Raptors Try to Explain Why Defensive Woes Have Persisted This Year

Darko Rajaković has been doing his part to try to fix this disappointing Toronto Raptors defense.

Just listen to him on the sideline for any stretch of the game. He’s yelling, calling out assignments, trying to be something like the sixth man on the court for his team. He’s engaged, very engaged. The problem for Toronto this season is far too often he’s the only one.

“We have a lot of just quiet people,” Pascal Siakam said earlier this week. “We’ve got to find a way to energize each other, find a way to communicate to each other.”

It’s the only reason that explains Toronto’s somehow 18^th-ranked defensive rating this year. Just look at the roster, it’s loaded with the type of players who should be good defensively. The Raptors are rangy, athletic, and quick. They can defend multiple positions and if you ask them, they’ll tell you that they have multiple players who should be in contention for All-Defense spots.

And yet, Toronto’s group has been less than the sum of its parts.

Why?

“Probably communication, missed switches, missed coverages,” OG Anunoby said Thursday as he tried to explain why the Raptors have been so disappointing defensively. “Also learning a new defense, a new play style defensively. Just try to figure that all out.”

When Toronto was at its best back in 2019 it had a roster filled with high-level defenders who knew how to communicate. Anunoby essentially listed off Toronto’s starting lineup from that team with Fred VanVleet and Serge Ibaka included when he was asked to name the best communicators he’d ever played with.

But these days, that communication is missing.

“It comes from a place of players being quiet but I want to have such a clear game plan and execution and everything that there is no gray area for them,” Rajaković said.

The players have to be better too, and it can’t just be the job of one or two players to speak up on the defensive end. Everyone has to be working together, willing to call out switches and rotations if they’re involved in the play.

“Just knowing that you have somebody there and just trusting that a little bit more,” Siakam said. “If your teammates are telling you, 'Oh, hey,' it just reminds you. Sometimes we just miss that.”

With the way offense is being played these days, there’s virtually nobody in the league that can defend one-on-one for extended stretches. Even Anunoby, one of the league’s premiere isolation defenders, needs help more than a handful of times every game. For Toronto, that help has been what’s been missing.

It doesn’t matter how good this team is individually as defenders, breakdowns are going to happen and without communication, those gaps aren’t going to be plugged. Until the Raptors learn to speak up and talk to one another, these defensive woes aren’t going anywhere.