High hopes for new-look offence lost in transition
Freewheeling Rockets on tap for Raptors squad seeking answers at both ends
HOUSTON— The point where it’s no longer possible to chalk up inconsistencies and trying to tweak the offence to the early portion of the NBA season is rapidly approaching for the Raptors, and a trouble spot or two remain.
The biggest issue at the moment is the team’s transition defence, which has been sorely lacking at times through the first dozen games of the season, and it’s given coach Dwane Casey a problem to solve.
“For whatever reason, trying to find our offensive rhythm, that’s no excuse,” Casey said in Boston after the Raptors began a three-game road trip with a 95-94 loss to the surging Celtics on Sunday.
“But I do know that not having a rhythm offensively has hurt our defence, our transition defence. We’ve got to get back to who we are.
“Last year we were top five or whatever (in) transition defence, and this year we’re in the bottom. Our philosophy is the same. So we’ve got to get back to it.”
There are a couple of factors at play that need to be addressed, and they were evident when Boston racked up a handful of easy looks in transition in Sunday’s victory.
The Raptors are wrestling with some positioning issues on offence — players are more spread out on the floor, leaving gaps opponents can attack — but it’s mainly a factor of work and awareness.
Too often, too many players are watching plays rather than reacting and busting back on defence.
“It’s up to us to get them to do better, and keep our foot on the pedal to improve the transition defence to give your defence a chance,” Casey said. “If you don’t get back and give your set defence a chance, you don’t know what you have. First it’s ‘want to’ in those first three steps. You got to want to take those first three steps, and second you’ve got to talk.
“You have to communicate in transition. All those things, no matter what happens on the offensive end — missed shot or shot selection, whatever it is — we’ve got to figure that out and get those first three steps going the right way.”
The offensive woes that lead to poor transition defence stem from slightly different spacing when the Raptors have the ball.
More movement gets players in different spots than they might have been used to, and with shots coming from different places — and often quicker than the team is used to — players can be caught by surprise.
It’s something that’s easy to work out once everyone is used to where shots are being taken from and who is taking them, but it’s getting to be long enough with problems still persisting.
There have been too many missed shots — the Raptors are shooting only 33.5 per cent from three-point range, but take 31.1 shots from beyond the arc on average each game — and floor balance is often off.
It’s led to the inconsistency that has plagued Toronto through a 7-5 start to the season, and the Raptors give up an average of 13.4 fast-break points per game, which ranks 27th in the 30-team league.
“There are a lot of things we see we are not doing and we’ve got to do better,” Casey said.