Which Raptors team stats trends would change if they get healthy?
Which Raptors team stats trends would change if the team got healthy?
NBA team stats start to normalize at roughly the 20-game mark. So, usually the quarter mark of the season is a prudent time to take stock of what these trends are telling us. However, this season has been anything but normal for the Toronto Raptors.
We have discussed the onslaught of injuries the Raptors have dealt with ad nauseam, so I’ll keep this brief. They have lost the fifth-most man games to injury (134) and have the third highest cash total per games missed. The de facto starting lineup has yet to play together this season, after playing together for only 10 possessions (four minutes) last season. This includes 30 missed games for Immanuel Quickley, 13 for Scottie Barnes, 31 for Bruce Brown Jr., 14 for Ja’Kobe Walter, 23 for Kelly Olynyk, seven for RJ Barrett, six for Gradey Dick, and five for Jakob Poeltl.
My initial inclination was to wait until we got a 20-game sample of the healthy Raptors, and evaluate the data gleaned from that. If only we were so lucky. This is something that will be revisited if and when that happens – hopefully it does for both our sake and the team’s.
Whatever the numbers are telling us about the Raptors to this point of the season, it comes with this big fat injury-riddled caveat. Along with that, we have to ask the question: which of these tendencies have been most affected by player absences this season, and which would have likely emerged regardless of the team’s health? Here we will break down some of the Raptors prominent statistical trends this season, and try to parse which ones are here to stay and which ones are likely to change along with the starting lineup.
Good transition defence and offensive rebounding?
Generally speaking, teams that place an emphasis on crashing the glass and grabbing offensive rebounds risk conceding easier opportunities in transition to their opponents.
The Raptors have managed to buck this trend, grabbing offensive rebounds at the fourth highest rate in the league while preventing opponents from running roughshod on the break. They rank 12th in both opponent transition frequency and opponent transition points per 100 possessions. How is this possible?
First, Poeltl is responsible for a great deal of it himself, grabbing nearly a third of the Raptors 12.6 offensive boards per game. You don’t need to send the whole gang to rebound your own misses when the big guy who’s already in the paint gobbles them all up.
The other factor that allows Toronto to get so many second chance opportunities while still sticking to their men in transition, is doing exactly that, sticking to their men. Caitlin Cooper and Raptors Republic’s Samson Folk discussed tagging on offensive rebounds on a podcast earlier this season. The Raptors have utilized this tactic, actively picking up their checks when the shot goes up. This has a twofold effect. First it makes it easy to grab the kind of long rebound that often comes after 3-point attempts – which teams around the league are putting up at an all-time high. Second, it means that if they fail to grab the offensive rebound, they are already paired up with their defensive assignment going the other way, mitigating opponents’ transition effectiveness.
While the Raptors aren’t doing much well this season, this is one area where they have been effective.
For the first time in a long time, the transition offence is bad
Prior to this season, the Raptors have long been a juggernaut on the fast break. They were a top five team in both transition frequency and points added per 100 possessions via transition for six seasons straight (per Cleaning the Glass, which differs from NBA.com as it filters out garbage time). They were also a top-10 team in points per 100 transition plays in four of the six years, and were always in the top half of the league.
No longer.
While they still get out and run often, they have been a bottom-five team when it comes to converting on those opportunities, and are eight points per 100 possessions worse than league average (114.1 compared to 122.1).
This is a significant departure from last season, particularly when it comes to running off of live rebounds. In 2023-24, the Raptors had the highest transition frequency after corralling opponents misses and the second-best points per 100 plays at 129.0. This season, while they are still eighth in the league in frequency, Toronto is 27th in points per 100 plays at 103.0!
This is an extreme shift, and there are identifiable causes. It started with the trades of OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam, who were significant contributors posting higher than 90th percentile on/off impacts on live rebound transition scoring. Somewhat surprisingly, Gary Trent Jr. had a similar effect on the Raptors transition play in this area, by the numbers.
The current Raptors have players who can thrive on the fast break. Strong, skilled finishers like Barrett, Barnes, and Ochai Agbaji. Barrett has been their best transition player by far. But, the only other players that have had a positive effect on the Raptors’ ability to convert on the break come off the bench – Mitchell, Walter, and Chris Boucher.
Barnes has seen his on/off impact on transition scoring go from positive across the board last season, to well below average this year. A lack of decisiveness and some uncharacteristically poor passes have played a part. Dick has also struggled on the fast break, posting the worst transition field goal percentage on the team at 39.2 percent. He has been a huge net negative when it comes to running off of live rebounds specifically.
