Not to rain on the parade, but I think they have played one of the easiest schedules in the league thus far.
This isn't accurate. The Raptors have 1 game in the Central time zone the rest of the season and every other game is in the Eastern time zone. They have played 23 road games and 17 home games. They are 15-2 at home and 14-9 on the road (and remember the only western team they haven't played on the road is Minnesota). They obviously still have some tough western teams at home (GS is their next game) and have some tough eastern road games, but I'd be pretty surprised if the Raptors aren't the 1 seed.
Strength of schedule.
the advanced/weighted SOS have the Raptors playing a more difficult schedule than the Celtics thus far. Which makes sense given what I posted aboit their road heavy western conference heavy schedule.
They play 1 game outside if the Eastern Time Zone the rest of the way (and it is Minnesota which is a short flight). That is insane. They are 14-2 at home and have played 6 less home games.
The East is 500 against the West so far this year.
There's 2 widely used SOS metrics. One is simple SOS and the other is RPI which is known to college BB fans. Both have BOS > TOR. I'm sure if one looks long enough, they'll find some model that shows TOR with a tougher schedule by incorporating days of rest, backs to back etc. etc., but there's likely more going the C's way given that the simple SOS calculations does.
I look both to road records and especially records against 500+ teams as indicative of playoff success. BOS leads both and our total 3 game advantage vs TOR in the standings is solely due to our much better record against 500+ teams (14-7 vs 9-8). Among the 6 teams with the best records whom most people think of as contenders BOS is 5-2, GSW 4-2, HOU 3-3, TOR 2-3, SAS 2-3, and CLE 1-4 with one of the Cs losses being the GH injury game.
My point about the West, was just that they don't have to travel as much the rest of the season. They have just 1 game outside of the Eastern Time Zone. That is just insane at this point in the season. There are plenty of metrics on schedule and how best to calculate it. Here is one that has the Raptors at 10 and Celtics at 26 https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other
basketball-reference's, SRS which accounts for both schedule strength and margin of victory, has the Raptors at 7.40 which is 3rd while the Celtics are 4.70 though 4th.
The Raptors are 14-2 at home and have played 6 less games at home. They have just 1 3 game road trip the rest of the season and that includes a day off in between all games and the 3 teams are NY, Brooklyn, and Indiana. Though they do have 6 back to backs and they have to travel in every single one of them (I still don't understand why the NBA does that so much in the schedule, but that is a different topic for a different day). So there are some challenges, but those challenges are all basically at home or a relatively short flight
You want to know why they're 15-2 at home? Look at their home schedule so far:
vs. Bulls (x2), vs. Wizards (x2 early in the season when they were still struggling quite a bit), vs. Philly (x2), vs. Pelicans, vs. Knicks, vs. Hornets, vs. Pacers, vs. Suns, vs. Nets, vs. Kings, vs. Hawks, vs. Bucks, vs. Heat, and vs. Cavaliers.
10 out of those 17 games were against current non-playoff teams. And they still have quite a few tough home games left: 14 out of the 24 remaining home games against current playoff teams, including vs. Celtics (x2), vs. Warriors, vs. Rockets, vs. TWolves, and vs. Spurs.