The term effort has really, really gotten a lot of run in the middle of the Raptors season. You probably couldn't find a team in the NBA whose schemes and playstyle rely on it more heavily. Talent runs the NBA, of course, but the Raptors saw an opportunity to invest in lunch pails, and they did so. When the lunch pails are left at home, let's say, things unravel rather quickly.
Cleaning the Glass ranks all their stats by percentiles, so even if you don't understand a term or stat that well, you can understand its standing in the league. Transition frequency is measured for every team, every game -- how often your team gets out in transition -- and the Raptors first 10 games featured eight games above the 90th percentile (including the 100th percentile game of the season so far) and none below the 70th. Lots of transition, which is tremendous offense.
In the last 10 games? None above the 90th percentile, and six of them below the 40th percentile. The Raptors never came anywhere close to that in the 2021-22 season. A foundational aspect of their team disappeared. And when it comes to this version of the Raptors who really struggle in the halfcourt? They have to score in transition. Not only to sustain their offense, but to continue to allow their defense to get set on the other end.
After the loss to the Grizzlies, I asked Nick Nurse about what's changed defensively for them to allow more rim attempts this season:
"Yeah, our biggest issue defensively is we're playing transition defense far too frequently. Right? They're coming out at us off a miss shot or turnover way too much. Right? You just can't constantly be in that mode. Right? Our lack of scoring and our lack of shooting has put our defense in a huge bind just early on and that you can handle, but you can't handle it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to be constantly on the run defensively. Right? You’ve got to get your defense set up. So that's probably my biggest concern right now."
While I don't think that's the whole answer -- and I'm sure Nurse doesn't think so either, he was probably just particularly frustrated with bad transition defense -- as the Raptors point of attack defense has slipped, some of the rotations have come slower, and Precious Achiuwa is a big piece of their defense when it's working properly. The Raptors have been running from (literally) their offensive limitations for some time. It's been catching up to them lately.
