One last gasp for Raptors or has their fate already been sealed?

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It was about three weeks ago in this same space that we wrote about the opportunity staring the Raptors in the face — a struggling team looking to find itself and presented with the rare opportunity of six consecutive home games in which to do so.

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There were other factors that played into the optimism. In a number of those games the opponent would be coming in tired from being in the midst of a tough road stretch, when teams these days opt to rest stars more often than not.

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But, alas, the Raptors spit on the opportunity going a very average 3-3, which admittedly was better than they had been running but not good enough to really change the public narrative that this team requires some fundamental change.

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Of course, the then still-a-ways-away trade deadline of Feb. 9 was pushing that narrative. What sports fan doesn’t love a bit mid-season trade to shake things up? But while the 3-3 homestand and a 2-3 record since hasn’t altered the public narrative one iota, social media hasn’t been this negative with the Raptors since LeBron was openly mocking them while stealing their collective lunch money every playoffs (or so it seemed).

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As usual the front office has remained tight lipped. The trade deadline could still be the blowout sale of Masai Ujiri’s career (although we don’t believe that).

The month of January has not been pretty. The Raptors, through 12 of the 16 games they will play before the calendar flips, are a woeful 5-7. Four of those five wins have come against two teams, the fully-tanking Charlotte Hornets and a New York Knicks club that seems to be the one unit that still fears the mighty Raptors brand.

Not exactly inspiring if your name is Ujiri or Bobby Webster and you’re in charge of deciding whether this is the time to put a stick of dynamite under the roster or ride it out until the summer and maybe re-assess then.

You can argue the team is actually playing better now than they were through that dreadful 4-11 stretch from late November through all of December.

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Rookie Scottie Barnes is looking every bit — and more — like the player he was a year ago when he earned rookie of the year honours and had the fanbase predicting big things.

Veteran Fred VanVleet, the Raptor whose stock has plummeted with the majority of the fanbase faster than Stefon Diggs got out of that losing Bills locker room Sunday, is looking very much like the Steady Freddy who was relatively recently the toast of this town.

His three-point stroke is back, he’s digging into defenders and those VanVleet hands are wreaking havoc on opposition ball-handlers.

Precious Achiuwa has also returned to that second-half 2022 form. All of it combines to provide a sliver of optimism, but quite frankly that’s not the overriding feeling one gets about this team right now.

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Certainly not all has been fixed. The defence continues to confound with its inability to settle in like they did a year ago with basically the same roster. For the three games before Sunday’s win, all of which contained periods of really good basketball by the Raptors, the final quarters looked very much like a team that had already started to tank.

All that said, the trade deadline remains 2½ weeks and eight games away.

Seven of those games make up a potentially deciding two-week road trip that begins Wednesday in Sacramento and concludes Feb. 5 in Memphis.

VanVleet, who has been on Raptors teams that have thrived on these long west coast jaunts, prefers to view it as another opportunity.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to grow and get better and come together as a group and see what we got,” he said. “Going on the road for that long is a good time to bond and get closer and one way or another lock in and go out there and get some wins. I think it’s a great chance to grow and get better as a group.

“… I’m excited about it,” VanVleet said of the trip. “And I think that our group is trending in the right direction. We’re getting closer and closer. We’ve been playing some pretty good basketball as of late. We just have to translate it into wins, and I think we will.”

What remains to be seen is whether even a successful trip will be enough to buy this group a little more time together or whether Feb. 9 will be the beginning of a tear-down.

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