EVOLUTION COULD SAVE THESE RAPS FROM EXTINCTION
Analytical approach, especially on threes, key to improving aging core’s fortunes
Dwane Casey gave the Toronto Raptors a day off from practice on Friday, which is the kind of thing a guy who has been around a while in these parts would do.
Not making his players drive to work on the morning after the season’s first snowfall, an occasion that renders the region’s drivers into Bambi-on-thefrozen-pond, is just good sense. Savvy move, coach.
But Casey has a lot more to think about this season than just weather-related traffic. He’s trying to guide the Raptors into something they have previously not been. And so, 11 games in and with a 7-4 record, how’s that evolution going?
First, a number of math-related caveats: 11 games is not much of a sample at all, especially when the six road games were played consecutively on a two-week trip. It’s barely an eighth of the schedule and coupled with the amount of change taking place in terms of lineups and strategy one has to allow for the possibility that the results of a game in March could look very different than the results of today.
But there is no doubt that stark change is underway.
There was reason to at least arch an eyebrow at Casey’s preseason contention that the team was serious about becoming more of a passing team and more of a three-point-shooting team. The coach and his two main weapons, DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, had all been defiant at various points in past seasons about playing a style that suited their roster — less passing, more isolation plays — rather than swooning at the revolution taking place elsewhere in the NBA. So far, though, the changed way of thinking hasn’t proven to be just talk.
The Raptors have attempted almost 32 three-pointers per game, a leap up from just over 24 last season. Even as much of the league is bombing more longrange attempts than ever, Toronto is on a steep upward curve. The team was 22nd in average three-point attempts last season and is seventh this season.
On the other key thing they were trying to change, there’s also clear evidence: the Raptors have averaged 22.4 assists per game, good for 13th in the NBA. Last season, they were last in the league at 18.5 assists per game.
In the fancy stats department, the Raptors have climbed from last to middle of the pack in percentage of baskets that were created by an assist. They are up to 11th in the league in pace from 22nd last year and they have a true-shooting percentage of sixth, up from 11th, which reflects the increase in three balls. All those things are pointing the right way for a team in the modern NBA, as anybody in basketball analytics would tell you. (They would also provide charts.)
But there are consequences to all that change, too. DeRozan is taking about three fewer shots per game and scoring about three fewer points. Lowry is taking about four fewer shots per game and his scoring has dropped by almost 10 points per night: 12.9 from 22.4.
This is where we can point back to the caveats of a few paragraphs ago about the time it can take for veterans to adjust to the new offence, but patience will be tested here. In an Eastern Conference in which the Boston Celtics are off to a blazing 10-2 start before Friday’s game and the Cleveland Cavaliers are struggling at 5-7, it has probably occurred to the Raptors’ vets that if they had just kept being the old Raptors, they would have had a pretty good shot against teams that are either young or unproven or lost key players or sometimes all of the above.
Except all that would have gotten them was another high playoff seed with a lineup and playing style that has been repeatedly stymied in the post-season. If they see this evolution through, they will at least get to late April as something of an unknown.
Could a Raptors team that is less predictable, that relies more on depth, that embraces some of the tenets of the modern game be more formidable in the playoffs? Could they at least win the first game of a playoff series for the first time since two-thousandand-freaking-one?
It’s worth a shot, which is why they are amid all this change. And here is one more statistic to watch as the season progresses: the Raptors, for all their threepoint shooting, are not doing it particularly well. They are at 33 per cent in the young season, third last in the league.
Of particular note, per the league website, the Raptors are second last in the NBA on open three-point attempts (31.2 per cent) and not much better on wide-open threes: 35.8 per cent or 23rd in the league. Last season, the best teams in the league by those metrics were Golden State, San Antonio and Cleveland. If the Raptors can just creep up to league average from distance, suddenly the whole plan falls together.
Casey has often said in his post-game comments that it’s a make-or-miss league, so much so that he usually apologizes for saying it again. But he’s not wrong. Even with all the upheaval the Raptors are engineering, some things don’t change.