Three-point woes start inside the paint
Shooters will benefit by moving ball into the key and kicking it back out
MILWAUKEE— The search for answers for the Toronto Raptors’ three-point shooting woes should probably focus on the painted area of any NBA court.
Never mind the corners, and forget the area at the top of the key and beyond the three-point arc. It is the paint that triggers everything.
At least that’s what the team’s analytical people say and it makes as much sense as anything to explain why the Raptors have fallen near the bottom of the league in three-point shooting over the past month.
Danny Green sees it, senses it and thinks it is a huge part of why the Raptors are 26th in three-point percentage in the 30-team league.
“We know we can get better (three-point attempts) if we touch the paint, move the ball, swing-swing (the ball around the perimeter), (make the) extra pass, which we need to get back to,” he said. Coach Nick Nurse had a more factual argument. “If (you) looked at the numbers analytically … you would say, ‘Oh my God,’ ” he said Saturday before the Raptors faced the Milwaukee Bucks. “That’s 1.38 (points per possession) every time it touches the paint and .83 when it doesn’t.
“I mean if you want to lay those numbers out for everyone and say, ‘I’ll pick that one’ … It’s not quite as obvious as three being more than two but almost.”
The Raptors, just 8-8 going into Saturday’s game after a blistering 20-4 start to the season, simply haven’t been shooting the ball well enough from three-point range to survive in this era’s style of NBA play.
It’s not that they can’t. Green, the still-injured Kyle Lowry, the now-forgotten C.J. Miles and Fred Van Vleet are historically better than they have been most nights. It’s just that right now, they aren’t. And it’s crippling the team’s offence.
And maybe the pedestrian ball movement of late — too much reliance on one-on-one attacking, and too little of the driveand-kick, swing-pass action that worked so well early — is behind the shooting woes.
“I think that’s the biggest reason why we’re not getting as many open looks and getting more forced looks or end-of-shot-clock looks, why the shooting percentage is lower than it should be,” Green said. “Not saying it would be great but it would be better if we did have crisper movement.”
The Raptors aren’t going to change the way they want to play because of recent shooting woes because there’s at least as large a sample size from early in the season that shows they are good at it.
But they do have to get back to that offensive “identity” built around moving the ball side-to-side on the floor and capitalizing on better open shots.
Nurse says they hammer that point home every day. “We start almost every day out with drills (where we) touch the paint and then the next one is to touch the paint and kick it out, and that’s the way we build our offence.”
It’s also what they’ve gotten away from. Disruptive injuries have played a role in what’s gone on, but there has also been too much individual play. It might be well intentioned when a player tries to singlehandedly get the Raptors back in a game or keep them it, but it’s counterproductive. “We know who we are, we just haven’t executed the way we wanted to,” Green said. “We get down, press and try to do it all one by one. One guy trying to bring us back, or another guy trying to bring us back instead of doing it collectively. And it’s kind of a domino effect, when other guys see one guy trying to do it, then another guy tries to do it.
“So we (have to consciously) try to find each other and move the ball, do what we do, so it’ll be a domino effect on a good note for us.”