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Anyone that tells you they know what’s going on with the Toronto Raptors this season—or with the NBA in general, for that matter—is lying.
Thanks to a COVID outbreak midway through December and injuries to key players sprinkled throughout, the Raptors have rarely been whole during their 2021-22 run, with Sunday’s win over the New York Knicks marking just the fourth time all season in which Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, and Scottie Barnes all played and the first with their top-eight rotation players (in terms of minutes per game) available.
Almost halfway through the season and the Toronto Raptors are 16-17 with the 10th best record in a very competitive the Eastern Conference, with only 3.0 games separating them and the No. 5 seed. The Raptors are 9-10 at home, 7-7 on the road, and 6-4 over their last 10 games, with the 13th best offence and 21st best defence in the league, with a net rating of +0.2.
With the new playoff format that came into effect last season, the top 10 teams in each conference will get a chance to make the playoffs, with a play-in tournament featuring the 7-10 seeds taking place between April 12-15, where two teams will advance to the playoffs.
With the obvious caveat being health and COVID—especially when it comes to Fred VanVleet, who has been the most consistent Raptor this season and is the only reliable point guard on the roster—the Raptors are good enough to continue fighting for a playoff berth, assuming the NBA is still functioning by then. If the Raptors get there, this season should be considered a success, especially given how young and inexperienced the roster is and how deep the conference has become. But it won’t be easy.
Here are the three biggest things that the Raptors need to do in order to make the playoffs this season.
Defensive Identity
Defence wins championships. That was certainly the case for the Raptors in their championship season, when they had the fifth best defence in the league. And it’s certainly the end of the floor that head coach Nick Nurse and the front office have prioritized over the last few years, targeting big, long, and athletic players who can cover a lot of ground and are known for their defensive prowess; ones who will only see the floor if they can execute Nurse’s defensive schemes. In fact, while the Raptors are the first team since at least 2014-15 to not have a player 6-foot-10 or taller on their roster, they are not small by any means, with an average size of 6-foot-6.7 and 209.5 pounds, including six players with a wingspan of 7 feet or greater.
Their length and athleticism should allow the Raptors to suffocate teams on the defensive end, but the Raptors defence has been up and down this season due to a combination of inexperience leading to mistakes and COVID and injuries messing with their rotation and chemistry. Fortunately, when healthy, the Raptors are significantly better than their 21st ranked defence would say, and they are trending in the right direction, with their new starting lineup of VanVleet-Trent-Anunoby-Barnes-Siakam allowing just 97.3 points per 100 possessions, which ranks in the 85th percentile in the league.
“It’s part of the roller coaster we’re riding this year a little bit, pretty drastically, right? Big ups, and big downs, and big ups,” Nurse said about the Raptors defence. “I think that the guys have worked really hard. We’ve zeroed in on continuing to practice fundamental, foundational, daily defensive developmental drills, and we’re seeing some results of that.”
What the Raptors do extremely well on defense is aggressively hound the ball for deflections and steals, leading the league in deflections with 18.7 and placing third in steals with 9.1 per game. In fact, VanVleet (3.8), Gary Trent Jr. (3.6), OG Anunoby (3.4), and Scottie Barnes (2.8) all rank within the top-20 in the league in deflections per game. The Raptors play that aggressive style in part to force a ton of turnovers (on 17.5 percent of opponent possessions) that fuel a transition offence that scores an average of 23.1 points per game, third most in the league.
However, where the Raptors struggle defensively is on the glass, where the Raptors defensive rebounding percentage of 70.1 ranks third last in the league, and opponents are scoring 15.0 second-chance points per game after offensive rebounds. Plus, because the Raptors don’t have a traditional rim protector to contest shots at the rim, they play a more aggressive style that demands all of their players pinch into the paint and collectively cut off drives to the rim, which leads to more fouls (opponents are scoring 20.6 free throws per 100 possessions, which ranks in the 22nd percentile) and more corner threes (12.6 percent of opponents shots are coming from the corners, 28th percentile).
These are legitimate concerns, but it seems as though the Raptors defensive chemistry has been improving as of late and, now that they are relatively healthy, a lot of these concerns should naturally dissipate.
Bench Depth
It wasn’t so long ago that fans and analysts were speculating that the Raptors would be one of the deepest teams in the league. But it hasn’t worked out that way. Not even close.
