LeBron James Returns to the Cleveland Cavaliers: Good News for the Raptors?

I finally managed to extricate myself from the world of Twitter here to pen a few quick thoughts on LeBron and his return to Cleveland.

However I'm not even sure where to start.

In no way was I prepared for a situation where James returned to Cleveland, after the way he exited, and the way he was treated by owner Dan Gilbert, fans, etc, etc.

I mean, isn't this whole situation as unlikely as Michael Bay making a good Transformers movie?  Or Iggy Azalea being relevant two years from now?

Not only that, but the way the news broke?  No Woj bomb, no typical Twitter leaks like we've become so accustomed to. Just a sudden tweet from SI author extraordinaire Lee Jenkins:

And then the floodgates opened.

But I'm not going to get into LeBron's decision here, nor am I going to pontificate on possible trade scenarios for Kevin Love etc.  But suffice to say that LeBron going to Cleveland, with Chris Bosh following close behind on the way out of Miami, is likely a very good thing for the Toronto Raptors.

The East looks pretty wide open now, and if Carmelo returns to New York instead of heading to Chicago, this is even more the case.

Make no mistake about it.  Miami was far and away the best team in the East when all was said and done last season, and now they look to be a shell of their former selves.  Some of the other top teams in the East such as Indiana and Washington don't look to be on very sturdy ground either, potentially losing key free agents in the coming days without much to replace them with.

So enter the Dinos.

While it's still very early, it's not a ridiculous notion to suddenly think that this Toronto Raptors team could be competing in the Eastern Conference finals next season.  Yes, a number of things have to break right from player health to improvements from youngsters, but that's the case with every team which has its eye on a top spot in the league.  As of now, it doesn't seem very far-fetched to say that Toronto should be right there, fighting for a top seed in the 2015 playoffs.

And Masai Ujiri might not be done of course.  While from a numbers perspective, his roster is almost full, the current reports of a Houston Rockets firesale in effort to clear space for Bosh and Chandler Parsons, might mean that Ujiri can take advantage.  Toronto doesn't have much in terms of cap space available for rent, but maybe they can facilitate a larger deal and end up with an asset or two, something Ujiri has been prone to do in the past.

In any event, the next 48 hours should be pretty interesting as the dominoes start to fall, and, oh yeah...the Raptors first Summer League game is in about 3 hours!