Toronto Raptors: Clear eyes, broad shoulders, can’t lose
The Step Back has been born from the aesthetics and traditions of the Hardwood Paroxysm Basketball Network. In the past, Hardwood Paroxysm has produced a massive stand-alone season preview. This year, that preview effort has been rolled up into the launch of The Step Back.
The Step Back’s writers and illustrators have prepared a hefty deep-dive into each team, built from multiple smaller sections. This year’s theme is television comedies and each section is named after some of our favorite sitcoms. For links to all 30 teams, as well as details about the focus of each section, check out our guide on how to read this preview.
Community
By Chris Barnewall (@ChrisBarnewall)
There is nothing harder in the NBA than consistently getting better. No matter the team in any era — even the Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls — at some point there will be a drop off from the previous year’s accomplishments. After all, there is no such thing as perfection in sports.
With that in mind, how in the world are the Toronto Raptors going to improve on a year that was the greatest in the history of their franchise? Everything that possibly could have gone right for Toronto did last season. They had an All-Star backcourt of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, a top five offense, and consistently great contributions from the rest of their roster on a nightly basis. Jonas Valanciunas finally had the type of impact season that Raptors fans had been waiting on. Bismack Biyombo became the greatest bargain in the entire NBA with a relentless attack on the offensive boards, and shot blocking skill that made even the best drivers look twice before attempting a floater near the rim. They finally overcame the first round hump that had haunted this regime of the franchise, and even managed to win a couple games in the Conference Finals. This team was incredible.
After a season like that, it makes sense for the franchise to want to keep around the key pieces of it, and they did just that by signing DeRozan to a gigantic five year, $139 million deal. Unfortunately, after signing someone to a contract like that, sacrifices have to be made elsewhere, and the enthusiastic Biyombo left for warmer weather down south. This might be a sacrifice that bites Toronto as they enter this season. Even with a fully healthy DeMarre Carroll, it’s hard to not see the Raptors taking a hit on the defensive end after losing their only rim protector.
The Raptors finished last season giving up 102.7 points per 100 possessions, which put them somewhere in the upper half of the league. This is a pretty solid number, and right around where most playoff teams wanted to be last year, but the problem for Toronto is they didn’t do anything this offseason to make sure they kept up that number. They let Biyombo walk, and replaced him with Jared Sullinger. Besides that, the majority of the roster remains the same. Of course, Biyombo was merely a bench role player,so the entire team defense is not going to fall off the face of the earth without him. However, there is a definite concern that Toronto decided to not replace him with a traditional rim protector after we saw how important it was for them during the playoffs. They don’t have many perimeter stoppers, but rather players that move the offense to where the defenders reside, which works a lot better with traditional rim protectors.
Perhaps the Raptors are hoping to find another breakout player in their slowly developing youth program. Toronto was one of the most active NBA teams last year when it came to using their D-League affiliate and they clearly value being able to develop their long-term project players in this manner. However, if they don’t find a player like that on this roster, then they could be in danger at facing natural regression this season.
Toronto is a young team, but not young in the way of development with most of their players done taking major jumps forward. What we see right now in Lowry, DeRozan, and Valanciunas is what we’re going to get and they’re unlikely to change. DeRozan can try to improve his shooting, but he’s not going to become a lights out 3-points shooter at this point of his career because he’s past that point. That’s how it is for the majority of Toronto’s roster. Terrence Ross, DeMarre Carroll, Patrick Patterson, and Corey Joseph are all talented players, but there should be no expectation of them taking a major leap. There are young guys on this roster such as Bruno Cabocolo, Lucas Nogueira, and Norman Powell, but two of those guys are two years away from being two years away. Powell was incredible during the playoffs, but he’s the exception to the rule on this roster.
It’s this lack of likely development, or change, on the roster that makes the expectations around the Raptors tough to manage. Those expectations only get more difficult to manage when DeRozan and his new contract get involved. The Raptors chose to pay DeRozan like a star, and they’re going to treat him like one with just as many ball touches as he got last year. This is both a good and bad thing for a Raptors offense that relies as heavily as they do on DeRozan.
