For all its flaws, the Star Wars prequel trilogy was charming, in its own way. The acting was miserable, and there was no small amount of racism inherent to the trade federation characters, and the plot wasn’t particularly scintillating. But Darth Maul was cool, and the trilogy contained a fair amount of interesting political economic layering, if you thought about it.
With all those negatives known and in the review mirror, the sequel trilogy somehow ended up worse than the prequels. Plot ideas introduced in the first movie were abandoned going forward, and the movies were aimless, and the stakes were completely uncompelling. Oh, and the things that made the prequels interesting? The villain(s) in the sequels were flat as the prairies, and there was no world-building in the least. Even the small charms of the bad sequels were gone in the worse prequels.
It seems that these Toronto Raptors might be following the same script.
There are improvements from last season to this season, in terms of helping the team win basketball games. First and foremost, Scottie Barnes is a star now. He has improved across the board, in virtually every area on the basketball court, on both offense and defense. That’s going to help a team improve! Dennis Schroder is also a very nice addition.
But on the other hand, Fred VanVleet is a tough loss. His Houston Rockets are a better team than the Raptors at the moment, and VanVleet once again is an advanced-stats god on the offensive end. Schroder has ably replaced him, and with the money factored in it’s no contest who the Raptors are happier to have. Still, losing VanVleet makes it harder for Toronto to win basketball games in the present.Â
And most importantly, the Raptors have lost the three things that helped the team win basketball games last year. (This is excluding playing their starters more than anyone else, which helped the team win earlier in the year but arguably not later, when the legs were gone.)
Toronto’s hacks included rebounding the absolute shit out of the basketball, stealing the ball on defense as much as humanly possible, and not turning the ball over on offense. All three of those components combined into one advantage: Toronto took far, far more shots than opponents in any individual game.
Toronto last year finished third in offensive rebounding rate, first in forcing opposing turnovers, and first in limiting their own turnovers. As a result, they attempted 9.0 more field goals per game than their opponents — a truly outrageous number, and according to Joe Wolfond, the third-largest gap in league history. The Raptors sure weren’t great in the half-court, but it didn’t matter as long as they got to shoot the ball so frequently. Given the average shooting possession is worth approximately 1.0 points, that meant the Raptors started all games with a very rough 9-point advantage, given the possession disparity.
And this year? That’s gone.Â
Toronto is now 11th in offensive rebounding rate, 16th in forcing turnovers, and 24th in limiting turnovers of their own. That means the Raptors are shooting a measly (actually, quite sizeable, but compare to last year) 1.0 more field goal attempts per game than their opponents. That’s good. But it’s not enough to hack the game of basketball. That 9-point advantage is now a 1-point advantage. It’s not enough.
And the thing about both Star Wars’ intellectual property, and the Toronto Raptors’ talent level, is that there’s a whole lot to work with! The force? Lightsabers? Hell yeah, hard to screw that up. It’s a little easier to put ill-fitting pieces around stars like Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes (apparently), but more or less, the same principle applies. Good stuff shouldn’t be hard to make good. And yet.
The Orlando Magic are a good team, but they’re not special. They have a solid defense and drive the ball with force, and that was enough to make the Raptors vomit on themselves.
There are many skills Toronto needs within the rotation to be able to compete successfully in the modern NBA. It needs guards who can shoot and drive and make complex reads. But the thing is, those players aren’t particularly hard to collect. Are the Washington Wizards committed to Tyus Jones and Monte Morris? One would help the Raptors a whole lot. Heck, the Indiana Pacers built the whole boat out of players fitting such archtypes. The Raptors need just a pittance to pair with their stars. The chances are there for the Raptors to modernize and improve. But choices will need to be made, and the front office’s holding pattern ended. Eventually.
Star Wars is much more than just the three major-motion trilogies. There are some fantastic television shows, specifically the animated ones. There are some great video games. I’m sure there are probably some good books out there somewhere. The failures of the prequels, and sequels, have not spelled the end of the universe. And neither does Toronto’s loss of its secret weapon spell the end of its competitiveness as a team. In fact, it probably positions the team better for the future. Toronto needed more than extra possessions to become a real championship competitor. The possession-hacking was a bandaid covering real issues, and Toronto has ripped it off in order to address the flaws. It has added passing and cutting and more. Now it needs players on the roster to help make it all work. This is for the best, in the long term. It just makes games pretty ugly in the short term. And despite Barnes becoming a legitimate star, the Raptors might finish with a worse record than they did last season — despite owing their pick, top-six protected, to another team. So, you know, maybe it’s for the best in the long term. The front office is going to have to prove it.
