Nylon Notebook: Toronto Raptors still searching for the right offensive recipe

The Toronto Raptors are 21-15 through their first 36 games, outscoring their opponents by an average of 2.6 points per 100 possessions. It’s a respectable start and has them in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race. However, it’s also a slight step backwards from last season when they were 25-11 through their first 36 games, outscoring opponents by 5.9 points per 100 possessions. The last half of last season was a frustrating back slide but with the additions of Cory Joseph, Luis Scola and DeMarre Carroll, Toronto likely hoped to be slightly ahead of where they are right now.

It was their defense that mostly let them down in their last two games, frustrating losses to the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers. But in general, their defense has been much improved over last season, jumping up in almost every defensive statistic. The problem has been uneven play at the offensive end. There have been some bright spots but at least as many areas for concern.

DeMar DeRozan post-ups

DeRozan is working on one of the strongest stretches of his career. His true shooting percentage is the highest since his rookie season, and he’s working on career-highs in both assist percentage and free throw rate. One of the weapons he’s really unleashed this season is an increasingly refined post game. Among guards, no one else has used more post-up possessions than DeRozan this season and he’s averaging 0.95 points per possession in the post. That’s 16th in the league among all 59 players with at least 50 post-up possessions, and ranks better than LaMarcus Aldridge, Carmelo Anthony, DeMarcus Cousins and Nikola Vucevic.

You can see that DeRozan is posting up slightly more often this season, both on a per minute basis and relative to the rest of his offensive possessions. His efficiency is up slightly, in large part because roughly one in five of his post-ups is resulting in a trip to the free throw line, which in turn has helped depress his turnovers. Among those 59 players with at least 50 post-up possessions. Only Paul Millsap, DeMarcus Cousins and Andrew Wiggins are getting to the free throw line more often. Only Kobe Bryant, Russell Westbrook, Dwyane Wade, Derrick Favors, Dirk Nowitkzi and Al Jefferson are turning it over less often. For a guy with an unreliable outside shot, DeRozan’s post-up game has presented a real way to bend the defense and score efficiently from the inside.

Leaning on free throws

Getting to the free throw line is a huge part of Toronto’s offense this season. As a team they rank fourth in the league in free throw rate, and DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry rank second and 14th, respectively, in total free throw attempts this season. As such, getting the opposing defense into the penalty quickly as the goal in almost every quarter. According to Matt Femrite’s team penalty statistics here at Nylon Calculus, Toronto has had 28.4 percent of their offensive possessions come in the penalty this season, tied for the fifth-highest percentage in the league. Those minutes are extremely important because they’re efficiency skyrockets when they can get those extra free throw attempts — 114.2 points per 100 possessions in the penalty, as opposed to 105.5 for the rest of the game. That difference, +8.7 points per 100 possessions, is the fifth-highest in the league.

If you like at their cumulative point differential by game time, you can see that Toronto is generally much better at the end of quarters, particularly at the end of the fourth quarter.

This bonus bump at the free throw line has helped cover up for some of the other ways their offense hasn’t been as effective.

Fighting stagnation

One of the challenges for Toronto’s offense this season was to decrease the reliance on dribble penetration by Lowry and DeRozan. Their isolations often led to stagnation and a reliance on difficult shots. For example, Toronto ranked 29th last season in catch-and-shoot field goal attempts and had the third-highest average touch time (an indicator of how slowly the ball was moving). Things look a little bit different this season but the results aren’t all the way there yet.

The Raptors are moving the ball more this season, about 30 extra passes per game but they’re generating a nearly identical number of potential assists . They’re averaging roughly 1.5 extra catch-and-shoot three-pointers per game this season, and about 3.5 extra catch-and-shoot field goal attempts overall. But they’re taking slightly fewer three-pointers per game overall and the overall value of their shot selection hasn’t changed much.

If we look at Toronto’s offense by stylistic characteristics we see they’ve slowed down and are moving much more in the half-court, but without getting better looks out of it.

Which again, circles back to the free throw point. In the aggregate, the Raptors are taking a similar mix of shots to last season but their effective field goal percentage is down from 50.4 percent to 48.8 percent. If they weren’t doing so much at the line, things might look even worse.