Failure to Launch

The Toronto Raptors were supposed to be the Long-armed Team of Tomorrow. What went wrong?

[Ed. note: This article was originally published at raymondsimms.com, a temporary personal blog I ran during the 2022-23 basketball season. It was ported over to Crucial Baskets on April 20, 2024.]

The 2021-22 Toronto Raptors looked like a team on the rise. Following a 2020-21 campaign that saw the team go 27-45 while playing their entire home schedule in Tampa, Florida, the 2022 Raptors returned to Canada and made the playoffs with a respectable 48-34 record.

The 2022 team was a unique build. The end-of-season roster had only three players out of 17 that were shorter than 6’5″, but no one was taller than 6’9″. Most of these players also had copious amounts of wingspan.

With a Solid Seven of Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, Scottie Barnes, OG Anunoby, Gary Trent Jr., Precious Achiuwa, and Chris Boucher, the 2022 Raptors managed to push their First Round series against the Philadelphia 76ers to six games. Despite their ultimate elimination, it seemed that there was plenty to look forward to in Raptors Nation.

Fast forward to February 2023 and the Raps are 23-30. Basketball Reference’s Pythagorean Win formula indicates that record is four games below expectation (27-26). Not only are they not in the East’s Top 8, they’re 12th in the conference, standing 1.5 games outside of the Play-In Club. All of this is happening even with the Solid Seven still intact and the team holding the seventh-best average point differential in the conference (0.5 points per game). So what gives?

In the macro, two things are immediately apparent: the year-over-year drop in defensive rating and the offensive efficiency from the Solid Seven.

Toronto finished 2022 with the ninth-best defensive rating. They’ve dropped to 20th so far this season. The Raptors were 19th in opponent 2-point percentage and 18th in opponent 3-point percentage in 2021-22, but has dropped to 29th in both categories in 2022-23.

Let’s look at opponent shooting zones to parse where the leak is coming from. Toronto dropped from 17th to 27th year-over-year in Left Corner 3 percentage and ninth to 24th on above-the-break treys. These declines undercut the improvement from 18th to 12th on Right Corner 3 percentage. Within the paint, the drop takes place in the non-restricted-area paint. Toronto fell from sixth in 2022 to 25th this season when defending that district of the court.

Despite the abundance of wingspan on the roster, it seems the team has become less adept at keeping opponents out of the paint and challenging perimeter shots, two places modern teams are always looking to score from.

The offensive efficiency of Toronto’s Solid Seven has also dropped from last year. Their 3-point percentage has fallen from 30.1 percent to 29.3 percent while their 2-point percentage has dived from 54.3 percent to 50.7 percent. That’s a drop in effective field goal percentage from 52.4 percent to 49.2 percent, when the general goal is to remain above 50 percent.

After a promising 2022 campaign, the 2023 Raptors are still a competitive, tempo-dictating (27th in pace in 21-22, 26th in 22-23) squad. Unfortunately, they aren’t as sharp on either side of the floor as they were last year, leading to some disappointing losses.

With these results and the trade deadline looming, the Raptors are clearly at a crossroads. Does the front office need to make moves so Toronto can make a more decisive playoff push? Or is it time to end this era and focus on the future? Either way, it’s clear that this is not where the Toronto Raptors want to or expected to be.