At 17-7, the Raptors are already 2 wins ahead of where they were at this point in their franchise best season a year ago. Some of the major storylines this year are much the same as they were in December 2015: Kyle Lowry is having his best ever season shooting from deep and DeMar DeRozan has been an absolute force offensively. Those things aren’t any less fun than they were a year ago, but they also aren’t new. What is new is that the Raptors are regularly playing a deep bench, 9-10 guys a night, and every single one of those players is consistently playing at or above expectations. It’s been one of the quiet reasons that the Raptors non-conventional offense has somehow kept step-for-step pace in the race for best all-time offensive efficiency with the Golden State Warriors.
Lowry and DeRozan are both coming off of career seasons a year ago. A simple repeat of what we saw last year would have arguably exceeded expectations, as many argued that that was possibly the best we could possibly see from either player. Well, Lowry put up a career best 21.2 points per game on a career best 38% shooting from 3. This year, he’s averaging 21.2 points again, but doing so on 44%(!) shooting from deep, while averaging a small uptick in rebounding and a full assist more per game. DeRozan, for his part, is averaging 4 more points a game (up to 27.9 from 23.5), shooting 49% from the floor (up from 45), is averaging another free throw attempt per game, nearing almost 10 a game, and has slightly improved his rebounding and assist numbers. Both players have been even better this season almost across the board offensively.
But it isn’t just those two carrying this team. Lucas Nogueira, Terrence Ross and Norman Powell rank 1st, 5th and 7th in the league in points per possession in the entire NBA right now. That’s crazy. None of those guys are shooting anywhere near the volume of someone like a Steph Curry or DeMar DeRozan, but they’re each making a remarkably high number of the shots that they get. There’s a reason that every Raptors blogger in the universe has been having an ongoing twittergasm over the “Kyle Lowry and bench units”. It’s because they’ve been scoring like the Harlem Globetrotters. Nogueira has been super efficient rolling to the rim and finishing on lobs while developing a real comfort in the Raptors trapping and hedging defense. Terrence Ross has been a hired-gun assassin who has transformed from looking timid at times in the past to unshakable confidence this season. And Norman Powell, the 2nd round pick sophomore who barely played until the end of the year as a rookie has looked like a veteran, reliably knocking down 3s and being a force in transition.
Similar trends carry all the way down the line. Patrick Patterson started the year cold from 3, but he’s bounced back nicely since then. Regardless, the focus on his shooting (or early reluctance to) betrayed the more important fact that he was among the league leaders in real plus/minus from day 1. The Raptors have been better served with him on the floor as opposed to off of it all year (+13.2). DeMarre Carroll is still playing his way back from injury but has still managed to be an above average 3-point shooter and defender that the Raptors miss whenever he has to sit. Cory Joseph’s 3-point shooting has bounced all the way back to his break-out numbers from his final season in San Antonio, up nearly 10% from a year ago. Valanciunas rebounding has been ferocious, and while the Raptors don’t always look to him as a scorer, he pours it in whenever they ask him to. More importantly, he has the strength now to set up post position seemingly as low as he wants to, and that ability is going to pay huge dividends as time carries on and especially come playoffs when opponents start double and triple teaming the traps on the Raptors wing ball handlers and it becomes a half-court game.
There are plenty of holes in the Raptors game defensively right now. But as long as they continue to score more efficiently than the showtime Lakers and early 90s Bulls, that shouldn’t be the storyline that we’re focusing on. The Raptors are doing it with well below average assist rates and an above average amount of mid-range shooting, but they’re succeeding despite that because both of their all-stars have improved upon what was their previous best-ever basketball, and every single player down the line is playing better than expected offensively. Maybe you don’t need to have a super-team as long as you don’t have any one player pulling you down.