If the year was 1992, there would be no reservations at all about the way DeRozan plays, and he would be an unquestioned star. He’s a ball dominant two guard that doesn’t shoot the three-pointer very much, and relies on a heavy volume of shots to get his points. He’s very talented, but his lack of outside touch and reliance on athleticism is troubling. Now that Toronto has paid him, is he going to get any better, or is he going to be the same DeRozan as always? In the regular season, DeRozan’s style of offense isn’t too much of a problem as he dominates weaker defenses with his sheer volume, and is able to use his athleticism to beat up on weaker defenders. Where the real problem comes is when teams choose to gameplan against him, and specifically design their defense as a means to slow him down. When this happens, DeRozan’s offense comes to a screeching halt, and he finds himself forcing midrange jump shots against a defense that wants him to shoot as far away from the rim as possible. His 33 percent three-point percentage doesn’t scare them, because he’s only taking two shots from deep per game.
This was very apparent in the playoffs. where DeRozan shot 39 percent from the field and a dreadful 15 percent from three-point range. It took him 19.9 attempts per game to reach the 20 points he averaged, and in today’s NBA, that is exactly what the defense wants to see. That top-five offense of the Raptors no showed in the playoffs, and DeRozan’s inability to score efficiently was largely responsible.
This is where the biggest problem with the Raptors reside: They’re a talented team that consistently puts together a great regular season, but when they reach the playoffs they fall apart. This isn’t due to mental weakness, but a roster and scheme that doesn’t handle the transition to a playoff atmosphere well. Every once in awhile the NBA will get these teams — great regular season teams that just can’t seem to make any noise in the playoffs because their flaws and style don’t transition well. Even though the Raptors had a great season last year, they’re dangerously close to being labeled a regular season team.
How does a team improve on the greatest season in their franchise’s history? For the Raptors, that task might be impossible without an unforeseen breakout season of some kind. Toronto seems destined for disappointment that they can’t control. They won 56 games last year and finished one win shy of the top seed in the conference. That’s something that should be celebrated, but if they’re expected to repeat that this season, they’ll likely fall short. Improving is hard, and not everybody is capable of doing it. For the Raptors, their focus should not be on clearing new bars but rather consistently clearing old ones.
Friends
By Chris Manning (@cwmwrites)
Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan are what make the Toronto Raptors work and what has made them one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference during the past few seasons. The two are a pairing that bring the best out of each other. Lowry, as much he is dynamic with the ball in his hands, has adapted and cedes some his traditional point guard duties in order to allow DeRozan to do what he does best. DeRozan, for his part, creates opportunities for Lowry by sucking in the defense as he attacks the rim over and over again.
Toronto has other players that matter, and players like DeMarre Carroll and Terrence Ross will be important this season, especially if they want to have a better chance of beating the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs. But no matter what you think of Toronto’s chances, its chance of something beyond 50 wins and a Conference Finals appearance starts with Lowry and DeRozan. Everything from Toronto does and will do stems from their partnership.
But there are questions. For one, DeRozan’s style is a bit predictable and it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll ever add three-point shooting to his game. As for Lowry, he’s 30 right now, will turn 31 during this season, and he’s at the point where point guards typically start to decline athletically. There’s a case to be made that the league has already seen the best version of the DeRozan/Lowry duo, largely due to Lowry’s age and the few injuries he’s suffered over the past few years. And if one of these two even drops off a little bit, Toronto’s margin for error decreases.
This, too, could be the last year of this pairing. While DeRozan re-upped on a max deal this summer, Lowry could leave next July and break this duo up. That doesn’t necessarily seem likely — he and DeRozan are basically a basketball-themed buddy cop movie who play off each other off the court as much as they do on — but it’s on the table. A year from now, a team like the San Antonio Spurs, the Dallas Mavericks, or maybe even Lowry’s hometown Philadelphia 76ers can offer him something new, something potentially better than what he has now, or what he’ll have in two years time when he exits his prime and can’t carry a team anymore.
