TORONTO — The last time the Toronto Raptors were playing .500 basketball for any significant length of time was last spring during the NBA playoffs.
It is remembered as the most successful moment in franchise history, as the Raptors won two playoff series and took the eventual NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers to six games in the Eastern Conference Finals.
But it wasn’t pretty. Toronto’s overall record was just 10-10 as they needed 14 games to advance past the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat.
It’s worth referencing as this year’s model hit its first extended rough patch of the season. Having lost three straight and standing at 6-7 in the 13 games since Patrick Patterson went down with a knee strain on Dec. 29, they now have pleasure of hosting the 35-9 San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday before flying off to Memphis to play the Grizzlies (26-20) on Wednesday.
Time to remove the sharp objects.
“Everybody’s in panic mode right now. It’s not time to panic,” Raptors head coach Dwane Casey said after practice Monday. “We’re going through a tough time. Every team goes through this time every year. Again, it’s how you come out of it. We’re a little discombobulated with injuries. That’s no excuse … this is part of the NBA. How you come out of this, how you fight against it, how you compete against it, is how you come out of it. That’s the most important thing.”
The Raptors’ fanbase is fidgety at the best of times — all this winning is still a fairly new thing after all. And you can point to struggling teams around the league all you want — Cleveland is 4-6 in their last 10; the Boston Celtics have lost two straight; the once-surging Milwaukee Bucks had lost five straight before a win Monday night. The Houston Rockets were the hottest team in the NBA a month ago and are 5-5 in their last 10 since.
But the Raptors’ woes always seem to be felt a little more deeply. It’s the price of passion.
And times do seem tough. Even though Patterson — whose value to the Raptors as the tie that binds is being proven more conclusively in his absence — participated fully in practice on Monday and seems a good bet to return against the Spurs, that offers only a small measure of relief. While Patterson was playing a vigorous game of 3-on-3 after practice, DeMar DeRozan, the NBA’s No. 6 scorer at 27.9 points per game — was limping around having been ruled out for at least the next two games with a sprained right ankle.
But Patterson’s (expected) return and DeRozan’s absence — which it says here will be longer than two games, given the way he was favouring his ankle — makes for an interesting test of what is really ailing the Raptors and what steps may be required to fix it.
The standard argument for the Raptors’ struggles of late is that they have downgraded from being ‘so-so’ defensively to bad. Prior to Patterson being hurt against the Suns — he missed four games and played sparingly in two before sitting the next six — the Raptors allowed 105.1 points/100 possessions through their first 30 games, good for 18th in the NBA.
Since Patterson has been on the limp the Raptors have allowed 108.8 points a game — which puts them 20th.
So yes, there has been slippage.
But where the Raptors have really struggled in the past 13 games has been offensively. After their shootout loss to Golden State on Dec. 28 the Raptors were the best offensive team in the NBA — their 114.2 offensive rating ranked them ahead of the Warriors and would be the best mark in NBA history over a full season.
Since? The Raptors have gone from elite to ordinary, dropping to 108.8 points/100, which is 11th in the league in that stretch.
What does the Raptors’ playoff run have to do with any of this?
The Raptors struggled mightily on offence then too, putting up just 99 points per 100 possessions compared with 107 in the regular season.
And back then the culprit wasn’t entirely different than it is now: When the Raptors — and specifically Kyle Lowry — are making threes at a decent rate, they are a formidable offensive team.
When they are not, they get very average, very quickly. In the playoffs last year they went from shooting 37 per cent from deep — fourth in the NBA — in the regular season to 29.8 per cent in the post-season. Scoring all of a sudden seemed like climbing Everest. Lowry probably had to worst stretch of shooting of his career, finishing at just 30 per cent from deep for the post-season.
It’s not surprising that during December when the Raptors’ offence — and their play generally — was peaking, it was Lowry’s shooting driving it. According to Basketball-Reference.com Lowry is the only player in NBA history to make at least 50 triples (Lowry made 59) while shooting at least 50 per cent in the month of December (Lowry shot 50.1 per cent) and is one of only five players to have a 50/50 month since the three-point line was introduced in 1979.
Since the Raptors’ slide began Lowry has shot just 24 per cent (14/54) from three in their seven losses compared with 60.1 per cent (20/33) in their six wins.
So while the common view of the Raptors’ woes is that they need to tighten up defensively, the reality is that there is likely no defensive adjustment they can make that would compensate for their offence sliding back to the middle of the pack — or Lowry being human. The Raptors are at their best when they are opportunistic defensively — 17.6 per cent of their scoring comes from points off turnovers which leads the NBA — but they are not a lockdown team and likely won’t be any time soon.
It was interesting that facing the prospect of at least two games without his leading scorer, Casey wasn’t harping on the need to defend better until DeRozan returns. And he acknowledged that scoring has become an issue. “Our rhythm is off offensively. Shots that guys were making, same shots they were making earlier, they’re missing now,” he said. “It’s about the rhythm. Some of the combinations I’ve had to go with has our rhythm off a little bit.”
Now, you can guarantee that Casey is looking for some improved defensive play and more minutes for Terrence Ross and Norman Powell on the perimeter might provide a boost there. But he was also looking forward to the added spacing and three-point shooting they provide that DeRozan doesn’t.
“He’s the number whatever scorer in the league. You lose that. There’s no question about that,” said Casey. “But I would say that T-Ross is a very good three-point shooter. Norm is a good three-point shooter. We have other guys who can do it in different ways within the offensive sets we have. We’ve got to make up for it in different ways. It’s a challenge anytime you lose a dynamic player like DeMar. But we’ve done it before.”
Not that often. DeRozan’s durability is astounding. He’s missed just 37 games in nearly eight seasons — 21 of them when he was out with a groin injury in the 2014-15 season. The Raptors went 12-9 without DeRozan then, mainly on the strength of some elite shooting from Lowry, who averaged 22.3 points and 8.9 assists and shot 40 per cent for the month of December that year, all with DeRozan sidelined.
DeRozan is confident that Lowry can rise again and shake out of his funk.
“It may speed it up even more just having that on your conscience, knowing you have to pick it up,” said DeRozan.
So should the Raptors worry? Panic?
No. As long as Lowry makes at least half his threes the Raptors should be fine.