Math remains Raptors’ greatest foe
The year was 2017-18. Dwane Casey, helped by his then-assistant Nick Nurse, redesigned the Toronto Raptors’ offence to emphasize analytics, modernity, and efficiency. Read: more triples. Behind Kyle Lowry’s 40-percent accuracy on more than seven triples a game (only Steph Curry and Paul George surpassed him in both categories that season), the Raptors took 34.8 percent of their shots from behind the arc, good for fifth in the league. Toronto’s offence jumped to third in the league, and the team won 59 games.
It was all downhill from there. Well, no, not overall. Of course, Toronto won a championship the following season. But in terms of Toronto’s position as a leader in the analytics revolution, at least on the offensive end? That was never recaptured. Toronto slipped outside of the top 10 the following year in 3-point frequency (despite taking an identical amount, as the league was just taking more and more every season), then experienced a slight resurgence the following two years behind Lowry’s sustained excellence. But since then, the Raptors have ranked 22nd or worse in 3-point frequency every season.
Of course, the front office has done its best to engineer a roster that takes 3s. (Well, after trying to make a go of it without 3-point shooting for a few seasons.) But Toronto traded for Immanuel Quickley, selected Gradey Dick and Ja’Kobe Walter in the lottery in consecutive drafts, signed one of the best rookie shooters in college basketball in Jamison Battle, and signed a head coach in Darko Rajakovic who built an offence around movement, passing, and shooting.
And the result? So far this season, the Raptors rank 29th in 3-point frequency, ahead of only the limping Denver Nuggets. By 0.1 percentage points.
Caveats: Quickley played only a few minutes in Game 1 before suffering a pelvic injury and Walter hasn’t played. And with RJ Barrett and Scottie Barnes also missing time (more on that in a moment), Dick has been forced into much more primacy in his role, leading to more stuff and ultimately fewer 3s (and more on that, too, in a moment).
Still. I wrote about this trend in 2021. The idea then was that Toronto was prioritizing the growth of its leaders in Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, and OG Anunoby inside the arc. There were benefits. But the team never ameliorated the downsides, which led to further and further slippage. Which brings us to now.
Before his injury, Barnes was taking a lower rate of triples this season than ever before in his career. And up and down the rotation, there are players who offer plenty — except spacing. Jakob Poeltl is a non-shooter. The plan is for Jonathan Mogbo to get there eventually, but he’s not spacing the floor from deep yet (despite hitting one already this season). The point guard platoon of Davion Mitchell and Jamal Shead is similarly capable of hitting triples now and then, especially open catch-and-shoots, but they are not stretching the defence and getting up shots on the move. Ochai Agbaji and Chris Boucher have proven they can hit triples from the corner, but neither is a high-volume shooter from a variety of areas. The Raptors roster a lot of players who can knock down triples if open and created by teammates. But few who can create triples for themselves.
This isn’t to say they’re bad players. Mitchell and Shead combined for 20 assists against the Charlotte Hornets. Poeltl was an absolute rock, as he has been so far all year. (He was plus-18 in the loss.) Mogbo might have been Toronto’s most impactful defender outside of Poeltl. There is plenty of talent. But just not in the one area that the league is prioritizing more and more every season.
Dick is Toronto’s only knock-’em-dead, from-the-hip shooter currently in the rotation, at least until Quickley returns. And his ability to move defences while sprinting around pindowns, or as the back screener in Spain actions, or dashing around flares — it has more or less become one of Toronto’s primary and most consistent sources of offence. It’s part of why he’s looking so much like a star. But it also means he’s doing much of his work inside the arc as he attacks closeouts. If Toronto had more shooters alongside Dick, could stretch the floor in other ways, could create for him in stasis — then he’d be firing triples with abandon. As it is, he’s doing work with his dribble. And he’s doing great. But it does mean his 3-point rate is depressed. Like Barnes, Dick is also taking a lower percentage of his shot attempts of 3-pointers than he did last season.
Meanwhile, everyone hit triples for the Charlotte Hornets during their 138-133 defeat of the Raptors. LaMelo Ball didn’t even need both legs to hit one. The Hornets attempted 17 more triples than Toronto, making 11 more. That’s the difference between winning and losing, and then some. Frequency of 3-pointers matters. The Raptors scored very well, obviously. But the dearth of triples remained noticeable. The Boston Celtics just won a championship taking practically every shot from behind the arc, and they’re taking even more this season.
If you’re Toronto, something’s gotta give.
The Celtics are able to launch so many triples because a) everyone in the rotation can shoot and b) they threaten defences with a boatload of pull-up 3-pointers out of pick and rolls.
As previously established, shooting is not a precondition to joining Toronto’s rotation. And right now, the Raptors are second-last in the league in pull-up 3-pointers attempted, at a mere 6.4 per contest. Eleven players (!) are taking more pull-up bombs per game than the Raptors as a team. And Toronto is connecting on only 25.0 percent of such shots, which isn’t enough to open anything on the offensive end. Outside of Quickley and Dick, there’s really no one capable of taking and making such shots at a high frequency. And Quickley is out, and Dick is too busy doing other stuff. So them’s the breaks, more or less.
It means Toronto needs to work much harder than other teams to create shots. It means there are areas of the court, types of shots, that are relatively inaccessible to Toronto’s offence that other teams can pry open at will. And it means that the Raptors are starting games at a huge numerical disadvantage. Forget starting games down five points. If the Raptors are going to let other teams take 20 more triples than them, they’re really starting games down 10 points or more.
Part of this issue is going to solve itself. As Quickley and Barnes return, Dick will be able to take far more, and more open, triples. Quickley will launch 10 (or so) triples per game of his own. If all goes right with Walter, he’ll join the rotation and slot in as a cutter, mover, shot creator, and most of all: a shooter. Perhaps Toronto will crack 40 triples per game. (Only three teams are doing so this year. The Raptors aren’t even cracking 30 per game.) But that’s way off in the future. And a lot of other things have to go right, in terms of personnel development, for the Raptors to get there.
Maybe it’s not such a bad thing for the Raptors this season if they don’t manage to even the 3-point disparity in 2024-25. But if the team is going to dig out of this hole at any point in the future, math will be a problem that needs solving.
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