At its core, that’s what this season is about for the Raptors. No one is really expecting them to beat Cleveland or maybe even Boston. But it’s possible that they can and should squarely be in the East’s top three. In 2016-17, Toronto has to build on last year and, if thing break right, take a step further or else take a step towards becoming the Northern version of the Atlanta Hawks. There are worse fates than becoming that, of course, but the Raptors’ ambitions are higher.
To do that, and maybe get another sequel to keep what is working going for a little bit longer, it has to be Lowry and DeRozan leading the way. The Raptors’ entire hopes to become something more rests on their shoulders.
Seinfeld
By Brendon Kleen (@BrendonKleen14)
Now that Drake’s basketball fandom has settled from “any team that will let him sit courtside and/or come into the locker room” to merely an impassioned love affair with the “We the North Raptors,” it’s worth analyzing how this alliance can continue to benefit the Canadian basketball franchise.
Besides clapping loudly and yelling even more loudly, Drake’s impact on winning basketball games has been intangible, if not mythic. But here’s this: The Phoenix Suns this season have taken to measuring high fives per capita as a way of analyzing chemistry and culture in the Valley of the Sun. Could we do the same by tallying how often the Raps interact with the 6 God per game? Perhaps we’d call them Drakeractions, and they’d tell us everything we need to know about the Toronto Raptors.
Consider this: By bullying Rodney Stuckey on the court (those mad claps again) and Paul George off it (a since-deleted crying PG meme on Instagram), Drake really took a leading role in the Raptors’ seven-game first round victory over the Indiana Pacers last season. Isn’t there value in that? I mean, if there’s not, do the Raptors have any hope? Their milquetoast early-series performance was saved by the rapper’s shenanigans. Is there hope for 2016-17 without severe intervention from Drizzy?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves; a true, impactful Drakeraction loses its oomph if it occurs more than once or twice per game. I’d say, on average, Drakeractions happen 1.2 times per game attended by Drake. Their magnitudes vary of course, and their potency rises to the occasion. Last year, as observed extremely scientifically (general glancing and squinting) methods, Drake was around for about one of every three Raptors home games. However, he just released an album in March, seems to have cooled in his efforts to have Future make him more famous, and will see his tour come to an end around the middle of October. Time is no obstacle this season.
He had two albums come out during the 2015-16 NBA season. If he cuts that in half, dropping a mixtape in early 2017 or something, he can be reasonably expected to increase his Raptors game attendance by 50 percent. Based on the extremely scientific calculations listed previously, Drake was present for approximately 15 regular season games last year, meaning he was responsible for 18 Drakeractions (1.2 per game multiplied by 15 games). If we increase that number by 50 percent as well, we can reasonably predict that we’ll see Drake tangibly affect the Raptors on-court product 27 times during the 2016-17 regular season via Drakeraction.
The Raptors went 32-9 at home last season. That means that 18 Drakeractions directly led to 32 wins, or 1.8 wins per Drakeraction. If he can indeed up that total to 27, the Raptors would accordingly increase their home win total to an astounding and previously-believed-to-be-impossible 48 wins in 41 games. And you thought you saw record-breaking in Golden State last season. Wait until you see what’s coming to the Six in 2016.
Perfect Strangers
by Matt D’Anna (@hoop_nerd)
Ten Word Analysis: Carroll and Powell potentially offset high-volume mid-range DeRozan activity.
TeamSPACE charts are based on mapped clusters of shot activity. These areas are affectionately called Hunting Grounds, because they are the areas on the court where a player hunts for shots — and successfully scores most often. TeamSPACE takes the Hunting Grounds of all five players in a lineup and puts them on the court together — because, you know, they have to share that physical space, and there is only one ball.