Both Brown and Quickley were net negatives in on/off transition scoring last season (-4.6 and -4.7 respectively). Although, both have been effective transition players in past seasons. And In Quickley’s return on Wednesday, his ability to increase the defence’s pick-up point and throw good hit-ahead passes led to fruitful transition play. There is potential for incremental improvement here. While it may appear unlikely that the Raptors will see significant gains on the break, Quickley, Brown, and Olynyk (who is also able to make quality hit-ahead passes off of rebounds) may cause a slight uptick in transition scoring.
Limitations in the halfcourt persist
For almost as long as the Raptors had excelled in transition, they struggled in the halfcourt. Just think back to the days of Nick Nurse pushing ultra-aggressive defensive tactics to force turnovers and generally gaming the possession battle all in an attempt to circumvent this. For five straight seasons, the Raptors have been a bottom-10 team against a set defence.
This season is no different. Toronto scores 93.0 points per 100 plays in the halfcourt, good for 24th in the NBA. Not only does this trend align with the Raptors’ previous results, there is also some fairly sound reasoning as to why they struggle in this setting, making it seem quite real.
A lack of 3-point shooting and live-dribble creation standout as the primary explanations.
A lot of the Raptors’ shot diet actually corresponds with what modern analytics prescribes. They are second in rim frequency and 11th in corner 3-point frequency, the two most efficient shots in basketball. However, similar to their transition game, they often fail to cash in on these looks (27th and 13th in the league in percentage respectively).
Move outside of the small space in the corner and into the vast expanse of court above the break and the Raptors’ 3-point struggles come into focus. They are last in the league in non-corner 3-point frequency. As the corner 3 is an easier shot, it is also one defences work to take away, funnelling shooters above the break, resulting in far more 3s being available from the wing to the top of the floor. Toronto has also been devoid of pull-up shooting, where they are last in the league by a wide margin. In consequence, the Raptors are 28th in 3-point attempts per game (33.4). They don’t take many 3s and they also don’t make many, shooting 34.4 percent total and 33.3 from above the break (21st and 24th in the league respectively).
Shooting volume isn’t everything. The Denver Nuggets are proof, as they take the least 3-point attempts in the league and are sixth in halfcourt offence (although they are fourth in 3-point percentage, plus Nikola Jokic). Above-the-break shooting does, however, stretch the floor vertically, opening up more space for a motion offence like Toronto’s to work.
And the .5 offence is still intact. The Raptors are top five in assist percentage, passes made per game, potential assists, seconds per touch, and distance travelled. And this system has succeeded in getting them high-quality shots. But to go along with all the passing and motion, Toronto needs to shoot the 3-ball to be successful.
Toronto’s lack of live dribble creation is also an issue. Barrett has taken a huge leap this season creating advantages for teammates as a pick n’ roll ball handler, and while Barnes was passive for a stretch, his feel for the game and passing ability remains elite. Yet the Raptors still lack a truly dynamic lead guard.
This is where Quickley’s return can get interesting.
He will instantly be the Raptors’ best shooter on both pull-ups and from above the break, and this will have some degree of cascading effect on the rest of the offence. We may see Dick’s percentages get a bump when he cedes some of these high-degree of difficulty shots to Quickley and benefits from the extra space.
As far as creating with a live dribble, the Kentucky product has a spotty track record. In his few appearances with the team this season, Quickley often had difficulty creating and maintaining advantages, frequently picking up his dribble and disrupting the flow of the offence.
Quickley will help ameliorate some of the Raptors shooting and spacing woes, and he may even propel them out of the bottom-10 in 3-point frequency. As far as the creation goes, time will tell. In his New Year’s Day return against the Brooklyn Nets, the 25-year-old guard showed some promise maintaining a continuous live dribble and making reads. He showed flashes in this area last season too, but it’s only been one game since he came back from injury. There is still a long way to go before we can consider this part of his toolkit.
The return of the Raptors’ lead guard and highest-paid player (for now) will have a positive impact on their halfcourt effectiveness. We saw that much on Wednesday. How much of a positive impact it will have is yet to be determined.
The increased defensive aggression isn’t going well
Coming out of media day, the biggest talking point was the Raptors’ new philosophy on defence. To coach Darko Rajakovic’s credit, the team has bought in. They are using higher pick-up points and pressuring the ball more at the point of attack.
