Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

The Raptors have been struggling in the clutch lately, but will it last?

The month and a half before the All-Star Game is always a weird time in the NBA and no team knows this more than the 2016-17 Toronto Raptors. They have stumbled through the start to 2017 with a 10-12 record. Seven of the losses have come by five points or less in that time. Since…

The month and a half before the All-Star Game is always a weird time in the NBA and no team knows this more than the 2016-17 Toronto Raptors. They have stumbled through the start to 2017 with a 10-12 record. Seven of the losses have come by five points or less in that time.

Since Jan. 15, the Raptors have a net-rating of -24.3 when the game is in the last five minutes and the score difference is five or less. That mark is good for 26th in the league and uses a decent sample size of nine games in that period. For what it’s worth, that’s tied for third-most “clutch” games in the league during the time period. Unsurprisingly, the Raptors are 1-9 in clutch games in that time frame.

All of this has to be said with the caveat of injuries. Patrick Patterson and DeMar DeRozan are in and out of the line-up and that has a real impact. The point of this is to take a long look what is happening and evaluate if we should expect this to continue.

The old adage is that you need a go-to player who will hit shots down the stretch to win close games. On paper, the Raptors have two of them in Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. Part of the problem is that the team adheres to the #narrative that Lowry and DeRozan are the guys who can win close games. The other part is that this team can’t lock in and defend.

Let’s start with the offence at the end of the loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Raptors ran the exact same play three times in a row: DeMar dribbled at the top with Andrew Wiggins guarding him. Norm Powell, with Tyus Jones guarding him, set a screen for DeRozan to drive right. Here’s the result: a made mid-range baseline jumper going to his right over Jones, floater over Karl-Anthony Towns (with Wiggins lurking) and a missed mid-range jumper over Wiggins after he went under the screen:

When Toronto mixed things up after that, they found success. Lowry used a high screen from Bebe Nogueira to take three that spilled out. It seems like a bad shot, but he’s shooting 51 per cent on pull up threes this year. DeRozan had a great drive and finish through contact after an out-of-bounds play too.

Toronto’s predictability down the stretch is the downfall. The squad falls in the trap of picking at a weakness over and over, assuming the returns will be the same. Problem is, there’s another team that is trying to win too. When the Wolves adjust, what do the Raptors do? Lately, they have not done enough.

The defensive story isn’t that much different than the rest of the game. With Patterson out, the Raptors are pretty limited in the frontcourt. Bebe and Jonas Valanciunas is a bad defensive frontcourt, especially against any team with bigs that are comfortable on the perimeter.

Toronto can try going small as long as Patterson is out, but they run into rebounding troubles when they do that.

And as whiney or hacky as it sounds, the Raptors are suffering on defence because of a lack of effort. Players are getting back cut, blown by or not hustling back on defence, and it leads to cheap points at the worst times.

 

I cut that DeRozan clip when rewatching that fourth quarter just to see my guy William Lou tweet a couple screen grabs of the infraction. These mistakes are so obvious and easy to fix that it leaves me frustrated yet optimistic.

Can they fix these crunch-time issues?

I say yes. They were a top-ten net-rating team in the clutch when healthy. The offence doesn’t need to be reworked for the final minutes, the team has to attack out of ball movement instead of just relying strictly on isolation plays from All-Stars to get buckets.

When they were a top-ten team, they had the third-lowest clutch AST% at 29.1%. (For context, their AST% is at 47.1% for the season.) To me, that suggests the Raptors don’t need to run beautiful sets; run your stuff, attack mismatches and let Kyle Lowry do his thing in the pick and roll. You’ll be fine.

The bigger improvement needs to come on defence. Prior to Jan. 15, they had a 99.3 DRtg in the final five minutes of close games. It’s been at 115.0 in the last month, a mark that would be five points worse than the worst defence in the league. 99.3 would be the best mark in the league (and yes, I know, small sample size, this is just for context).

I think this will improve with Patterson back, as everything seems to. Patterson alone can not fix the effort issues, but his presence will restore integrity to the frontcourt defence. He’s an excellent communicator and a way better pick and roll defender than anyone we have playing right now. There’s an addition-by-subtraction factor at play since Patterson’s availability means Casey doesn’t have to even consider the Bebe/JV frontcourt in the final minutes.

And it could be a good thing in the long term to get some of the younger guys the clutch time run. Norm Powell has made some great plays down the stretch (like that steal against the Magic), but his focus has also wavered. Powell got back cut in the Wolves game and maybe Casey shows that in a film session the next day and the sophomore learns from it.

It’s a long season, and they haven’t been healthy. The clutch performances have been troubling but there are reasons to be optimistic about the Raptors steadying the ship before playoffs.