Twenty games is the internationally accepted point at which the Small Sample Zone gives way to the province of hard conclusions. Generally, we know what teams are around the quarter poll of the season.
That’s probably true of these Toronto Raptors. Maybe their 6-15 overall record is a tad unrepresentative, noised up by the league’s second-worst injury luck and a bunch of lost coin flips. But the general identity of this team — a deeper-than-expected bunch of plucky menaces that can hang with most any opponent and probably lose 2-3 times as much as it wins — is set.
And yet, thanks to the disjointed nature of the Raptors’ start, there’s plenty going on under the hood that’ll need another 20 games (or more) to be fully understood.
Here are some of the stats making me go “hmmmmm....” so far.
Zone busters?
After years of getting absolutely flattened by zone defenses, there are signs of life in Toronto. Per Synergy, they’ve seen the sixth-most zone of any team in the league — a meager 3.3 possessions per game. In the past, the Raptors’ dire lack of shooting and absence of any real plans meant zone stopped them dead in their tracks. But through this admittedly teensy-tiny sample of 70 or so possessions, they’re pouring it in at a 1.29 points per possession clip — fifth in the league!
It could crater, certainly. Immanuel Quickley is still a ways from returning, and this roster isn’t exactly loaded with zone-busting shooting talent. There’s more than there used to be, though. And the collective interior passing talent of this group, from Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl to the revelatory Jonathan Mogbo and leaping RJ Barrett, just to name a few sources, is off the charts. If you can’t beat zone with threes, do it with dimes — as they did on this pretty sequence on Sunday against Miami, their longest standing zoning foe.
Transition troubles
Why do the Raptors stink so bad on the run this season!? It’s been one of the more confounding early season trends to track. Last year, Toronto’s lifeblood was scoring in the open court — they were first in transition frequency, and fifth in points per play according to Cleaning the Glass. Elite stuff.
This year? There’s all kinds of low-hanging fruit being left on the tree. Darko Rajakovic’s runs the 12th-most of any team after being oh so sprint happy a year ago, and are 27th in points per possession on the break (29th if you go by NBA.com’s tracking data). What’s going on here?
My best guess is this is a in large part a lingering metric from Scottie Barnes’ 11-game absence. He’s as majestic a transition conductor as you’ll find in the NBA, and hasn’t played in half of the games. It’s if nothing else a start in trying to find the root of the problem.
You’d think turnovers would be to blame a little, considering they’ve dragged down the Raptors’ offense in all sorts of contexts this season. But the numbers say that’s not quite true. They’re actually 10th in limiting giveaways on the run. So what gives? Some of it is sloppy finishing, and the lack of healthy shooters has left them without much of a trail threat. But this a number that needs a little more time to bake before we really know what we’re working with, I reckon.
Good or lucky?
It’s been a steady climb for the Raptors’ high-pressure defense after once being sub-Wizards on that end in late October. On the season, they’re bad-not-catastrophic, sitting 23rd in getting stops per NBA.com. Over the last 10 games, though, they’re 12th.
Part of the recent uptick is sustainable, surely. Davion Mitchell and Agbaji each rank among the league leaders in all kinds of fancy perimeter defense metrics, and Scottie Barnes has gone pterodactyl mode since his return from injury. Factor in Mogbo and Walter looking well ahead of the curve as rookies, and ol’ reliable Poeltl, and there’s some real defensive talent working within Rajakovic’s ball-hounding system.
Is the dam about to burst, though? Three-point shooting is highly variable, and the general belief is that defenses only have so much sway over whether the shots from deep are falling on a given night. It stands to reason then that some regression to the mean is coming for the Raptors, who currently give up the 5th-lowest opposing three-point percentage; 2nd-lowest from above-the-break.
But maybe there’s something behind what the Raptors are doing to force off-nights; they do employ a guy who goes by that nickname after all. With how nasty the Raptors are at the point of attack, getting off pull-up threes is understandably hard for opponents. Toronto also contests the 10th-most threes a night, for whatever that’s worth.
They also allow the 17th-most desirable shot diet to opponents, while surrendering the 8th-lowest overall effective field goal percentage. So yeah, there’s probably some sort of reality check on the way, though maybe not a disastrous one. Let’s check back in at the halfway point.
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Today on the podcast, Vivek Jacob and I ran through The Good, The Bad & The Hmm from the Raptors’ first 21 games. Enjoy the show!
