Raptors’ shooting has to heat back up to avoid extending current cold streak

The Toronto Raptors have had three meaningful winning streaks this season, and a common thread runs through all of them.

A synopsis: When the Raptors shoot the ball even close to league average efficiency, they are a tough team to beat.

The first win streak came early in the year when they won five straight and helped stabilize things after a rocky 1-3 start.

The second came in early January when they reeled off six consecutively, celebrating their long-awaited return to full health of their core players.

And not too long after that came an impressive eight-game surge that included a signature, epic triple-overtime win over the Miami Heat that seemed to suggest the Raptors were ready to move out of the Eastern Conference play-in tournament.

What’s telling, as the Raptors get set to play in San Antonio Wednesday night and change their momentum after going 2-5 coming out of the All-Star break, is that the Raptors' winning streaks have been strongly correlated with periods of hot shooting – at least by their standards.

On the season, the Raptors haven’t been a bad perimeter shooting team and they haven’t been a good shooting team, either. They’ve been decidedly average – ranking 16^th in the 30-team league in three-point percentage (35.2) and 15^th in three-pointers made per game (12).

But during their hot streaks, they’ve been either good enough, good or outrageously good.

In their five-game streak early in the season, their true shooting percentage – a measure that includes the value of two-point field goals, three-point field goals and free throws – was .543, which is below the league average of .562 and in line with the season average of .542.

It was during that streak that Toronto signalled its strategy for overcoming what even early on looked like was going to be a weak-shooting lineup: take more shots than the other team by forcing more turnovers and grabbing as many of their own missed shots as possible.

They rank second in both opponent turnovers and rebounding their own misses and, accordingly, their +6.5-shot differential leads the NBA.

When they won six games to start the new year, their TS% was .569 and they were averaging 14 made threes a game – two more than their season average of 12 made threes per game. That stretch coincided with Fred VanVleet catching fire during his All-Star push as he averaged 31.2 points per game and a Steph Curry-like 44 per cent from three on an astounding 13.2 attempts per game.

And when they ripped off eight wins in a row their shooting was a massive reason, as they shot 43 per cent from deep as a team – well above their 35.2 per cent season average – and their TS% of .593 would have them slightly outpacing the Utah Jazz, whose season mark of .591 leads the NBA and is a big reason Utah has the league’s most efficient offense. At that stage it was Gary Trent Jr. who was in can’t-miss mode, though he wasn’t the only Raptor shooting well.

Working in harmony with a solidly functioning perimeter game was Pascal Siakam, who was punishing defenses that had to spread themselves thin to account for VanVleet or Trent Jr. at minimum by putting up 23.5 points a game along with 9.7 rebounds and 6.1 assists while shooting 50 per cent from the field and 42 per cent from deep over the Raptors' 17-6 stretch that included their six- and eight-game winning streaks.

It’s worth making note of how correlative the Raptors' shooting is to their winning spells because – surprise, surprise – when they shoot poorly, they have a really hard time not losing.

It’s never been more apparent than in their post-All-Star lull, where they’ve shot just 32.5 per cent, which ranks 27^th in the NBA over that from three and have a TS% of 51.6, which is dead last.

Even those numbers are flattering because if you take away their win over the Nets in Brooklyn on Feb. 28 when they shot 18-of-38 thanks to multiple triples from the likes of Malachi Flynn, Thad Young, Precious Achiuwa and Chris Boucher, Toronto is shooting just 29.9 per cent from deep.

It’s a problem.

“You guys saw it, it was hard to get a whole lot going from the perimeter,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse after the Raptors shot 6-of-24 from three in their loss to Cleveland on Sunday, a game in which the Cavs made 11 triples. “It’s tough to kind of lose 33-18 at the three-point line.”

Even at full strength, the Raptors three-point shooting is a roster deficiency.

Heading into the season, the only players on the roster who had shot at least league average from three (36.7) on at least 100 attempts from the year before were Chris Boucher (38.3), OG Anunoby (39.8) anTrent Jr. (38.5), making Toronto just one of six teams with less than three league average three-point shooters on their roster.

Now, it should be noted that VanVleet shot 36.7 last season and is obviously a quality perimeter shooter – he’s third in the NBA in made threes this year on 39.8 per cent shooting – but with Anunoby and Boucher regressing (connecting on 35.1 and 29.1 per cent of their threes this year, respectively), the Raptors are short of proven deep threats and they have none on their bench. 

And now with Anunoby out – he’ll miss his eighth game Wednesday night with a fractured ring figure in his shooting hand – and VanVleet having missed five games and questionable against the Spurs, the Raptors have even less to threaten defenses with.

Making things even worse is that Trent Jr. – who enjoyed the best streak of his career over a 13-game stretch before the break when he averaged 25 points a game while shooting 45.6 per cent from deep – left his shot back home in Minneapolis. He’s averaging just 13.4 points and 22.2 per cent from three since.

Not surprisingly, the Raptors are facing more zone defenses than any team in the NBA of late as opposing coaches can smell a weakness and are exploiting it.

On the season, Toronto has played the second-most possessions against opposing zones in the NBA according to data from Synergy sports, and for good reason – they are third from the bottom in points per possession against zones, at just .869.

But teams have been rushing to that tactic recently. Before the All-Star break, the Raptors were only the 10^th most zoned team, even though they weren’t particularly effective against a defensive approach that defaults to defending the paint over challenging ball-handlers and shooters on the perimeter.

With Trent Jr. having yet to thaw out and with Anunoby and VanVleet out, the Raptors have been pointing the remote at the TV over and over again, but the screen has remained blank.

Tellingly, when the Raptors dipped into the pool of available free agents for 10-day contracts they most recently added Armoni Brooks who shot 38 per cent from three on high volume in a 20-game stint with Houston last season.

The Raptors' offensive crater never felt deeper than on Sunday night against Cleveland when they went nearly seven minutes without a field goal and missed 14 consecutive shots – six of them threes – to end the third quarter.

“I certainly know it felt like it was tough,” said Nurse after the game. “The hard part about it is the turnovers are super low, so it’s not like we’re saying, ‘Oh, man, we turned it over a ton, we couldn’t get any kind of shot up.’ There wasn’t a whole lot of deep shot-clock possessions, so chances are we got some fairly good looks that we’re just going to (have to) make more of a percentage of.”

Making things worse? The Raptors are shooting just 68.7 per cent from the free-throw line over their 2-5 slide, 29^th in the league and well off their 75.8 per cent mark before the All-Star break, which was 23^rd.

“It certainly doesn't help,” said Nurse.

The Raptors are in the midst of one of the toughest stretches of their season. The Spurs are their second start on a season-high six-game road trip and a stretch of eight of nine games on the road.

Toronto has been nothing if not streaky this season, but if they don’t find a way to either shoot better or otherwise manufacture more offense, it’s not hard to see what kind of streak the Raptors are heading for now.