The once powerful Raptors offense has slowly been atrophying over the last two months of play. The coaching staff has taken the heat for a lot of this, and a lot of that is valid. Lowry and DeRozan’s slumping shooting has been at the heart of it, with DeRozan and Vasquez both feeling compelled to shoot every and anything in sight. It’s felt like unless Lou Williams was consuming the court in embers, the Raptors offense was pedestrian and too easily guardable. It’s looked more like a schematic problem than an execution issue at times, and that’s a potentially huge issue. Let’s break down some of the team play type stats to look at where points are, or are not coming.
Using Jonas Valanciunas effectively has been a problem. I wrote a long article last week talking about how Big Val’s personal stats are completely at war with his team effectiveness stats, and how the way the team is utilizing him is probably partially to blame for this. In this past week’s Rapcast, William Lou brought up how infrequently Jonas is used in the pick and roll despite his effectiveness. Jonas is scoring 1.2 points per attempt as the roll man in pick and roll situations, an outstanding number that his him in the 87th percentile of NBA big men, according to NBA.com. Jonas is shooting 65% in those situations and getting to the line on 18% of those attempts. That’s money. And yet, Jonas is only being used in the pick and roll on 9% of his plays, an unpardonably low number. This isn’t an isolated scenario though, as James Johnson has been an even bigger beast as a roll man in a smaller sample size. In 17 possessions as the role man, Johnson is shooting 78.6% and scoring 1.47 points per attempt, the 5th most efficient roller in the league. Johnson is playing this role on just 4.3% of his plays.
It’s not as if the Raptors don’t run the pick and roll; Amir Johnson and Patrick Patterson have combined for over 200 attempts as the roll man. They’ve both been in the top 80% of NBA players in efficiency on those plays as well though, suggesting that more would probably be more. Pick and roll has become the staple of the NBA. It’s a pick and roll league. The Raptors have big men who are very good at scoring in that situation, and they need to be used more in that scenario.
Ball handling is at the centre of a lot of the team’s offensive issues this season, as they simply do not have many players comfortable handling the ball, let alone creating offensive for themselves or each other. Each of Toronto’s 4 top guards in Vasquez, Williams, Lowry and DeRozan average an incredibly high usage percentage as a result, with all of them coming in over 20% and Vasquez the only player who isn’t closer to 30% than 20. Those 4 guards have been the focal point of the team’s offensive, consuming the lions share of the teams shots, possessions and set plays. How has that worked out for them?
Lou Williams has run 262 possessions as the pick and roll ball handler, and he’s averaged 1.03 points per possession in that role. That’s in the top 96th percentile for ball handlers. If you feel like Lou has been great on offense this year, it’s because he has been. Lowry comes in at 0.82 points per possession in the pick and roll, a number that is above average but not spectacular. DeMar DeRozan and Greivis Vasquez are both averaging 0.76 points per possession as the ball handler, at the 51st percentile. Pretty much half of the league has been more efficient than DeMar or Greivis have been in trying to finish as the ball handler out of the pick and roll. Considering that we’re talking about 390 of the Raptors possessions this year just in that play type alone for those two guys, that’s a problem. Neither of them are using their bigs enough in the roll game. Defenders know this and compound the problem, setting their defense to take away the pass and force a bad shot from the driving Raptors guards.
The Raptors love to use dribble hand-offs as pseudo screens to get players like DeMar and Lowry the ball in motion out of the half court. It was their primary play type last season that Brooklyn punished them in the playoffs by taking away. The Raptors are still using it a lot, but seeing shots come out of it less than they were a year ago, as the copy-cat league has learned how to predict and defend it. Terrence Ross and Kyle Lowry are both scoring well out of a limited use of this play, putting up 0.97 and 0.94 points per possession shooting off a hand off. Lou Williams has trailed behind at 0.89 points, while DeMar has fallen well below the Mendoza line, scoring 0.77 points per possession on 52 such shots. It occupies the highest percentage of his play types of any of the guards and he’s shooting worse than a full three quarters of the league in that situation. The Raptors are putting an oddly inordinate amount of work in the half court struggling to make a clearly telegraphed dribble hand off set happen that is rarely working out in a good shot, and more often than not leading to a bad isolation if there isn’t a shot. This has been the DeMar set of choice, and the NBA has demonstrated far too clear of an ability to either defend it, or use it against the Raptors, knowing the DeMar is willing to take a bad shot out of it. DeMar’s numbers have looked strikingly Rudy Gayish since coming back from injury, and so has his style of play.
When the Raptors offense devolves into isolation, the results have been mixed. When Lou Williams has been off, the 2nd unit has completely and utterly perished. Having said that, Lou Williams has been among the leaders in isolation isolating scoring this year, and he trails only James Harden in frequency and attempts, so the good has far outweighed the bad. Lowry’s isolation numbers have stayed well above average too, despite the struggles that lead to his extended rest. James Johnson has been a wrecking ball in isolation as well, banging pretty well whatever joints he wants to. Even Terrence Ross has surprisingly good iso numbers, reigning enough jumpers in his limited opportunities to put him in the top quarter of the league. Valanciunas has been an absolute disaster in isolation situations. How bad has he been? He’s been so bad in isolation, he’s been even worse than DeMar! The only difference is, Valanciunas has only taken 11 shots in isolation. DeMar has taken 114 in just 40 games. This. Is. A. Problem. DeRozan is scoring 0.81 points on an unacceptably high number of isolations. Why are we running this as a regular set? It’s not even just out of desperation, the Raptors spend several possessions a game running actions designed to get DeMar the ball in an isolation set. It’s an exercise in insanity. If 5 DeMar DeRozans played together running exclusively isolation sets against the Philadelphia 76ers, they would lose by 13 points. Please, stop this nonsense.
The Raptors coaching staff needs to tweak the offense heading down the stretch if they don’t want it to atrophy in the playoffs. The coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for coming up with something to start the season that best utilized the unique skill set of the guards that they had, consistently building shots for them on the specific spots of the floor where they felt most comfortable and able to succeed, and getting a crazy amount of free throws from unconventional spots on the floor. But as the league has learned what they’re doing and scouted their offense, those shots have become more contested, and taken away before they can even happen. When you’re playing an offense designed to get a specific player a shot from a specific spot on the floor, it becomes easy to guard once it’s figured out. The defense knows the play, and the Raptors have struggled to create good release valves and second options. But that’s not a reason to panic. The team’s bigs in Valanciunas, Patterson and special agents Johnson and Johnson (no relation) are all scoring at highly efficient rates, and the team is slowly realizing that. If they can figure out how to better incorporate those players skill sets into a bigger part of the team’s offense, it will allow them to dictate matchups to Eastern Conference teams lacking size, and free up more space for their talented guards whose numbers have dropped under the swarm of defense. This coaching staff is not offensively challenged; let’s not forget that they designed the scheme that lead the league in offensive efficiency out of the gate. In the last week they’ve showed a couple instances. Terrence Ross is often inactive on the wings, stretching the floor and looking for a 3. Knowing that he’s been slumping, and knowing that he isn’t a serious threat to drive, defenders have gotten sleepy sitting on him. The team has used this to have Ross cut hard to the basket in the half court off the weak side and leap up for an alley-oop. It’s a smart and simply play that is reflexive to how teams have played the Raptors, gets easy points and helps boost the confidence of a young player whose role has diminished. That’s an example of good coaching. Hopefully we can see more like this from a once great offense that might not be able to maintain being good if it doesn’t adapt.
