I think their biggest reason for success as of late is Masai Ujiri, he is the best executive in the NBA, he showed that in Denver and he's showing that in Toronto. He has a real eye for unseen or undervalued talent, take Lou Williams, he's an elite scorer, and he was able to get him for John Salmons expiring contract because Lou was injured most of last season. The Rudy Gay trade which some people thought was the Raptors giving up, was really what brought in the key elements to make them a playoff contender. Greivis Vasquez and Patrick Patterson were the heart of their bench, and he added Lou Williams and James Johnson to make it deeper. However it's not all Masai, it's also players developing under Coach Casey, Kyle Lowry finally getting a leadership role on a team, and DeMar DeRozan proving he wasn't yet another wasted Raptors lotto pick. Also the developing of Jonas Valanciuanas is instrumental, I believe he has the potential to become a top 5 center in the NBA, he's still young. The reason why many Toronto fans are so excited about this team, is that most of the other years that Toronto was competitive they had either a lot of veteran players, or their big name stars had wanted out. Now it's different because a lot of the stars are still fairly young in the career, JV has yet to enter his prime, DeMar is just entering his prime, and Lowry and Amir are in their prime. The Toronto Raptors will be a playoff team for years to come, what many people were talking about Toronto's offseason and keeping the core together, what it really was in changing basketball culture. For many years although Toronto is a pretty big market, it hasn't been treated as such because it's the only Canadian team in the NBA, and basketball was seen as a distant third as far as Canadian's favorite sports. It still is, however with the influx of Canadian talent, mostly from the Toronto area things have changed. There was a time where there were only 4 Canadians in the NBA, now there are 16, with more coming.