Five standout Raptors stats from the first quarter

Aside from Barrett being out, there have also been other notable issues crop up against set defences. Namely an over reliance on Brandon Ingram’s heroics as a primary means to score rather than a release valve if advantages don’t open up.

Last season the Raptors ranked amongst the league leaders in quality of shot diet (fourth in Cleaning the Glass’s location effective field goal percentage). They took a ton of attempts at the rim and from the corners but were inefficient. This year they’ve done a bit of the inverse, dropping to 14th in Loc eFG% but actually making the shots even though they’ve been harder. That is until recently. They were fourth in eFG% prior to the last four games, since they’ve been dead last.

This is an oversimplification but Ingram takes a lot of shots, the bulk of which come from the mid-range, so it’s easy to see where a lot of this change in the shots that the Raptors are taking is coming from. The offence needs to find a happy medium – streamlining Ingram’s shot-making abilities and also getting more easy catch-and-shoot looks and layups. Which takes us to our next topic.

Low-quality assists

Once again Darko Rajaković’s offence is generating (some would say farming) a ton of assists. The Raptors are top five in both assists per game and assist percentage. That they’re also top five in assist to turnover ratio is impressive considering their offence is predicated on a ton of passing, something that usually comes with more turnovers. (The Raptors ranked 24th in turnovers last season and are sixth now.)

The Raptors use passing and off-ball movement as their primary means of moving the ball around the court, rather than the dribble, because they don’t have many players who can get places with their handle.

The one who can best, Ingram, often passes when he has to, not when it’s most opportune. He passes out of only 29 percent of his drives, well below the league average of about 37 percent. Scottie Barnes, who is often a willing playmaker, passes out of only 27 percent. The Raptors’ lead guard, Immanuel Quickley, has had issues both maintaining his dribble and delivering layups to teammates in the past.

Instead teammates cut to the hoop and fly off screens, with a concert of movement and passing between the group combining to do the work. And this is ok, even good process, when it works. Yet similar to having a player like Ingram who can break defences with his talent when a play breaks down, having a creator who can collapse defences and generate shots for others is invaluable. The Raptors have showed flashes of this recently. Doing it even more would go a long way towards busting their offensive funk.

Jamal Shead is the exception here. He’s been making brilliant decisions with the ball. Last season he frequently used an inefficient push-shot from the short mid-range. He’s mostly cut that out – his shooting frequency from the short mid-range has dropped from 67th to 28th percentile – and is instead making great passing reads when he stops his drives short of them rim.

Tipping the transition scales

The Raptors get out and run more than any other team in the NBA and also are one of the best teams at limiting opponents from doing the same.

They rank first in transition frequency by a wide margin. They also rank first in both transition frequency off steals and live rebounds. If there is an opportunity to run, they’re going to take it, often by pinging the ball ahead with quick hit-ahead passes. They call this “first touch,” Where they look to immediately find an outlet after reacquiring possession of the ball.

While transition play is always going to be more efficient than in the halfcourt (the league’s worst transition offence is 7.8 points per 100 possessions better than the best halfcourt offence this season) the Raptors have struggled to finish these looks. They rank 25th in transition efficiency at 119.3 points per 100, with players like Ingram, Quickley, Shead, Gradey Dick and Ja’Kobe Walter all struggling here.

On the other end the Raptors rank seventh in limiting transition frequency and third in opponents’ transition efficiency. I wrote in a similar but more depressing version of this column last year about the Raptors tagging up on offensive rebounds. They still do this, but not nearly as much to my eye, often sagging off instead. This can be seen in their drop off in offensive rebounding – they finished fourth with 12.6 last season and are currently 22nd at 10.4.

It seems to me that they still matchup with their man though, they just don’t get right on his back to potentially grab the board the way the Houston Rockets are this season, for example, leading to exorbitant offensive-rebounding rates. Instead they’re prioritizing just limiting opponents getting out in transition, while also doing everything they can to get out on the break themselves, hoping the disparity in easier possessions tilts the floor in their favour.

Defensive red-flag

This has been written about both in an outstanding guest column by the esteemed Joe Wolfond and by Raptors Republic’s big boss Louis Zatzman, but there are holes to be poked in the Raptors’ fifth-ranked defence.

I won’t go long here because they covered it so well but the crux is that the Raptors are allowing a lot of high-quality shots (at the rim and corner 3s) and opposing teams are missing them. They’re now allowing the fourth-highest rim frequency and sixth-highest corner 3-point frequency. Opponents are shooting only 33.2 percent from the corners and 32.2 percent overall from downtown against them, both the second-worst rates in the league.

The conventional, analytical, wisdom is that defences can effect opponents’ 3-point volume, but not their accuracy. Interestingly, Rajaković had the opposite opinion.

Opponents’ shooting is liable to normalize at least a little. It’s swung back the other way in big way over the last four games, as the Raptors have allowed 42.9 percent shooting from the corners, tied for the seventh-highest mark in the league.

Barnes is a DPOY candidate

We’ve just covered the primary reason to be negative about the Raptors’ defence. If there’s a reason to be optimistic, it’s Barnes.

He can’t do it all himself, but he certainly is able to clean up a ton of the drives the Raptors’ offence allows with its high-pressure scheme as a help defender. (Rajaković does deserve credit for scaling the pressure back a little when it wasn’t working.) Barnes swallows massive tracts of ground with his steps, stalking around the middle of the floor with his straight-out-of-a-zombie-movie steps before he pounces on his prey, adding to his 64 stocks on the season, second-most in the NBA. He is going to get you.

And while his work as a backline sweeper is his calling card, Barnes is also versatile. His on-ball defence has been strong and he’s shown a willingness and ability – dating back to last season – to play great deny defence on opposing stars, changing the dynamic of games.

If the Raptors stay near this good, Barnes should make an All-Defence team, and maybe even wind up as a Defensive Player of the Year candidate.