Rock bottom is only rock bottom until you find a rockier bottom.
I thought in November when I wrote that the Raptors are facing a math problem every night that the season would turn around. They were missing Pascal Siakam and struggling to a .500 record without the star, but in theory the problem Toronto faced was a solvable one. If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you; Toronto could have looked and turned around.
Instead the Raptors have nosedived into the abyss, transmuting their identity into the very problem they faced earlier in the year. There is little else, at the moment, that defines them.
There are so many things that aren’t working right now for Toronto that it’s almost pointless to list them all. For example: I was writing a piece about Scottie Barnes’ pick-and-roll defense, which remains problematic, but it’s not really worse than anyone else’s on the team, so why focus on it?
Toronto’s defensive struggles can’t be pinned on a single player. It’s not reasonable to point to Barnes giving up blowbys at the point of attack with no resistance whatsoever, not without pointing out that Fred VanVleet is often doing just the same. The backside help isn’t there to contain, either. And when the Raptors do bottle up the drive, off-ball defenders are giving up back cuts. Toronto is failing even without the basketball as the focus of the play; the Warriors created open layups, as they are wont to do, simply by running off-ball screens and watching two defenders chase the cutter. (The only difference is that Steph Curry wasn’t playing in the game to warrant such defensive overreaction. Although, Jordan Poole was, and he finished with 43 points on 23 shots, so potAto potAHto.)
On possessions when the Raptors do not force a turnover, the defense becomes weaker than … well, I struggle to find the metaphor. The stats describe the situation better than the English language. On possessions when a defense does not force a turnover, the Raptors have the second-worst defense in the league, accompanied by the four teams with the worst records, all of whom are racing for the Wembanyama sweepstakes: the San Antonio Spurs (30th), Detroit Pistons (28th), Charlotte Hornets (27th), and Houston Rockets (26th). Those four teams are head and shoulders worse than any others in the league. But as far as this component of defense goes, they are equaled by the playoff hopeful Toronto Raptors.
There is little process for Toronto on a defensive possession that fails to produce a turnover. They give up boatloads of corner triples, rim attempts, and free throws. Teams against the Raptors have the shot spectrum that define Daryl Morey’s dreams. And it’s not like Toronto is defending them well — not only do teams attempt easy shots against the Raptors, but they convert them extremely efficiently. Bad on bad on bad.
Toronto’s stratagems simply aren’t working. They put their players into rotation, asking their bigs to play high and be mobile, but if those bigs don’t force turnovers, it leaves Toronto’s smalls protecting the rim as rotators and taggers. And even if they do force misses, it often leaves those smalls as the defensive rebounders.
The Warriors couldn’t miss. When they did miss? Kevon Looney finished with six offensive rebounds by himself.
“Are there schematic changes you can see that are necessary because the personnel is what it is?” asked the Toronto Star’s Doug Smith after the game.
“No,” said Nick Nurse. “No… We’re not doing what we are supposed to do very well — at least tonight we didn’t.”
“You talk about spirit a lot,” asked the Athletic’s Eric Koreen. “Do you think you lost it in this game?”
“For sure,” said Nurse.
After Toronto’s last-second loss to the Brooklyn Nets — which showed real improvement on the process side for the Raptors — I wrote that only good teams deserve the benefit of the doubt of moral victories in process. That is even more true after the Raptors were shelled by the Warriors. The process decidedly took a step backwards on the defensive end. Brooklyn made tough shots. Golden State made easy ones.
The Raptors are not playing a style that, at the moment, works. And neither are they changing. They’re caught between a rock and a stubborn place.
It is fair to ask at the moment if any scheme would work for the Raptors. As it currently stands, the Raptors do not have five trustworthy defenders to put on the floor together. O.G. Anunoby and Precious Achiuwa are out injured. It matters to a lesser extent than the former two, but so too is Otto Porter jr. injured. On top of that, there are a number of defenders who have taken steps back from previous defensive highs, particularly VanVleet (from extraordinary to perhaps average, all things considered), but also to a lesser extent Barnes (from maybe average to, currently, worse than that). Thad Young has lost a step athletically, and when he gambles, he hasn’t shown he’s able to get back into the play to positively affect the outcome. Khem Birch can’t get off the bench.
The Raptors don’t have any center who can play drop defense; Christian Koloko, for all his benefits, is not equipped to hold together a crumbling defense.
Who on the defensive end right now is solving problems? VanVleet, for one, but he causes roughly as many in the point of attack as he solves elsewhere. Even the defenders who have been mostly solid, such as Juancho Hernangomez, aren’t capable of solving issues if they pop up elsewhere. And the Raptors insist on creating issues for themselves on the defensive end.
They are currently the equivalent of a marathon runner, who, confronted with a particularly challenging, uphill course, decides to also wear ankle weights. Maybe when they’re healthy, things will turn around. Maybe they’ll try harder, with better defenders available, and they’ll be able to force misses if they don’t force turnovers. Maybe they’ll wall off the point of attack and use rotations as proactive tools rather than a reactive stopgap. Maybe they’ll protect the rim and be in rebounding position. That’s a lot of maybes. What’s certain, though, is that this year’s Raptors have found a new rock bottom.
For now.
