Fan Duel Toronto Raptors

An Investigation into CJ Miles’ Domination: Part Two

Trust the shooter.

C.J. Miles has been dominating the NBA since the start of February. It is known. In fact, I already wrote a piece about his offence and how the shots he’s been hoisting during the hot streak are the same qualitatively and quantitatively as the shots he threw up before. My conclusions (that surprised me) were that he was simply hitting a few more shots, but not enough to account for his human embodiment of the fire emoji on the court. Therefore, much of his success must be attributed to improved defence (we’ll see about this later). So let’s get it.

 

Defence is harder to discuss than offence because there are fewer stats available, but let’s start with the most often used stat: defensive rating. Since January 31st, Miles has a defensive rating of 98.1, or 5th best on the team among rotation players. Give that to a team and it’s the best defensive rating on the season. You could say that Miles is carried by his defensive partners, as he’s played the majority of his minutes next to defensive mavens Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright, Pascal Siakam, and Jakob Poeltl. But he’s been playing next to them all year! And his defensive rating before January 31st, when he played the majority of his minutes alongside the same teammates, was 102.5. So rotations that include him have defended better, but that’s not enough information.

 

So where can we get more? An important indicator of defence is actually stopping your man, so let’s look at how players have shot while defended by Miles. Spoiler: it hasn’t been pretty.

 

Since January 31st, he hasn’t been any better at forcing opponents into missing shots. In fact, he’s been worse. Opponents shot 4.1% worse than their averages, overall, when directly defended by Miles until January 31st, and that’s decreased to 0.6% better than their averages since January 31st.

 

Perhaps more instructive than quality of Miles’ defence on attempted field goal is quantity; he’s only directly defended 67 shots – least on the team – in the few months since January 31st (teammates like Poeltl, Valanciunas, and Lowry have defended more than 200 each); this, perhaps more than any other statistic, speaks to how the coaches can gameplan Miles’ defence into respectability.

 

Going through some film, the Raptors seem to have some specific defensive principles that are unique to Miles (and maybe also DeRozan). First of all, the Raptors want Miles to cover the team’s worst wing shot-creator. This is despite Miles being the only true wing of the bench mob! However, Wright and Siakam are so versatile defensively that the Raptors can hide Miles on a variety of players. For example: against Washington, he guarded Kelly Oubre while Wright took the more threatening (and taller) Otto Porter.

 

It is important to note that with Miles and DeRozan on the floor, Miles defends the stronger wing player. When both play, many of their principles in terms of hiding Miles go out the window; both players seem to switch freely on all areas of the court.

 

 

However, most of his minutes come without DeRozan alongside him. In those situations, the Raptors like Miles to stay in the corners as much as possible. With Miles hidden from the action, the Raptors like to keep it that way; they work hard to keep him from switching in the middle of the floor.

 

 

Here, Poeltl bent the team’s defensive structure relatively far to provide help for Miles without switching, then he recovered to stymie the play. He displays ridiculous mobility and awareness on this play, all just to allow Miles to stay on his original man. There’s not many centers in the league that can do that, but fortunately Miles spends most of his minutes alongside one.

 

When Miles does switch, it’s to continue hiding him on defence. Here against the Knicks, the Raptors pre-emptively switch a ball screen defended by Miles and Siakam to get Siakam onto the ball. Miles is left guarding a Westchester Knick, which is fine for the Raps (although Miles does eventually foul).

 

 

The same thing happened later in the game when Miles switched a screen to pick up Beasley, who promptly posted up and isolated. The point is that the Raptors are ok with primary wing scorers isolating against Miles as long as it bogs down the offence and comes from the side of the floor and not the middle; the team can easily zone up the weak side and send the center to help. Against Beasley, Miles’ own quick hands saved the day:

 

 

Another area where the Raptors are happy for Miles to switch is into the corners. The Raptors will switch Miles onto ostensibly better offensive players if it keeps him away from the action. A benefit of this is that this unlocks Siakam onto the play, like releasing the hounds onto an intruder on your property, Mr. Burns-style:

 

 

