I’ll admit that I’m one of those people who never fully enjoys the good times. For brief moments I will lose myself in the good but my mind inevitably returns to trying to sniff out the bad, preparing myself for the other shoe that always seems poised to drop. And it almost always does. Raptors fans know as well as any fanbase in the world what I’m talking about, watching promising first overall picks become walking punchlines, franchise record win totals lead to first round sweeps and seeing star players walk in free agency or dog it until they get traded.
Going into this NBA season I told myself that things would be different. I’d focus on the good. I’d maintain a positive outlook, predict good outcomes and for the most part just sit back and enjoy the ride. I’d say that lasted all of 2 weeks before I began looking for – and finding – chinks in the armor and things to pick apart, but for the most part I remained positive. I allowed myself to get caught up in the hype of the winning streak and I boldly predicted that while there are teams that worry me I think the Raptors can trade punches with anyone in the East not featuring Lebron James and come out victorious, a statement that I still stand behind.
But I can’t help being me.
A big reason for my relative optimism was the Raptors defense, which started strong and held a top 10 position in the NBA around the halfway point of the season but has since fallen as far as 13th currently sits at 11th. The Raptors have been winning games in 2016 but their defense has taken a step back, ranking 17th in the NBA over the last two months. The Raptors offense has shown a tendency to struggle during the playoffs so that level of defense just isn’t going to cut it when the regular season is done and the intensity ramps up. This allowed my doubts to creep in, though I’m fairly certain that if the defense had remained solid I would have found something else.
In the interests of turning my character flaws into half-decent reading material this is going to be the first of a series of posts looking at the Raptors defense as it stands now. We’re going to start with who is propping up or tearing down the Raptors defense with their contributions, followed by some video of specific things the Raptors are doing poorly and some ideas for what the Raptors could do to solidify things on that end in preparation for what will hopefully be the deepest playoff run in franchise history. We’ll start by looking at the impact some individual Raptors players have on the teams defense, looking only at the players on positive or negative end of the on/off ratings, with the individual players defensive on/off per 100 possessions listed by their name.
The Good
Cory Joseph(-9.3) – a lot of the Raptors defensive improvements seem to be a direct result of the acquisition of Joseph. As you would expect from someone who came up in the NBA under Gregg Popovich he rarely makes mistakes on the defensive end. He doesn’t over-help, he doesn’t gamble for steals and he’s rarely beat to the point where he’s not in a position to contest the shot. He’s also the most tenacious of the Raptors little defenders, attacking perceived mismatches with a ferocity that often leaves bigger offensive players off balance and comfortable and rarely giving up on a play. That combination of knowing what to do/how to do it and the willingness to put aside insignificant things like size disadvantages and get things done is the hallmark of every great perimeter defender and the Joseph has more than enough of both. He’s been the teams defensive MVP all season long.
Patrick Patterson(-6.6) – I’m not sure there’s anything Patterson hasn’t done for the Raptors on the defensive end this year. He’s played center at times, tasked bodying up and boxing out players with significant size advantages over him. He’s played the role of perimeter stopper, guarding guys who are obviously quicker than he is for crucial stretches. His instincts have held the Raptors pick and roll defense together in much the same way Amir Johnson used to because he’s one of the few big men the team has who can read a broken play and figure out where to rotate to stop the bleeding. He has obvious physical limitations as a defensive big man but he’s become a fundamentally sound defender and arguably knows the defensive scheme the best of all the Raptors players and that is more than enough to make him an invaluable part of the Raptors defense.
Bismack Biyombo(-6.0) – He’s not a perfect post defender but the good far outweighs the bad. Like Patterson he’s a little light to bang with some of the bigger bodies in the NBA but he’s kind of like Joseph in that he makes up for it with sheer determination. His one on one defense isn’t the greatest in part because there is nothing in the world that gives him more joy than blocking shots so he tends to bite on fakes or leave his man to pursue them even when it’s not really necessary to do so, but when you consider how effective he is as an interior defender you can live with that. He’s also a great rebounder, snaring rebounds easily enough to make you wonder why he can’t seem to catch a bloody pass on the other end.
