What's behind the greatest offense of all time?

The Golden State Warriors are on pace for 70 wins again and scoring more efficiently than any team that's ever come before them, but not more efficiently than any team this season.

A third of the way through the year, that distinction belongs to the Toronto Raptors, whose offensive rating of 115.2 points per 100 possessions is 1.4 points ahead of the star-studded Warriors for the best all-time mark.

courtesy: Basketball Reference

The Raptors' offense isn't as aesthetically pleasing as Golden State's up-tempo attack, where almost every bucket seems as though it was manufactured through mesmerizing ball movement and complex creativity.

Toronto's offense is for those who find beauty in methodical simplicity. The Raptors play at the 10th-slowest pace, take care of the ball, move it just enough to find and attack a mismatch (they rank 28th with 270.8 passes per game), knock down 3-pointers, get to free-throw line, crash the offensive glass, and put it all together to the tune of 48-40-81 shooting.

The Raptors' offense has been good for a while now, ranking in the top 10 in four straight seasons and the top five in three straight, so what's been the difference in going from perennially good to historically great?

Finding shooters

Head coach Dwane Casey said before Tuesday's victory over the Brooklyn Nets that the Raptors are emphasizing 3-pointers more, but the percentage of their field-goal attempts that come from behind the arc has actually dropped from 28.7 last season to 28.5 this year, which ranks in the bottom 10.

If there's a difference with Toronto's long-range attempts, it's that they're getting cleaner looks, as roughly 80.2 percent of the team's 3-point tries have been defined as open or wide open (meaning the closest defender is at least four feet away), compared to 75.6 percent last season, according to NBA.com's shooting data.

"I think guys are getting their rhythm playing with DeMar (DeRozan) and Kyle (Lowry)," Casey told theScore on Tuesday. "When teams send extra bodies at them or blitz them, those guys are doing a good job of finding an outlet, and then that outlet is doing a good job of finding the shooters, and then they're making the shots. We're making plays off drive-kick-swing situations."

Continuity

In addition to the play of All-Stars Lowry and DeRozan, Nets coach Kenny Atkinson credited the team's continuity for its lethal offense. Casey agreed, as the quintet of Lowry, DeRozan, Patrick Patterson, Jonas Valanciunas, and Terrence Ross has been together for more than three years now, while nine of the team's 10 most used players have played at least two seasons in Toronto.

"The continuity's huge," Casey said. "There's a reason why San Antonio's been successful over the years. It helps to keep a group together and add a few pieces here and there, which we've done.

"We can call a lot of stuff on the fly. We're running a lot of our same sets and calls. In timeouts, referencing things in videos and film that they see over and over again. Defensively, it hasn't kicked in yet, but we can use the same terminology and philosophy."

DeRozan, who recently became the franchise's all-time leader in games played and needs only 59 points to become Toronto's all-time leading scorer, understands the importance of that familiarity.

"There's not much we haven't seen, not much we don't understand," DeRozan said in the Raptors locker room following Tuesday's win. "When you have camaraderie, everything else falls into place and it makes it look effortless."

Dynamic duo

DeRozan knows a thing or two about making things look easy, as the mid-range maestro, often knocked for his shot selection, is averaging 27.9 points per game on an effective field-goal percentage of 50.2. Even with his nightly parade to the free throw line, that kind of efficiency is striking given DeRozan's career-high usage rate (34.1 percent) and his time spent in isolation.

It didn't take long for Lowry to reference DeRozan's career year when asked how the Raptors' offense has improved. "DeMar DeRozan's scoring whatever he's scoring," Lowry quipped, moments before having his hat flipped off his head by DeRozan in the comedic duo's latest on-camera highlight. "He's scoring a lot."

Lowry did reference another, often overlooked component of the offense, however. "I think we're screening better (than last season). That's one thing we're doing better. Everyone's involved, and everyone has the confidence to just go out there and play their game. No one's worried about anything but us winning as a team."

To Lowry's point, the Raptors rank third in team screen assists (12.4 per game), defined as a screen that directly leads to a teammate making a field goal.

Of course, the presence of Lowry, who ranks ninth (just ahead of Kawhi Leonard) in Win Shares over the last four years, must always be considered when discussing Toronto's excellence, as the Raptors score 13.2 points per 100 possessions less with their starting point guard on the bench.

The road ahead

Entering a grueling stretch that includes a six-game Western Conference road trip and eight of 12 games against winning teams, Lowry's Raptors are 20-8, boasting the league's second-best net rating, the 16th-best point-differential of all time, and sitting one game behind Cleveland for the East lead. If they can get through the next three weeks while keeping within arm's reach of the Cavs, the league's easiest January-April schedule could very well propel the Raptors to the No. 1 seed.

Beating Cleveland four out of seven times come May remains a near-impossible task, especially considering Toronto's sub-par defense, but home-court advantage would be a start. Should the Raptors achieve that feat after surviving a punishing first-half schedule, they'll have basketball's most productive offense ever to thank.