With only 14 games down technically the season as a whole still qualifies for small sample size theatre. We’re at that awkward point of the season where sample sizes are inching closer to significance but not quite at that point where we can draw meaningful conclusions from them, which is difficult because we really want to.
Tryna Build a House
If you’re one of the 4 Raptors Republic readers that follow me on Twitter you’ve probably seen me talking about the most unexplainable small sample stat of the season: the Raptors somehow ranking near the top of the league at defending spot up shooters. It doesn’t make even the tiniest bit of sense; when you watch the Raptors you see them close out late, miss rotations entirely and prioritize the wrong shooters, yet 14 games in the Raptors sit tied for 6th fewest points allowed per spot up attempt. While everybody else has been talking about if/when DeRozan will regress or when the Raptors outside shots will start falling, I’ve been waiting for this to show signs of normalizing but so far this has stood tall through the back to back from hell and the worst road trip ever. The teams defensive rating has been up and down(but mostly down)all year and it’s apparently unrelated to how well(or poorly) they defend the opponents shooters.
On the other end of the floor the Raptors remain one of the worst shooting teams in the league. They’re currently 2nd last in points per spot up attempt and last in eFG%, meaning the only thing keeping them from the bottom in points per possession are a few extra free throws drawn on spot up attempts. This means that nobody is really making any spot up attempts on either side when the Raptors play. If you feel like there’s something ugly about this seasons Raptors games that you couldn’t quite put your finger on what it was you may have found your answer. Brick after brick after brick.
A Mirrored Image
These early season trends represent a sharp 180 degree turn from last season, when everybody seemed to make everything in every game the Raptors played. Last years squad tied for 7th in points scored per possession on spot up attempts, lead by standout performances from Kyle Lowry, Terrence Ross and DeMarre Carroll and supported by strong showings across the board, with only Cory Joseph and James Johnson ranking in the bottom half of the league’s players. Season to date the only above average spot up shooters the Raptors have this year are Norman Powell, Terrence Ross and, surprisingly, Pascal Siakam. After strong showings the past 2 games Patterson is almost exactly average. Everyone else is a awful, with Lowry, DeRozan and Carroll combining to make a meager 25% of their spot up attempts.
This decline on the offensive end is balanced by the fact that the Raptors opponents have experienced a similar drop off. Last year the Raptors were tied for 5th-worst in points allowed per spot up attempt, so while their shooting has fallen off of a cliff it’s balanced out by the fact that their opponents really aren’t doing much better. If you were wondering how the team has still performed fairly well despite the poor shooting this is a big part of the reason why. This Raptors team is a mirrored image of last years; they were horrible at defending shooters but great shooters themselves, now they’re shooting terribly but instead of taking advantage of this opposing shooters are joining the brickfest.
Right now this is all noise and it can be difficult to say what will last. Some of these shooting woes on both sides of the ball could be caused by subtle strategic shifts that we haven’t identified or they could just seem like outliers because our eye test is way off – it’s been known to happen. But If I had any money to bet I’d put a lot of it on shooting in Raptors games normalizing on both sides of the ball with the team approaching their marks from last year by seasons end.
On Patterson and DeRozan
No look at the Raptors early season shooting outliers would be complete without a discussion of Patrick Patterson and DeMar DeRozan, the two most talked about shooting outliers on the roster.
Patterson is having a more extreme version last years season-opening slump – as of 11/23/2015 he was shooting 38% from the floor and 32% from deep. This obviously wasn’t ideal, but is significantly better than the 32% from the floor and 27% from deep he’s putting up this year. Prior to the last two games he had been truly awful at shooting the ball, but he’s always struck me as a little bit streaky and he has an established history of bouncing back in a big way – for example he was on fire during the Raptors record breaking win streak last season. If there’s one struggling Raptor on the roster I’m not worried about it’s Patterson.
DeRozan’s situation is a bit more difficult to pin down. He hasn’t quite come down to earth but he’s no longer in orbit and outside of the Kings game the crash that I think many people expected still hasn’t happened. If he keeps having good bounce back games after his bad performances this 30 ppg pace on near 50% shooting could very well be sustainable. This means we could be treated to yet another round of thinkpieces and statistical breakdowns on whether or not he will continue to sustain this level of play in a few weeks time, which will be really annoying but not because it demonstrates a lack of respect for DeRozan(though it definitely does that) but because I think it says a lot about us as fans.
It seems like we can’t just enjoy greatness anymore. There are people who invested a lot of time arguing about Steve Nash’s supposedly undeserved MVP awards until the day he retired; the man gave us so many years of brilliant play but for a large segment of people that was the only thing that they got out of it. LeBron James has spent years outplaying everybody in the league but there is a certain segment of fans that can only seem to focus on where he stands relative to players like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. These conversations can be a nice distraction but when they become bigger than the game itself it’s a problem. I try not to judge but if your first reaction to a string of DeRozan 30 point games is “he can’t sustain that” you’re doing fandom wrong.
It’s also important to remember that almost every great individual achievement in sports was unsustainable until it was sustained. Wayne Gretzky was unsustainable. Michael Jordan’s 38 ppg and 32-8-8 season were both unsustainable. Kobe Bryant’s 35 ppg was unsustainable, as was his pace in his 81 point game. Nash with the Suns. Oscar Robertson’s triple double season. Steph Curry’s shooting. Too often we as fans equate “unprecedented” with “unsustainable” and we let our inclination toward contextualizing everything distract us from things like the fact that DeMar DeRozan is playing both the most effective and visually appealing basketball of his career(on the offensive end, anyway)
And to be clear, this is not a “you fans” rant, I am often as guilty of this as anyone. We’re all oversaturated with statistics and takes of varying temperatures and this can affect how we actually take in and appreciate the game – if the conversation around the game never ends it’s easy for it to drown out the actual games. Sometimes I think we all need to take a step away – though not so far away that you stop visiting Raptors Republic and Raptors HQ daily – and appreciate what is happening on the court for what it is instead of always looking for some confirmation or contradiction of some broader basketball worldview. Maybe DeRozan keeps up his current pace, maybe he doesn’t, but so far this season it seems like more attention has been given to whether or not he can continue to do this than what he is actually doing. So yes, DeRozan has played at this level for only a short period of time and it’s impossible to say if he’ll be able to continue it but at this point I don’t think that’s something that we should really care about. There’ll be plenty of time to analyze and contextualize after the fact.