Terrence Ross(-5.0) – That’s right: Terrence Ross has become a significant positive on the defensive end. I’ve been keeping an eye on his numbers and expecting them to drop but they’ve stayed pretty steady. He still struggles with open court defense allowing quick offensive players to shake him far too easily considering how athletic he is. He lets his athleticism be used against him, overreacting to fakes and feints which leaves himself out of position. But he doesn’t seem to give up on those plays as easy as he used to and has gotten better at recovering and pressuring shots from behind after he gets beat. His off-ball defense is not perfect but it’s definitely more attentive than it was in the past. After a rocky start to the season he has seemed solid but there is a good chance that his defensive on/off numbers are inflated by poor defense from other Raptors.
The Bad
Luis Scola(+7.3) – I’m sure this is no surprise to anyone who has been watching the team play for the last couple of months. He’s too slow for the stretchy big men and he’s not big enough for the burly ones so it’s unclear what his niche on defense would even be under optimal circumstances. He didn’t seem so bad at the beginning of the year but a large part of that may simply be teams not attacking him as consistently then as they do now.
DeMar DeRozan(+8.6) – This is probably the most surprising result for me because DeRozan had put in a lot of work to become a solid defender and seems to have taken a sharp turn in the other way. He over-helps now, drifting into the paint when he has no play on the ball and isn’t needed, yielding open perimeter jump shots. He makes big gambles for steals. He loses track of people in transition or when rotating. He still shows some of the signs of solid defense – he remains good at stunting to the ball and returning to his man and he slithers around screens about as effectively as any Raptors defender not named Cory Joseph but the focus just doesn’t seem to be there. Early on I chalked it up to the extra energy he’s expending on the offensive end and figured it would stabilize over time but it’s actually just gotten worse as the season has gone on.
Jonas Valanciunas(+7.1) – He’s still a mixed bag on defense. He’s hesitant to commit in open floor or pick and roll situations which gives ball-handlers too much space to operate but his one on one post defense is solid and he’s the Raptors best defensive rebounder. His hesitance seems to indicate a confidence issue which may be the result of having him on such a short leash through his first few seasons so the coaches need to do something to make him feel like he’s trusted because not committing to any course of action is often worse than simply making a wrong decision. If you make a bad decision on defense at least your teammates have a chance to read and react to what you do – if you do nothing in a situation where you are a primary defender they can’t really act and the entire defense is in a sort of stasis that leaves the entire team ineffective.
The Caveats
You may notice that Kyle Lowry, DeMarre Carroll and James Johnson are absent from this analysis. That’s because they’re all more or less net neutral players on the defensive end, this part of the defensive analysis is focusing on the extremes at both the positive and the negative end to determine who are the major impact players on that end for the season. Further analysis into specific lineups will obviously include them but they’re not on the extremes so they just get a quick mention this time around.
If you look at these groupings of players you should immediately notice what they have in common: the positives are all bench players and the negatives are all starters. Like last year, when Valanciunas’ defensive numbers changed dramatically based on whether he was playing with Ross or not, this can make it difficult to sniff out who is actually having a big positive or negative impact and who is just along for the ride. Thankfully, we have NBAWOWY to help us sort this out, allowing us to look at this in a more precise manner by including and excluding specific players in the on/off numbers. NBAWOWY calculates possessions a little different than NBA.com does so for reference the Raptors base number is 105.4, the team’s points per 100 possessions for the season. We’ll look at the With or WithOut You numbers for the Raptors to try to sniff out who is actually responsible for the good and the bad, starting with the Raptors defensive rating with the Raptors who have posted great on/off numbers.