In the past, it was one color per player; which meant that blending colors represented overlapping spaces for shot activity. But this time around, these are not your ordinary TeamSPACE shot maps. Each lineup is analyzed in the aggregate — one color! — and that unit is compared that unit to the rest of the league. So you will see a persistent red layer on every chart, highlighting the league’s Hunting Grounds from last season. The most prolific locations should come as no surprise: the paint, the corners, most of the top of the arc, and a couple of dabs at the foul line and top of the key.
So…how were these lineups chosen for each team? In the past, it’s been about projecting the starting lineup, estimating the most used lineup, or even designing the “most favoritest” lineup. This year? It’s the these charts represent the “most interestingly feasible” lineups….what? That’s a loaded phrase, so let’s unpack it a bit.
The goal is to identify the collection of five players on a team that could potentially play together, and if they did, the offensive results could be glorious. Ideally these lineups aren’t too far-fetched, but also slightly off-kilter and confusing to an opposing defense. While this type of analysis is not conducive for assessing defense, somewhat reasonable decisions are attempted to be made. So while it’s tempting to just put all the best shooters together…how realistic is it (outside of Houston, at least)? And, full disclosure: I favor some stretch in my lineups. It not only provides plenty of high-octane potential, but getting stretchy is also on par with current league-wide trends.
Each TeamSPACE chart has a couple of other sitcom-related features:
Family Matters: You’ll notice a series of Jaleel White’s across half court. Each lineup is scored on a scale of 0-7 Steve Urkels for how well it matches league-wide trends. Remember, there’s seven league Hunting Grounds (right corner three; at the rim; left corner three; foul line/top of the key; right wing; middle 3pt; left wing). A lineup gains points for matching each area; it loses points for messy excess shot activity.
Odd Couple: “Most interestingly feasible” is obviously debatable, so in order to account for some of those decisions, you’ll see Oscar and Felix on each chart. Often, there are players that are in the lineup…and maybe/probably they should not be. They get the Oscar label. And, there are those players that are out of the lineup…and maybe/probably should be included. They are the Felix for their team.
And briefly, a word about data. These strange visual displays are based on last season’s shot data, weighted by made buckets — so rookies and season-long injuries are sadly excluded. This analysis is nothing without the help of Darryl Blackport, and the research materials available at Basketball-Reference and NBA.com. Further, these charts feature some of the best logo re-designs I could curate from the ol’ Information Superhighway, including Dribbble.com and Pinterest. I made none of the logos; I merely selected some of my favorites. Enjoy!
Everybody Loves Raymond
By Dan Favale (@danfavale)
Real talk: All of us need a friend like Kyle Lowry in our lives.
That much becomes clear when you look at the bond shared between Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. These two, despite a three-year age gap, often come off as besties. And it’s Lowry who does the best, most overt job of mixing sentiment with humor.
When DeRozan signed his five-year, $137.5 million deal to stay with the Toronto Raptors, it was Lowry who congratulated him on Instagram….while including the hashtags “Dinner is never on me again” and “I already charged all my bills to your card.”
It takes but a fraction of a second to watch Lowry with DeRozan, be it in a Ford Fiesta commercial or during a joint interview in which he destroys DeMar for crappy math, to see that he embraces the role of brotherly clown.
And this isn’t just a “Kyle hearts DeMar, always and forever” thing. Look at Lowry’s Instagram page, and you’ll see he’s dedicated a birthday post to Rudy Gay in each of the last three years. I’m lucky if my friends and family post more than an emoji on my Facebook wall once every three birthdays. Lowry’s out there dredging up nearly decade-old photographs and waxing nostalgic and friendship and brotherhood every year.
Let’s put it another way: If Kevin Hart’s best-man-for-hire character, post-falling action, from “The Wedding Ringer” was based off a real-life character, it would be Lowry. If there was an award for the “NBA Player Most Likely to Follow in Tim Duncan’s Footsteps and Pay $10,000-Plus for a Random Dog’s Surgery,” Lowry would win it every year. That’s the type of guy he seems to be — you want to know him, but you don’t need to know him to figure out that he’s a genuine pleasure to be around these days.
