TORONTO . It is nice when the spirit of the schedule and the science of the schedule match up. The NBA's all-star weekend has long been considered the unofficial halfway point of the NBA season. However, in reality, teams are generally well past the midway mark in terms of games played.

Not this year - if nothing else, the compressed schedule has provided some order to the world of those who like their landmarks to be appropriately timed. The Toronto Raptors will play their 33rd game of the 66-game season on Wednesday, and will head into the all-star break after playing Detroit to end a seven-game home stand.

Depending on the result, the Raptors will have either nine or 10 wins going into the break, putting them squarely on pace for the 20 or so wins most observers predicted for them. That they have accomplished that without Andrea Bargnani for 20 games is surprising.

Still, given the embarrassment of some of the defeats - at home to Charlotte, twice in Washington - as well as the stalled progress of DeMar DeRozan and Ed Davis, this sprint of a first half feels like a disappointment.

"Finding the right consistency in performance, in productivity, is huge," Raptors coach Dwane Casey said. "One night DeMar will have a great game offensively. The next night, teams do a good job of taking him out. Getting that consistency going from all of our players has been our biggest challenge this year as a coaching staff.

"I expected it. Am I disappointed when it happens? Yes. But it is something I expected from a young team, Jekyll and Hyde. I saw that early in practice in training camp and in our couple of exhibition games."

The season's start has not been a waste, however. Casey always knew the year would represent a transition from past years' score-and-bescored-on teams to this year's defensively oriented squad. At the beginning of the season, Casey said he wanted his team to get to the middle of the pack in defence.

Heading into Wednesday, they are allowing 101.1 points per 100 possessions, 17th in the league. One horrible game could drop them to the bottom of the third. But the progress, for now, is tangible.

"Defensively, they picked up the zone quicker than I thought," Casey said. "There are some nuances in it that we haven't grasped."

That last point might be unavoidable. Casey said he wants the team eventually to be able to slip from zone to man-toman defence and back again seamlessly. Thanks to the lack of practice time, that is not going to happen soon. These last few practice days, instead, were spent on re-emphasizing old lessons.

"No question, it's going to wait until next training camp," Casey said. "The worst thing we could do right now is add more defensive schemes [before] we are near perfect on what we're doing right now. Lord knows we are nowhere near perfect as far as our defensive execution right now."

What you make of the first half of Casey's season depends on your expectations. If you wanted this team to fundamentally change the way it played, get a little tougher and expose some weaknesses in the roster that need to be addressed - all while earning enough losses to get a nice draft pick in June - then this stretch has been for you.

If you wanted more entertainment, more growth from young players and more surprising wins, you probably quit on this season long ago.

"I've seen some good signs," Casey said. "Even with those [games with Bargnani out of the lineup], we were right there with some good teams."

For the time being, that will have to suffice.

RAPTORS NOTEBOOK

Toronto will not have a player representative in Orlando for all-star weekend: not in the rookie-sophomore game, not in the three-point contest, not in the slam-dunk contest, not in any of the other contrived events surrounding Sunday's game. DeMar DeRozan represented the Raptors in the slam-dunk contest the last two years. In 2010, Nate Robinson won; a year later, Blake Griffin won. That latter angered DeRozan, as he felt the contest was starting to depend too much on the use of props. So DeRozan is just fine taking the weekend off this year. "I'm not even going to lie: Yeah, I'm glad I get to go home, see my family, spend time with them for a couple days," DeRozan said. "Mentally, it will definitely be good for me to see my family and come back strong." Indiana's Paul George, Houston's Chase Budinger, Minnesota's Derrick Williams and New York's Iman Shumpert are taking part this year. "I talked to Paul George. He told me a couple of things that he's got," DeRozan said, declining to predict a winner. "Iman Shumpert's got Jeremy Lin, so he might just win because he's in it."

DeRozan will be going home to California. Amir Johnson is keeping open the option of booking a last-minute trip somewhere. Jose Calderon is going to find some sun. Even the coaches are looking forward to some time off, although head coach Dwane Casey said he would have gone to Orlando if Andrea Bargnani was playing in the All-Star Game. "We're definitely going to get away," Casey said of the coaching staff. "We're going to meet in Houston on Monday morning and get ready for Houston and New Orleans. I just think it's great to get away."

Bargnani is going to the All-Star Game, kind of. "He's going down to do some commercials for Sprite for the NBA," Casey said. "It will be a good experience and let him get a taste of that environment, to see the great players of the past. Hopefully that will rub off on him and get him excited to come back after the all-star break."

Eric Koreen, National Post

ekoreen@nationalpost.com twitter.com/ekoreen