The Raptors are the NBA’s media darlings, but for how long?

Open this photo in gallery:

At Monday’s introduction to the upcoming season, someone asked the Raptors’ genial monosyllabist, OG Anunoby, what he’d most enjoyed about this summer.

“I dunno,” Anunoby said, shifting in his seat. “Maybe reading a book?”

What book?

More shifting: “I, uh, um … I’ll say going for a walk.”

A walk.

“Nice walks. Good views. Watch the sunset.”

Everyone laughed, even Anunoby, and he’s not much of a laugher.

Though this was the best question anyone asked him, it wasn’t the right question.

The right question, sports-wise, was about Anunoby’s prominent rumour-mill position vis-a-vis the Raptors’ theoretical off-season pursuit of Kevin Durant. Everybody and her brother had Anunoby right in the middle of that mess. That can’t have felt great.

But Anunoby was able to (very literally) shrug those questions off. He didn’t really answer, and no one pressed him very hard.

Why? Because he’s a Toronto Raptor.

Being a Raptor circa 2022 makes you a protected species. Backed by a recent championship and the most roundly admired executive in Canadian sports history, the Raptors exist above the usual sports churn.

All they have to do is be nice and try their best and people will love them. All the usual animus that attaches itself to underperforming hockey stars and lippy baseball players has no angle of purchase.

This is the only remarkable thing about this year’s Raptors team, which returns with a lot of good vibes, some good enough players and zero chance of making a run at a title.

When you talk about the quicksand that is the middle to upper middle of the standings in any league, the Raptors are up to their neck. There’s no nearby branch to help pull them out.

“We have a young, growing team,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said by way of introduction. “Our plan is to grow our young players.”

That is president-speak for: ‘If you’re thinking of booking an overseas vacation in April, then feel free to do that.’

If you tried that ‘growing’ line in New York, the media would start pulling fire alarms and then blame you for lighting a fire.

This may be Ujiri’s greatest contribution to sports culture. He has broken the usual binary. A modern sports franchise can be one of two things – a hot contender, or a tanking mess.

If you’re not the former, then you should be doing everything you can to be the latter. That’s current best practices.

Whichever one you are, you should also generate as much off-court drama as possible.

Maybe your owner is getting the bum’s rush out of the league because he makes a stegosaurus look chilled out and clued in. Maybe your coach has been suspended for treating the support staff like a buffet. Or maybe your best young player is torching his reputation on social media because, I don’t know, he’s bored?

That’s just the last few weeks in the NBA.

But not at the Raptors.

They got together over the summer and practised, not because anyone told them to, but because they like each other. They do clinics and support estimable causes. They seem genuinely grateful that they get paid a lot of money to do work they’re good at.

With most pro sports teams, it’s ‘What have you done for us lately?’

With the Raptors, it’s ‘Why don’t you take as much time as you need to figure out what it is you’d like to do for us, and then let us know? No rush.’

The Raptors are the just-so sports team. Neither bad nor particularly good. Neither hot nor cold. Never lurid; always likeable.

The closest thing to a controversy at the moment is point guard Fred VanVleet’s dangling contract extension.

By dint of personality as much as quality of play, VanVleet has become the face of the franchise. Sophomore Scottie Barnes is the team’s most valuable athletic commodity, but VanVleet is its rudder. Without him, who knows where everything’s headed?

The Raptors have been in a position to extend VanVleet’s contract for months. They have yet to do so.

So where’s that at?

“I’m happy where I am, and I think it’s a mutual love,” VanVleet said.

Oh. Well, um, read any good books?

Teams everywhere should be studying the Raptors like they’re the Talmud. Building a champion is hard, verging on impossible. Burning a team to the ground is miserable and dangerous. Aspiring out loud to either thing is such a gamble that few GMs are willing to do it.

What if you could have a Goldilocks team instead – boring, beloved and given total latitude to develop at its own pace?

While the players do the promo work, you sell out the arena, shift a ton of merchandise and bask in the editorial glow of an enamoured press.

Whenever someone does ask you a tough question, you feel so confident in your position that you don’t have to dissemble.

Here’s VanVleet on going out to Philadelphia in last year’s first round: “We got our asses kicked. We can make excuses all day long – injuries and whatever – but we lost to a team we thought we should beat.”

Can you imagine anyone on the Maple Leafs saying that?

You cannot. Because that line would trail the guy who said it for years. But on the Raptors, it’s one honest man telling hard truths.

This peaceful idyll between the team, its fans and the people who cover it can’t last forever. All it takes is one petulant, public moment to get everyone clawing at each other again.

But that it exists at all given the current state of the sports world is something worth stopping to admire.

Sometimes it’s not just about results, or the latest conflict, or whatever will get people worked up online. Sometimes it’s nice to enjoy small, commonplace things, like nice walks or a basketball season that you’re playing just to play.