Of course, it helps Lowry’s case that he’s currently working through one of the most transformational career paths in the last decade. Like, five years ago, before he joined the Raptors, and even right after arrived in Toronto, I wouldn’t have been saying any of this stuff. Lowry was a turbulent enigma. Squandered potential, even. His attitude wasn’t lauded, it was derided. His conditioning was an issue. His career was never in any real danger, but he wasn’t going to be winning any hypothetical “Everybody Loves Raymond” awards, either.
Talk about a complete and utter 180.
Lowry is now the understated standard for point guard excellence in the Eastern Conference. People devote a lot of time to placing Kyrie Irving and John Wall on a pedestal, but Lowry, as of now, is the best floor general in the East.
Think about that. Really think about it. I could not have written that sober and with a straight face, free from the threat of bodily torture, just a few years back. I could not say that Lowry would be the best player on a conference finalist, or that he would one day rank inside the top-10 of MVP voting, as he did this past season.
Very few players are able to reinvent themselves six and seven years into their career. They might expand their game or enjoy a mid-prime surge, but they rarely ever undergo this top-to-bottom facelift both on and off the court. Lowry did just that, and he continues to remake himself even now, at the age of 30, an exception to the traditional superstar arc. And that makes him beyond easy to like.
Well, that and his dutiful policing of DeRozan’s mathematical comprehension.
Boy Meets World
By Brendon Kleen (@BrendonKleen14)
As is true for most NBA franchises, competitiveness on the court means hidden gems off it. That’s what made it Norman Powell’s breakout last year all the more exciting. The rookie generated 1.6 Win Shares in only 49 games with an efficient performance centered around shots at the rim and beyond the arc. The modernity in his game is important on a Toronto Raptors team that occasionally strays too far from the best kinds of shots on offense.
But behind the scenes, Powell is surrounded by talented young players in Toronto. As a product of the time they’ve all spent with the NBA team over long, competitive seasons, it feels like Lucas Nogueira, Delon Wright, and Bruno Caboclo have been around this team forever, yet none out of that trio have proven themselves in any real way. On the other hand, fellow under-25ers Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross have already been core contributors on this team for years. With such a roster in place, the Raptors benefit during each slogging NBA season from the freshness and depth that youth affords.
There are also two rookie bigs who could one day move the needle if Valanciunas walks in free agency or the need for a power forward continues to dominate the Raps’ nightmares. Pascal Siakam came to Toronto following two impressive seasons at New Mexico. He flashes guard skills in a 6-9 body with a 7-3 wingspan, attacking closeouts and slithering around the paint. He relies too much on that length on defense, occasionally foregoing sound technique in favor of flashy block attempts.
Jakob Poeltl, the team’s other 2016 first-rounder, is a different sort of big man. He’s mobile in a more imposing way, able to corral guards in the paint and swallow their shot attempts. On offense, he uses nice footwork and a big body to draw fouls and create space. He’s a similar player to Valanciunas in role and size, and that speaks to a larger point about the bottom of the Raptors’ roster.
Toronto has chosen to double up on player types throughout their years with this core, having the youngsters in the background mirror those in front of them. Wright provides a nice combination of what DeRozan and Lowry do, Powell is a 3-and-D presence with much to learn from DeRozan, and even Siakam fills a role that Toronto has always coveted — call it, “The Biyombo.” And really, what is Caboclo doing that Patrick Patterson hasn’t already given the Raptors?
Such orderly roster-building is emblematic of faith in the system and coaching in place. The current tandem in the backcourt wasn’t really supposed to be this good, either, so to expect and plan on improvement from the young guys isn’t unreasonable. There’s evidence on this same roster that patience, culture, and practice can be enough to help the sprouts bloom.