Miles can be an intelligent defender; his issues come from lack of physical mobility, strength, and vertical. By keeping him out of the play, the Raptors limit the damage from those weaknesses. But he is still capable of identifying when defensive breakdowns are about to occur and rotating when needed:

 

 

He’s smart enough that he can involve himself in the bench’s trapping, force-turnovers scheme without being a monster athlete:

 

 

 

So the image that remains is that Miles is not a world-beating defender, but he won’t destroy a scheme. He’s smart enough to know his strengths and weaknesses, and he is heady enough to follow a scheme designed to minimize his weaknesses. So he mostly stays out of the way, which is by design. He is able to chip in when necessary, forcing some turnovers, and helping put out fires caused by defensive breakdowns, but in general his defence is solid, if uninspiring.

 

This is a far cry from early in the season, when he was a defensive issue. Against the Bucks on January 1st, Miles finished a -12 in a 4 points overtime win. The Raptors mostly played him against Malcolm Brogdon and Kris Middleton, who are quite involved in the Bucks offence. The Buck’s offence frequently created breakdowns in the Raptors defence by exploiting Miles’ involvement on important offensive players in high-leverage areas of the floor:

 

 

Every NBA offence has somebody standing in the corner. The Raptors just have had Miles guard that person as much as possible. Don’t get it twisted; these are smalls changes. Miles is not a defensive stopper, but he has become less of a negative during the majority of his minutes, which come alongside four defensive wizards. This is much of the point: Miles’ teammates drive his numbers, to a great extent.

 

In 460 possessions played alongside the bench mob (just over 1/3rd of his total possessions played), the lineup allows only 94.8 points per 100 possessions, per CTG. In 228 possessions played alongside both Jonas Valanciunas and DeMar DeRozan, the lineups allow 110.9 points per 100 possessions. That number shoots to 134.5 when Serge Ibaka fills the power forward position instead of Pascal Siakam. These are big differences based on personnel, but the important point is that alongside terrific defenders, Miles can be part of a good defence. Alongside less mobile, less aware, and less effortful defenders, Miles cannot boost the defence into tolerable levels (in fact, he likely makes it worse).

 

And if Miles can be part of a good team defence, he can absolutely dominate. That’s what we’ve seen over the past few months: utter annihilation. Miles has been torching the league like Ip Man (if the rest of the NBA were to be blackbelts who wronged him). His offence has been the hottest of hot fires, despite him still taking ridiculously difficult shots. He’s just been hitting more. And when his defence is passable? Forget about it. There’s a reason why the Raptors bench has been the best lineup (> 100 minutes played together) in the NBA.

 

So what are the takeaways here? CJ Miles’ defence can be gameplanned around. In fact, most poor defenders can probably be part of a good defensive lineup if the coaches are smart and the other four teammates capable. Can you imagine a wing in the NBA who would sink the bench mob’s defence to below-average levels? I can’t either. (Before you ask, in the 62 possessions DeRozan has played in Miles’ usual position alongside VanVleet, Wright, Siakam, and Poeltl, they have held opponents to 70.0 points per 100 possessions, which is ungodly and don’t you dare mention small sample sizes!).

 

I set out approximately 3000 words ago to discover how specifically Miles has been slaughtering opponents with such consistency. At first I thought: of course! he’s been making more shots. Well, yes, true, but only enough to add an extra point or two per game. And he’s taking the same shots, in the same sets, with the same levels of defensive attention as earlier in the year. Seems to be more smoke than fire. So next I assumed, of course, that Miles’ defence had improved massively. Not so much. He’s mostly just been asked to do less on defence, and that’s worked.

 

Miles has set opponents ablaze because of a variety of factors, including all of the above. Most likely, the largest factor has been his teammates’ various improvements; net rating is driven by five players on the court (and five opponents), so Miles hitting more shots isn’t enough to have driven his net rating through the roof since January 31st. Teammates, coaches – a long list of people must be credited for Miles’ improvements, in addition to his own play. Perhaps this is the most important takeaway of all.

 

All statistics used are taken from nba.com unless otherwise noted.