WOWY the Good
w/ Cory Joseph – 101.6
w/ Terrence Ross – 102.9
w/ Patrick Patterson – 102.4
w/ Bismack Biyombo – 102.3
All well above average with Joseph being the best by a small margin.
w/ Joseph, w/o Ross – 102.5
w/ Joseph. w/o Patterson – 102.2
w/ Joseph, w/o Biyombo – 104
Joseph seems a lock to be a positive contributor on the defensive end regardless of who he is with. I’m convinced.
w/ Biyombo, w/o Joseph – 107
w/ Biyombo, w/o Ross – 105.2
w/ Biyombo, w/o Patterson – 107.1
While having a lot of strengths on the defensive end, the effectiveness of lineups featuring Biyombo seems largely determined by who he plays with.
w/ Patterson, w/o Joseph – 105.7
w/ Patterson, w/o Biyombo – 106.1
w/ Patterson, w/o Ross – 104.6
On the surface Patterson seems to be able to contribute a little more than Biyombo, possibly owing to his versatility and his existing chemistry with Raptors who are not in the bench mob.
w/ Ross, w/o Joseph – 107.3
w/ Ross, w/o Biyombo – 106.9
w/ Ross, w/o Patterson – 107.9
This makes a lot of sense given what we saw from Ross last year. The eye test says that Ross is playing a little better on the defensive end but the numbers indicate that his stellar numbers also have a lot to do with who he plays with. This is progress for Ross, though – last year he torpedoed the defense of most groups he played with. Fitting in with good defenders is a step forward.
The Raptors can trot out a lot of good defensive combinations but a cursory examination of WOWY numbers show that Cory Joseph is pulling his weight and then some at that end. It’s also worth noting that these guys are like a defensive Voltron: when they’re on the floor together the Raptors give up a stellar 95.1 points per 100 possessions, a full 10.3 points below the teams overall average.
WOWY the Bad
w/ Valanciunas – 109.5
w/ Scola – 109.0
w/ DeRozan – 107.8
DeRozan’s initial numbers look a little better but it’s important to note that by virtue of playing significantly more minutes than Scola(800+) or Valanciunas(1000+) he has a lower percentage of his minutes played with the rest of the starters and more minutes with the bench players who have the significantly positive defensive impacts.
w/ Valanciunas, w/o Scola – 106.8
w/ Valanciunas, w/o DeRozan – 103.0
Valanciunas has his numbers altered significantly by the absence of the other two and they’re actually really good without DeRozan on the floor with him, but it should be noted that’s only for 121 minutes of total playing time. This is the problem with evaluating his defensive impact – most of his minutes are played with other players who have shown themselves to be a problem.
w/ Scola, w/o Valanciunas – 106.6
w/ Scola, w/o DeRozan – 100.4
Again a small sample size without DeRozan at 128 minutes but the shift is huge.
w/ DeRozan, w/o Valanciunas – 105.7
w/ DeRozan, w/o Scola – 105.2
From all of this we can draw a couple of conclusions: Scola drags down the defensive performance of DeRozan and Valanciunas, Valanciunas improves the defensive performance of Scola albeit slightly and DeRozan is simply not working with the starters on the defensive end. It lends credibility to the theory that while Valanciunas is not yet an impact defender he’s also not one of the main reasons the defense struggles. His on/off numbers are as much the result of who shares the floor with – or, perhaps to be more accurate, who he doesn’t share the floor with – on a regular basis and they suggest that it’s actually safe to play him in crunch time in most situations. There is also support there for DeRozan’s defense being a bit of a problem, suggesting that something needs to be done to refocus him before the playoffs start – he’s been a problem this year but we’ve seen enough solid defense from him in the past to know that he’s capable of better. Also this trio performs like the Monstars stole their abilities, giving up a miserable 111.1 points per 100 possessions when they’re on the floor together.
I’d also like to note that this is an intentionally surface-level examination – using WOWY numbers we can look at endless combinations of players and in the future I’ll go into greater detail and highlight certain combinations of players who should or should not be playing together but right now this is just about individual players. The intent is to serve an introduction and give Raptors fans an idea of who is lifting the team up and who is holding them back. Now we know that Cory Joseph and to a lesser extent Patrick Patterson are the defensive leaders while Luis Scola and DeMar DeRozan are the guys who either need to be benched(Scola) or refocus their efforts(DeRozan). Biyombo is better than Valanciunas but at least part of the gap between the impact each of them has seems to be the result of Biyombo playing more minutes with better defensive players, indicating that Valanciunas is not quite as bad as his numbers make him seem at first glance. Come next week we’ll get into specifics – what they do well, what they don’t do well, the status of the oft-praised ICE scheme and we’ll take a look at things the team can do to get the defense back to an acceptable level come playoff time.