So far, this hasn’t achieved the desired effect, as the Raptors rank 26th with a 116.9 defensive rating. They have some strong individual defenders like Mitchell, Agbaji, and Jonathan Mogbo, and also some poor ones in Dick and Barrett. The Raptors’ level of focus and energy when it comes to help principles has fluctuated throughout the season, and has been on a downward trajectory of late, as they just allowed the most points by any team over a three-game span in 33 years.
The disparity in defensive talent and ebb and flow in effort has come out in the wash to a 16th-ranked opponent effective field goal percentage of 54.6 percent. That’s the friendliest number that can be mustered to compliment this defence.
But interestingly, all the pressure on ball handlers isn’t creating many turnovers, as the Raptors rank 23rd with a 13.9 percent opponent turnover rate and 21st with 7.8 steals per game. Their mix of persistent pressure and relative inexperience has however caused them to have a league-worst opponent free throw rate.
I wrote about this new defensive identity in detail back in November, but all the high pick-up points, aggression on the ball and lock-and-trail defence has made it easier for opposing players to get by Raptors’ defenders and to the paint/rim. They’re 24th in the percentage of opponent’s shots taken at the rim (34.2 percent) as a result. The aggression in some ways has had all the drawbacks with few of the benefits.
This won’t change with Olynyk back in the rotation and Quickley’s return from injury, and if anything could get worse, considering they’ve both previously had a negative impact on the defensive end. The Raptors might need to wait another year or more before a good defence comes to Toronto.
The “starters” and “bench”
This is the easiest question to answer. With so much time missed to injuries, the Raptors’ starters haven’t really been their starters and in turn the bench hasn’t been the bench. The process and results would certainly change if the personnel were entirely healthy. But how would it change?
The starting lineup most often used in the projected starters’ place has been Davion Mitchell, Dick, Agbaji, Barrett, and Poeltl. This quintet has started eight games and played 167 minutes, both team highs. However, all eight occurred during the first 15 games and all during Barnes’ initial injury absence, and the lineup has been defunct since, not playing a single minute over the past 19 contests. For what it’s worth, they had a 116.7 offensive rating and 113.1 defensive rating for a plus-3.6 net rating. Given Toronto’s dearth of winning lineups, there could be something to this group when Barnes rests.
While Dick was out for a five-game stretch, the lineup that started most consistently and saw the most time was Barnes, Walter, Barrett, Agbaji, and Poeltl. These five have played the second most minutes of any Raptors lineup, and they have been successful – in an albeit limited sample. Over 63 minutes they have the best offensive rating (122.8), net rating (22.1), and third best defensive rating (100.7) of any Raptors lineup (minimum 25 minutes played). In fact, their net rating is over 12 points better than the teams’ next best lineup (there is some shooting variance affecting this).
The lineup most easily compared to Toronto’s true starting five is their third-most played unit – Barnes, Dick, Barrett, Agbaji, and Poeltl. The group is only missing Toronto’s best 3-point shooter, Quickley, instead replacing him with Agbaji, who has been the Raptors’ second best three-point shooter by percentage this season (shoutout the no. 1, Jamison Battle). Don’t get me wrong, Quickley and Agbaji are drastically different players who take drastically different shots – more shots off movement, pull-ups and floater attempts from Quickley versus spot ups and cuts to the basket for Agbaji. While Quickley will open up a lot of vertical space and options for the offence, his defence has been significantly worse than Agbaji’s over both players’ time with the Raptors, particularly on the ball.
The Agbaji-plus-starters lineup has played 53 minutes together, and the results haven’t been good. All of this has to be taken with a large grain of salt, as lineup data can be noisy and doesn’t stabilize until roughly 550 possessions on offence and 850 on defence (about 600 total minutes). But they have a 101.8 offensive rating and 116.4 defensive rating for a -14.6 net.
Overall, these three most frequently used and started Raptors lineups have been a net positive on the court. Considering the overall outcomes, that means that transitionary and bench dominant lineups have been bad. When the Raptors have one or more of their five most frequently used starters off the floor, they have a 111.6 offensive rating (37th percentile) and 117.4 defensive rating (26th percentile) for a –5.8 net rating.
While the rookies have been fun and shown glimpses of promise, these kinds of lineups have been even worse (-8.5 net) with one or more Jamal Shead, Walter, Mogbo, or Battle on the floor. Rookies don’t often contribute to winning minutes, even good ones. And when bench players come into the game is when Toronto starts to lose them.
Hopefully we’ll have more positive trends to break down in 2025. Happy new year everybody!
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