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Lowry hit a corner 3, then DeMar DeRozan did the same, then Lowry did it again off a feed from Joseph - 110-103, 54 seconds left, ball game. And then they did what you would expect a good team to do: They let their All-Stars take over, and drilled the Wolves with a sack of doorknobs.

On Wednesday night, with the Timberwolves - and Wiggins in particular - piling up points, the Raptors found themselves just tied 101-101 with about three minutes to go. A degree from Gregg Popovich Academy in San Antonio will do that for you. He arrived in large part to help them get over the playoff hump, but whether he will be back in time from knee surgery to fit into a lineup that has churned along in his absence is the biggest question of TorontoвЂ™s remaining 26 games.Д«ut they are on a 55-win pace, six better than last yearвЂ™s franchise record, and the other acquisition, Toronto-area guard Cory Joseph, has been fantastic. Their ceiling is unclear, mostly because their biggest off-season acquisition, forward DeMarre Carroll, has played 23 games and missed 33. They are, as has been noted pretty much since the season began in October, a very good team with the cloud of two straight first-round playoff losses hanging over it. Which brings us back the Raptors, or the tank job that wasnвЂ™t. Even the best tank jobs have some rough patches to overcome. The local fans, where they are 27th in average attendance among the 30 NBA teams, appear inclined to wait it out before they get too excited. They are likely still years away from being consistently good, even with another high draft pick coming, and in part because they play in the crucible of the Western Conference. вЂњNow we are PLAYING,вЂќ he said, hitting the last word hard to denote that the Wolves have more structure, purpose, cohesiveness, however you want to define a team that gets it now more than they did. вЂњEarly in the year, we were just playing,вЂќ Mitchell said. Sam Mitchell, the interim head coach - and former Raptor boss - said that his kids are starting to understand that there is more to the NBA game than just showing up and matching talent against talent. The offence has been the best in the league over the past two weeks, even if the defence remains abysmal. But they are 4-5 in February, which each of those wins over playoff teams. After their 114-105 loss to the Raptors on Wednesday night, they are 18-40 on a season in which coach and GM Flip Saunders died after a short, sudden illness.

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All of a sudden Minnesota - Minnesota! - is full of scary potential, with Wiggins, Towns and the occasionally dazzling guard Zach LaVine, Wiggins is the old man of that bunch, and he just turned 21.Д«ut the Timberwolves are also a fine indication of how even a successful rebuild does not have an immediate payoff. That turned into the top pick in last yearвЂ™s draft, which turned into seven-footer Karl-Anthony Towns, who is almost certain to succeed Wiggins as the Rookie of the Year. They traded Kevin Love, their best player by some distance, to Cleveland for Wiggins, which turned a middling team into one that stunk. Instead, it was the Timberwolves that embarked on the kind of youth movement that so many in Toronto had envisioned. NBA and Toronto: One arctic weekend wonвЂ™t really change this fraught relationship.'A growing team': Raptors have learned to deal with setbacks.Raptors win a franchise record-tying ninth straight at home with victory over Timberwolves.The ingredients fit together, and I have probably pushed the food analogy as far as it can go. But when a Kyle Lowry trade fell through and a Rudy Gay trade didnвЂ™t, suddenly the Raptors were transformed anyway. Masai Ujiri, the GM, almost went down that path. A 10% shot at transforming the franchise was better than the alternative of perpetual mediocrity. That this plan left an awful lot to chance was a minor problem to its advocates.

There was, at the opening of the 2013-14 season, a decent argument that the best thing the Raptors could do was blow up the roster, lose games by the bushel, and hope the draft lottery balls somehow managed to give them a shot at Andrew Wiggins, the Toronto-area kid with the superstar potential. It was like a fridge full of leftovers: there was enough there to cobble together a meal, but you werenвЂ™t happy about it. It wasnвЂ™t bad enough that the season could be written off in pursuit of a rebuild, but it didnвЂ™t look good enough to be anything more than stuck in the dead zone of the NBAвЂ™s mushy middle. Just two seasons ago, Toronto was coming off five straight years outside the playoffs, with a new general manager who inherited a mess of a roster. ItвЂ™s just that what the Timberwolves are now is what, not long ago, everyone around these parts hoped the Raptors would become. That phrase is not intended to be used in its normal, wistful, manner.

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