Raptors leaving ‘free’ points on court

They’re not free points. You still have to earn them by taking the ball aggressively to the basket.

But once a team is drawing fouls, those points from free throws are the kind of uncontested, unrushed, low pressure scores a team is going to have in a night.

There’s a reason them call them free.

So when you fail to take advantage, it can be costly as it was Wednesday night in Chicago when the Toronto Raptors lost 111-105 to the Bulls and as a team shot a woeful 61 per cent from the charity stripe, leaving 11 gimme points uncollected.

At first glance, the situation appears to be very alarming. The Raptors went from the No. 4 team in the NBA a year ago, shooting 81.5 per cent, to the No. 24 team this season, making 75.4 per cent of their freebies.

But as it always the case there are some factors that have contributed to this decline and it’s certainly not ones that can’t, and probably won’t be improved with time.

Age and experience, for instance, is a factor.

A wily old vet like Kyle Lowry knows from his vast experience how impactful taking advantage of those shots can be and when he left he took his .875 free throw percentage with him.

Rookie Scottie Barnes now fills out the starting lineup and instead of an 87.5 per cent free throw shooter there, you have a young man who is still developing and shooting 71.7 per cent from the stripe.

Outside of that jump, the biggest falloff from last year to this is probably the guy who has seen him game make the biggest comeback and that would be Pascal Siakam.

Siakam is doing just about everything on the court better this year than he did a year ago. The only exception is at the free throw line, where he’s gone from an 83.7 per cent shooter down to 72.5.

Seeing the way Siakam has worked on every facet of his game, it seems only a matter of time before he too will revert closer to his numbers from a year ago or at least to his career average, which is about five per cent higher than what he is shooting now.

LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN

Dalano Banton has another opportunity and he’s making the most of it.

Banton, the Etobicoke native, was getting steady bench minutes to begin the year behind Fred Vanvleet but when the decision was made to split those minutes between Siakam and Barnes as Vanvleet rested, Banton’s role shrank considerably.

But now with Vanvleet out the past two games with knee soreness and no indication of a return date, Banton and even Malachi Flynn have become integral parts of Nurse’s rotation.

Banton played 24 minutes on Wednesday in a loss to Chicago and 17 minutes Tuesday in a win over Charlotte. Flynn, who was become a mere rumour the past month or so based on who little playing time he was getting, played eight minutes Wednesday and 24 on Tuesday with Banton in some early foul trouble.

And with a packed schedule the next few weeks as the NBA shoehorns in those games that were postponed in December, those minutes should be there even when Vanvleet returns, at least for the first while.