The Raptors bench has been abysmal to start the season, at least on the offensive end of the floor, scoring by far the fewest points per game of any bench in the league at 24.8 and shooting by far the worst percentage from three at 27.5. In fact, one of the only ways that the bench has survived this season is by mucking up the game and attacking the offensive glass, where they are grabbing a league-leading 35.4 percent of offensive rebounds, which is not a sustainable number. It’s no wonder Nurse has leaned so heavily on his starters, with VanVleet (37.9), Anunoby (36.8), and Scottie Barnes (36.0) all top-9 in the league in minutes per game.
Sure, the Raptors have been banged up all season and that has forced Nurse to bump certain players into the starting lineup and others into bigger roles on the bench; ones that they might not be comfortable playing at this stage in their careers. But between Malachi Flynn, Dalano Banton, Svi Mykhailiuk, Yuta Watanabe, and Chris Boucher, it would be fair to expect more from the Raptors bench over the first quarter of the season. They have simply not delivered.
Things have been so bad that Nurse turned to undrafted two-way rookie Justin Champagnie at the end of the Oklahoma City Thunder game recently, having this to say about the other bench players following the loss:
“I didn’t like any of the other guys. I thought the other guys were soft, and unenergetic and not playing their role. They’re supposed to come off the bench and provide energy and they weren’t getting any stops, weren’t getting any rebounds, were fumbling balls around, so I went to Justin.”
Sure, the bench should improve with Anunoby back in the starting lineup and the two centers back in the fold, but some of those guys are going to have to start hitting shots in order to give the starters more rest and to cover for them on off nights when they don’t have it going.
Clutch Time
The Raptors are not an elite team blessed with a superstar and they’re not a bad team tanking to the bottom of the standings, which means there will likely be a lot of very close games this season; ones that come down to the final few possessions. Already, 16 of their 29 games have been decided by 10 points or fewer and 11 have been decided by six points or fewer.
Last season, the Raptors were one of the worst “clutch” teams in the league, performing poorly in the final five minutes of games within five points, with several heartbreaking losses coming at the buzzer. In fact, they went 11-28 in such games, with a bad offence and a bad defence culminating in a net rating of -16.9, which ranked second worst in the league.
The Raptors have gotten off to a better start in clutch time this season, going 6-7 in games that were within 5 points in the final five minutes, with a +8.8 net rating in 41.0 clutch minutes. Unlike last season when the late-game offence was almost all on Siakam’s shoulders, the Raptors have diversified their approach this season, with VanVleet, Siakam, Trent, and Anunoby all getting opportunities late in games.
“I’d much rather go toward where you might see an advantageous matchup, maybe. I’ve always kind of felt that way. If you’ve got a few guys where there maybe isn’t a whole lot of difference who you give the ball to, then you’ve got to look for the best matchup,” Nurse says about his offensive philosophy at the end of games. “Then it’s the feel of the game as well. I think there are certain nights where guys are really rolling or they got really hot and scored some in the end, and that influences your decision, too.”
While the offence sometimes looks stilted at the end of games, Nurse is trying to balance ball-movement to get good shots with risk-aversion to not turn the ball over, a hard balance to strike at the end of games when the intensity and physicality picks up.
“I think the absolute safest thing to do is to give one guy the ball, get out of the way, and let that guy get a shot up, right? Because it’s a very, very low risk of a turnover, which is a disaster in those situations. And so limiting passes, limiting screening, I think everybody can understand that. That probably makes the most sense,” Nurse says. “Yet, when that happens, everybody says: ‘why didn’t they move the ball, and why didn’t they set some screens?’… it’s the funniest thing.”
One thing the Raptors have done really well in the clutch is attack the offensive glass relentlessly and rely on offensive rebounds to provide second-chance opportunities, grabbing a league-leading 52.6 percent of offensive boards in late-game situations. However, on the other end of the floor, the Raptors are leaking defensive rebounds, grabbing just 52.8 percent of defensive rebounds in the clutch, by far the fewest in the league.
Sure, some of those numbers on both sides are due to a small sample sizes and are sure to regress towards the mean, but some of this is to be expected with how the Raptors like to close out games, preferring to go small with a closing-lineup of VanVleet-Trent-Anunoby-Barnes-Siakam. After all, they didn’t draft Barnes No. 4 overall to sit on the bench at the end of games, but defensive rebounding will be a huge bellwether for if that lineup works long-term or if they will need to play a more traditional center at the end of games.
Only time will tell how things play out, but the Raptors are on an upward trajectory right now, playing better as the season goes along. If they can improve the defence, get more from the bench, and effectively close-out tight games, they should be in the playoff mix come season’s end.