At this point, it’s clear what losses mean to the Toronto Raptors. There aren’t many more negative stories worth pursuing. The last time the Raptors lost six games in a row, it was the final six games of the Tampa Bay season. The parallels are, slowly but surely, coming together. It would probably be in the Raptors’ interest to make sure that stops being the case. There’s still plenty of time either way.
The Raptors are losing, and losing teams don’t get the benefit of taking sustenance in process. Results or nothing. But in the future, the Raptors will surely start to win games — the longest losing streak in NBA history is 28 consecutive games. The Raptors will win again at some point.
And at that point, many of the seeds that will begin sprouting, bearing the fruit of success, will be seen to have been planted during this losing streak. So process isn’t meaningful for Toronto now, but it might be later. And for now, even if process isn’t meaningful for the team itself, it can be for us. So let’s get ahead of the curve and look at one of the most significant factors for Toronto’s future ability to win: Fred VanVleet’s finishing.
VanVleet reached, hopefully, the nadir of his scoring on Dec. 5 against the Boston Celtics. He scored eight points, but the means by which he was unable to score was more striking than the final tally. He shot 1-of-6 from deep, continuing his plunge further and further into his slumping rabbit hole. And on the 10 possessions he drove the basketball, the Raptors — not VanVleet himself, but the team itself — scored zero points.
His jumper wasn’t coming around — and Nick Nurse spoke to media about how he was missing left and right, which is rare for VanVleet and indicative of a truly wayward jumper, rather than simply short or long — so VanVleet needed to change things. Specifically, he needed to find some other way to score. Or if not that, at least a way to more positively influence the offensive end.
Facing an inversion, his greatest power dwindling to a trickle, a weakness, VanVleet simply turned his hitherto greatest weakness into a new superpower.
Over the next five games, VanVleet scored the fifth-most points per game in the entire league out of drives. (More than either Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ja Morant, as a point of comparison. Or, as a second point of comparison, he was 87th in points per game out of drives last season. It was a sizeable improvement.) He shot 58.8 percent on drives while drawing a beefy 4.0 free throws per game while driving. Players don’t usually simply become excellent at a skill which they were previously among the league’s worst. VanVleet accomplished it, albeit for a short period of time.
Even after cooling off in the two games since, he’s been shooting 70.8 percent from within five feet — and was at 41.5 percent through the season to Dec. 5 inclusive. The rate of fouls he’s drawn has almost doubled. VanVleet was as close a simulacrum to Steph Curry as you could get for most of last season as a shooter. (Which is to say, not particularly close, but still the closest compared to his peers.) Then his jumper failed him, so for a time he just went and became a (relative) simulacrum of Ja Morant instead.
Of course, that’s a pretty tiny sample size of five games. And needless to say, VanVleet sunk right back down into his former slump — and then some — against the Philadelphia 76ers. He scored nine points, shooting 2-of-11 from deep on a remarkably open diet as well as 1-of-4 from 2-point range. It was the Celtics game all over again. If VanVleet had made one more of his completely uncontested looks, the Raptors would no longer be on a losing streak.
VanVleet can be a good finisher. He can drive points in the paint, hit the free throw line, and force rotations from the defense when he gets inside the paint. You know: normal, high-level point guard stuff. For me, those five games were a small revelation. For Nick Nurse, they weren’t at all.
“The layup thing has been there for him since his rookie year,” Nurse said when I asked him. “I think most of us can remember back and thinking, ‘How’s he making those?’ He goes in there against a 6-10 guy and is scoring those. I’d like to see more of that because he’s got a unique ability to score against guys by getting his body in between there and the way he finishes. That I think has been there. It depends on how he’s feeling, whether he’s there or not.”
In some ways, if finishing the indicative factor for health, then VanVleet looks quite healthy at the moment.
He can also be a great, great shooter. He seemed to get it back for a couple games in a row, including a monstrous, extra-deep, pull-up, game-tying triple against the Brooklyn Nets with 30 seconds remaining. You don’t get better shots than that. And when he does the driving and the shooting together, well, that’s when he scores 39 points in back-to-back games. When he does neither, that’s when he scores single digit points.
VanVleet is not a nine-point-per-game scorer. Neither is he a 39-point-per-game scorer. Broadly, the Raptors need to know which is going to be more likely on any given night. They can survive VanVleet scoring nine points as long as he’s doing it on six shots and with 12 assists. Heck, they won enough of those games with Kyle Lowry doing just the same. (Just for fun, I checked: Toronto went 13-10 in games with Lowry scoring single-digit points and recording double-digit assists.)
There’s a lot of ways VanVleet can help this team score points. His defense, for its shortcomings in recent weeks, was stellar against the 76ers. His jumper is supposed to be the team’s ideal play finisher in the half court. Sometimes it has been. And even when it’s not falling, he has shown an newly powerful ability to help out by hitting the paint and finishing, drawing free throws, or spraying the ball to shooters. Maybe he’ll be consistent at that even if his jumper doesn’t return to its full powers. Progress is progress, even if it comes surrounded in the clothes of collapse.
