The Raptors need to fix whatever is ruining their offence (yet beat Bulls)

What is modern NBA offence? Is it skill? Is it shooting? Is it pace and the frantic redirection of the ball and players? Is it trying really hard? All of the above? Whatever it is, there’s something the Toronto Raptors simply lack. 

Raptors Republic has documented the Raptors’ inability to shoot: 

This is a team-wide epidemic. The Raptors just can’t hit open triples. They create a ton of them. Defences leave them open. Increasingly more often, as the season has aged. But Toronto can’t convert. 

But there’s more rotten in the state of Denmark than that. Toronto just can’t find easy points in an era defined by incredibly potent scoring.  

Brandon Ingram plays professional offensive basketball. He opened the game driving to the rim in transition for a layup. He found another off the catch after punching through a dig and tipping in his own misses. Another on a drive after a Chicago Bulls’ make. He created points, layups, easy buckets. 

And he was alone. 

Scottie Barnes was practically non-existent on offence in the first quarter. He was part of a two-headed hydra with Collin Murray-Boyles that terrorized Chicago’s offence into nine first-quarter turnovers. But Toronto managed only 25 first-quarter points despite oodles of transition scoring. At one point, Jakob Poeltl caught the ball on the short roll, pivoted, and threw it to no one for a back-court violation. 

In the second quarter, Toronto’s offence became a comedy of errors. Immanuel Quickley, Gradey Dick, and Barnes missed some triples to start. Dick smoked a layup, then Barnes overthrew him in transition. Murray-Boyles simply dropped the ball in transition. 

Barnes had to turn to individual isolation scoring. On three zero-pass possessions, he hit a post fadeaway, created a layup in transition, and hit a middy up-and-down pull-up. That’s not where his game should be, the best usage of his offensive talents. But with everyone else on the floor stepping on each other’s comically oversized shoes, Barnes had to turn to some hero ball. It was good enough. 

Ingram re-entered the game and brought some professionalism to the contest. He hit a corner triple — Toronto’s first in the game — then another above the break in transition. Toronto finished shooting 7-of-23 from deep.

And, look. The Raptors were playing the Bulls. They are hardly an NBA team since the trade deadline. The Raptors played them immediately following the deadline. And smashed them with total ease despite playing a B or C+ game themselves:

The Raptors didn’t solve anything against Chicago. They beat a much lesser team, which is what’s supposed to happen. And because of their defensive inattention for wide swathes of the game, they actually did so in a somewhat unconvincing fashion. But they still found catharsis. Like hitting a pillow when you’re upset. It doesn’t solve anything, and sometimes it feels silly. But sometimes it feels pretty good.

And in this one, Toronto led virtually start to finish. It’s not like it was really at risk of losing despite the putrid offensive performance. But goodness. The Raptors need to find some self respect on the offensive end. If Ingram is the only performer there, the Raptors will be dead in the water when they face real teams, let alone good ones. (More than they already have been.) 

Credit where it’s due: The Raptors played ferocious defence against the Bulls. They jumped every drive, turned most Bulls possessions into one-on-one contests with multiple Raptors stunting and helping. Chicago scored 45 first-half points, and it was lucky to get to that number. Quickley and his backcourt mate, RJ Barrett, had real moments of defensive strengths. Barrett had a help block at the rim (ruled a steal). Quickley picked off an outlet pass to save another sure thing. Even if they aren’t empowering Toronto’s top-10 defence, they are certainly fitting within it. That’s meaningful.

The thing is, we already knew the Raptors were a fantastic defensive team. That isn’t new. 

The team needs to find ways to play real offence. Because right now, something is missing. And Quickley and Barrett, the starting guards — positions that are supposed to catalyze team offence — were unable to effectively drive sustainable and simple offence. Quickley hit some floaters, including an and-1 floater powered by an impressive pump fake. Barrett got his own rebound on a post-up for a layup. But those are not the type of baskets that drive meaningful, team-wide offence. The two combined for 27 points and six assists, which would be great numbers for one starting guard. Not two. The Raptors were virtually entirely healthy against the Bulls, playing against the 25th-ranked defence in the league, which has been last by a country mile since the deadline. If Toronto couldn’t break out and score some easy points against this defence, that’s problematic. 

Am I mad because my toddler decided, after years of sleeping perfectly, that he is going to freak out when we leave the room at bedtime? Maybe! It’s been a long week with very little sleep! But I maintain that there is a real problem with Toronto’s offence. Probably.

In the second half, Barnes continued to try to do it alone offensively. Hard to blame him. He faked a handoff and veered to the rim for a layup through his defender. But his scoring didn’t manage to create the juicy passing lanes that Barnes is so exquisite at exploiting. He finished the game shooting 5-of-14 from the floor. Meanwhile, Poeltl fumbled a handoff out of bounds for a turnover. Dick finally made a layup, but committed a charge in the process. Darko Rajakovic’s pass-happy modern offence didn’t yield much.

Ingram kept driving, including out of pick and roll with Poeltl that saw the big Austrian mash Ingram’s defender with the type of power screen not seen since 1947 to let the spindly scorer get free downhill. Later Ingram drew free throws. He reached 29 points in the third quarter, as the Bulls couldn’t even gesture at the concept of what an answer to Ingram might have been. He could probably beat any pair of Bulls in two-on-two with virtually any professional basketball player as his teammate. Heck, even a former one. But firepower superiority in the form of Ingram won’t always be enough. Most NBA teams are, you know, NBA teams.

It is true that the Raptors can only beat the teams in front of them. And the Bulls were in front of them, and the Raptors beat them. But the game could not have been less convincing. The Bulls pulled the game back within four points early in the fourth quarter. But Jamal Shead played the defence of a lion, and Ja’Kobe Walter hit a triple in transition. Murray-Boyles swatted a shot at the rim (and Walter missed a triple in transition). Murray-Boyles sealed deep in the paint on an ingram drive and created an and-1 with his early work. He blocked a triple from the corner with seconds remaining. Toronto closed it out, if imperfectly. That’s what real NBA teams do! The Raptors certainly are that.

But they have a clear and present issue, and it was on great display against the Bulls. Whatever modern NBA offence is, the Raptors simply don’t possess it.

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