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Why the Raptors shouldn't fear the Nets

Adam Hunger / USA TODAY Sports

For the Toronto Raptors, there are plenty of eerie similarities between this season and the 2006-07 season. Of note:

- They won the Atlantic Division title after turning their season around in mid-December following a poor start to the season

- They matched their previous franchise record of 47 wins, only this season they also set a new record by reaching 48 wins.

- They finished with the East's No. 3 seed thanks to a tiebreaker with the Bulls that sees a Division leader take ties from non-division-leaders. In 2007, when division winners automatically got top-three seeds, the Bulls were actually the third-best team in the East, but Toronto got the higher seed.

- They entered the final night of the regular season slated to open the playoffs against the Wizards, but by the end of the night were locked into a matchup with the much more veteran Nets.

- Jason Kidd. In 2007, Kidd averaged a triple-double in a six-game series win for the Nets over the Raptors. In 2014, he'll be on the sidelines for the Nets, perhaps with a beverage in hand.

Raptors fans and pundits alike will likely point to that 2007 sequence of events as exactly the reason why this young Raps squad should want no part of the aged, battle-tested Nets again.

Other than those matters of coincidence, however, the 2007 version of the Atlantic winning Raptors just weren't cut from the same cloth as this group. Sure, they won 47 games, but they outscored opponents by an average of just 1.0 points per game, had a middle of the pack defense, went 17-24 on the road and supported All-Star Chris Bosh with an average to underwhelming supporting cast that while exciting, was also rightly labeled as soft.

This season's Raptors will never be referred to by the 's' word. DeMar DeRozan may not be the All-Star Bosh was, but he's also not even the best player on his own team, as that honor goes to Kyle Lowry, and the supporting cast around DeRozan and Lowry is stronger and deeper than what Bosh had seven years ago.

That 2007 Raptors team always seemed more lucky than good, and the expectation going into the postseason was that the Kidd, Carter, Jefferson-led Nets would prove it. Many expect the Williams, Pierce, Garnett, Johnson-led Nets to do the same this year, but the difference is that this Raptors squad has proven to be good - like, legitimately good - over the last four months.

In fact, since the infamous Rudy Gay trade on December 8, the Raptors have posted the Eastern Conference's best record at 42-22, beating out teams like the Heat and Pacers over a three-quarter stretch of season. They've outscored opponents by an average of 4.5 points per game during that time and boast a sixth-ranked net rating of +4.8 over their last 64 games. In addition, they went an East best (tied with Heat and Wizards) 22-19 on the road and 16-14 against the stronger Western Conference, and they're one of only four teams - along with the Spurs, Thunder and Clippers - to finish the season top-10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency.

They also finished as a top-10 rebounding team in terms of rebound rate while the Nets finished 29th in the same category, and they took two of three games from Brooklyn after the Rudy trade (The Nets beat them originally with Gay in the fold). Not to mention, the Nets went 16-25 on the road - the second-worst mark of the 16 playoff teams - and will have to open the series in Toronto.

In other words, while the Nets have been slightly hotter from a win/loss perspective if you start the cutoff at New Year's, the Raptors have a lot going for them, and the only clear cut advantage Brooklyn possesses is experience. Over the next couple of days, you'll surely hear about how some of the Nets' vets have more playoff experience than most of the Raptors' roster combined, and perhaps that will play a factor come Saturday afternoon when these two teams tip off the 2014 postseason at Air Canada Centre.

But other than serving as a pre-playoffs talking point, what does experience do for you, really? Are the young Raptors going to be so stunned by the stakes that they suddenly enter into a four-to-seven game malaise? Will one of the best ball moving teams over the last 64 games suddenly stop moving the rock because they're not used to moving it outside of the regular season? It's doubtful, just as Kidd out-coaching Dwane Casey would be.

No, just like in 2007, if the Nets are going to beat the Raptors four out of seven times, it will likely be because they're simply better than the Raptors, not because their added experience magically renders Toronto useless. For the Raptors, the good news is that the numbers suggest otherwise, that they are in fact the superior team entering the series.

Nets big man Andray Blatche warned Terrence Ross to be careful what he wished for when the Raptors sophomore declared that he wanted Brooklyn in the playoffs in a Reddit AMA, and Blatche brought the matter up again after the playoff matchups were set on Wednesday. Considering that the Nets clearly tanked their way into the No. 6 seed to draw Toronto despite the Raptors' superior season, however, one could issue the same warning to Blatche, Kidd and the rest of the more experienced Nets.

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