Given their history the Toronto Raptors are in no position to quibble about aesthetics when it comes to winning basketball games.
But they’ve hit a rough patch in their otherwise charmed season and there is no other way to put it: They are losing ugly.
It’s trash, really.
Friday night’s debacle against the Golden State Warriors was the ugliest yet. They went 1-of-19 in the first quarter of their 113-89 homecoming defeat. Their frigid start set a franchise record for offensive futility for a period, and it was entirely on merit.
This was not a case of a team missing makeable shots. This was a case of a team consistently forcing the ball into the teeth of a very good defence and missing one highly contested shot after another.
If you’ve been to an amusement park and watched bumper cars, you know what the Raptors looked like when they had the ball.
All teams slump and the Raptors have kept theirs short this season, but even when rolling up their 37-21 record which remains the second best in the Eastern Conference, there were warning signs that not all was well.
The Raptors three most frequent shooters – DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and Lou Williams – are shooting a combined 40.3 percent on the season. According to Basketball-Reference.com there are 90 players who average at least 11 field goal attempts a game this year, Among them Lowry, Williams and DeRozan rank 67th, 80th and 81st in field goal percentage. Lowry leads the trio at 41.6 and his success rate his falling like a stone.
Friday night they combined to shoot 7-of-30 while combining for three assists.
DeMar DeRozan is shooting just 39 percent this season in part because – as he told reporters this week – he believes he shoots better when a defender is draped all over him.
This is absolutely untrue, and DeRozan made the case as he missed his first nine shots – many on wild drives into a set defence — before knocking down a couple of open jumpers late in the second quarter.
Maybe the light has come on.
“We need to realize we can’t rely on myself and Kyle,” said DeRozan afterwards. “We need everyone else going and take the pressure off us.”
The Raptors offensive woes are a trend that’s been highlighted in their recent stretch in which they have lost four straight against some top-flight opponents, but Friday night the contrast was glaring. The Warriors were clean and shiny and crisp like a German-made car that had just rolled out of the car wash. They moved the ball. The Raptors were the salt-stained clunker with the bumper dragging.
“Golden State was a great example,” said DeRozan who finished 4-of-16 on the night with 14 points. “They moved the ball extremely well, they shared it. Got it into their bigs, their bigs found their shooters and that’s the way we got to get back to playing and not be so stagnant. For myself too, not settling for jump shots.”
Excuses: Toronto was playing at home for the first time in three weeks and on top of that it was the first game home after a western road swing. Playing in their fifth city in eight nights was doubtless a factor.
How deep the Raptors issues run isn’t clear. Lowry left the game twice and said afterwards that he was suffering from “general soreness.” Perhaps more ominously he hinted at a deeper malaise.
“We need to make the game fun again, going out and playing and executing the game plan,” said Lowry, who played just 18 minutes, shot 1-of-7 and left for the dressing room twice. “Basketball is fun in general but when you’re losing it kind of sucks the life out of you a little bit. The love of the game is always going to be there, but sometimes [you need] to find a way to make the love and passion be all in.”
The Raptors best moment came in the third quarter when Tyler Hansbrough got ejected for a brief skirmish with Festus Ezeil.
“I loved it,” said Casey. “I’ll take 15 guys with that kind of passion.”
Playing against Golden State certainly didn’t help. Not only because the Warriors have the league’s best record at 45-11 but because the Warriors are the Raptors’ spiritual opposite.
Quite simply the Warriors have given themselves over to the idea that passing the ball as often and efficiently as possible is a great way to play basketball.
The Raptors don’t do this very much. They pass the ball 281 times a game, which is 25th in the NBA and they are second in the NBA in pull-up jumpers – by definition a contested shot — which they convert at just 34 percent.
Heading into the game the Raptors knew they were in a funk. Both Lowry and DeRozan described their recent play as “trash” to reporters on Thursday. The Raptors shot just 32 percent from the floor in the fourth quarter of their last three losses.
And passing – or lack thereof – is a big part of it.
“We don’t move it enough,” acknowledged Raptors head coach Dwayne Casey.
“If everyone holds the ball two seconds and then they pass it and that guy bounces it a couple of times, now you’re fighting the clock. We just have to get off the ball and make quick decisions and we’ve been working on that all year.”
There is hope. Last season Warriors passed the ball less than any other team in the NBA, averaging 245.8 per game, this season they average 314 passes a game, which is good for eighth in the league.
Improving their ball movement was the single biggest adjustment rookie head coach Steve Kerr pushed for when he took over from Mark Jackson who was fired in the off-season. Despite the Warriors high level of skill they were only 12th in the NBA in offensive efficiency and forcing their offence was identified as a reason why.
The NBA champions San Antonio Spurs led the league with 332 passes per game last year and the Warriors took note.
“It was an easy sell, these guys are naturally very unselfish,” said Kerr. “We just had to build the habits a little bit more, get the ball moving a little earlier in possessions and throwing it up ahead and cutting and moving. We worked on that and there’s been a lot of improvement, offensively.”
No kidding. The Warriors rolled into the ACC as the second-most efficient offensive team in the NBA, averaging 109.4 points per 100 possessions, compared with 105.3 last season.
It should be noted that the Raptors have been one of the more efficient teams in the NBA this season, benefitting from their ability to get to the free throw line and shooting threes at a high rate.
But they’ve been slipping, badly of late. They are 24th in the NBA for the month of February on offence in part because of scouting reports like the ones the Warriors had in their dressing room that noted the Raptors quickly devolve into one-on-one play when challenged.
The Raptors played right into their hands.
Meanwhile the Warriors make it look like this passing thing works. Last night was no different. The Warriors counted six assists on eight made field goals in what was a ragged first quarter that they led 27-11 even while shooting 8-of-23. But they kept the ball moving and were rewarded by shooting 63.6 percent in the second and third quarter combined, with 20 assists on 28 made shots.
When done well it makes basketball look easy, and those doing the pitching and catching certainly like it.
“It’s a lot of fun. It’s easy to make shots like that,” said Klay Thompson, who pairs with Stephen Curry to form the most potent backcourt combination in the NBA. Between them they had 25 points in the first half as the Warriors ran out to a 54-31 lead. Notably, they also combined for seven assists. They finished with 47 points and 11 assists.
This is the norm: The Warriors lead the NBA points created by assists. They are proof of the oldest adage is sports: the ball is faster than the man.
“You have so many guys who can pass, dribble, shoot,” said Thompson, who is 10th in the NBA in scoring at 22.1 per game, while connecting on 44.1 percent of his three pointers, many of them like the one he had last night in the first quarter: standing wide open in the corner and converting on the seventh pass of the possession. “Everyone is a threat out there, you’re seeing more open shots in years past. I watch a lot of tape of us and it’s fun to see when we’re playing well.”
The Raptors showed none of those things last night in one of their worst performances of the season, and it wasn’t fun to watch.
Not one bit.