorrow night we have to show where we fit in that sphere."

As a team, their first challenge came in the form of an injury to DeMar DeRozan. In 12 games without their leading point producer, the Raptors have held together, winning nine of those contests as their nightly scoring average - almost exactly the same as it was before the all-star guard sustained his injury - remains elite.

Without a timetable for DeRozan's return, the Raptors will hit the road and it's unlikely they'll have him back in uniform before their return home in early January.

This trip won't determine their fate. In the grand-scheme of things, the six-game stretch accounts for roughly seven per cent of their regular season schedule. It's not make or break, but it should be a healthy barometer for a team with high aspirations in the spring.

"It's always about ourselves," Vasquez said. "We don't want to prove anything to anybody. This is a family right here in this locker room."

"Hopefully we do well. I've got all the confidence in the world that we can do better and that we're going to continue to get better. We can't be satisfied because we've got a  22-6 record. We want more."

Good teams win the games they should - the Raptors are an impressive 15-2 against losing clubs this season. But great teams are the ones that can compete with the rest of the league's elite.

What are they made of? We'll find out soon enough.

FIELDS SITS OUT

The Raptors were without newly-minted starter Landry Fields, who was sidelined as a precaution having sustaining a head injury in Friday's win over Detroit.

Fields needed eight stitches to close up a gash on the back, right-side of his head after a scary fall knocked him out of the game. He remained sprawled out on the court, surrounded by his teammates, coaches and the medical staff for several minutes, as a pool of blood collected underneath his head, before being helped up and to the locker room.

Although the forward passed initial concussion tests that night, he failed a secondary examination ahead of Sunday's contest.

Fields had said he blacked out for a moment after hitting his head on the court but seems to have dodged a bullet. He was lucid in the locker room post-game, walking around and conversing with teammates.

"He's alert, looks good, looks as ugly as he's always looked," Casey joked. "But those tests are intricate so it's something that you have to go through, which is great. It's the right thing to do to make sure [he's okay]."

The fifth-year vet had been a pleasant surprise, starting six straight games in the absence of DeRozan, logging over 20 minutes in each of the five before his injury - his longest streak as a Raptor.

James Johnson replaced him in the starting lineup Sunday, matching up with Knicks' star Carmelo Anthony. Although Johnson picked up two quick fouls, limiting him in the first quarter, he did an admirable job on Anthony in 24 minutes of action. The Raptors - primarily Johnson and Terrence Ross - held Anthony to 28 points on 26 shots.