NBA on Grid

Many people have no doubt that Toronto Raptors is a great team sitting at 2nd place in Eastern Conference, but at the same time, many of those do not include Raptors as a favorite to win the NBA Championship. Why? Lack of playoff experience? Lack of a superstar?  People and media provide their own different reasons, but I wanted to dig deeper from analytical perspective to see what Toronto needs to do to get to the next level to compete for the championship.

Since Toronto doesn’t have much trouble scoring the ball, I wanted to focus on the defensive side of the games in which Toronto lost. To start off, I found two interesting key statistics:

% of Toronto winning when they keep their opponent under 110 pts = 41 / 51 = 80%
% of Toronto winning when they keep their opponent under 100 pts = 33 / 36 = 92%

These statistics themselves are very astonishing, but more interestingly, all of the three games that Raptors lost when opponents scored fewer than 100 points occurred all in November.(Nov.6,8,18), which means they haven’t lost a SINGLE GAME since Nov.18 when opponents scored fewer than 100 points. This suggests that Raptors feels more comfortable closing out games when opponent scores fewer than 100 points. Most importantly, it shows how important defense is for Toronto to win games.

So what does this mean? Does Toronto need to play slow tempo basketball? Does Toronto need to play aggressively to force tough shots to lower the other team’s FG%? Does Toronto need to secure more rebounds to limit 2nd chance opponent points? Does Toronto need to force more turnovers?

Upon further analysis into last N number of games they lost Toronto had given up more than 110 points in all of the last 7 lost games.

Score: (113-115, 100-122, 93-112, 112-117, 106-116, 101-114, 106-113)
VS.      (BULLS, CAVS, NUGGETS, TIMBERWOLVES, BULLS, PISTONS, ROCKETS)

(in respective order)

Toronto gives up 98.4 points to an opponents per game in 2015-16 season on average, so these losses were very uncharacteristic of the Raptors squad. (as noted below)

So what were the matters in these 7 games? I went onto compare the Advanced stats for the season avg and for the past 7 lost games.

As you can see from the red-squared column values above, Raptors had noticeably worse Defensive Rebounding, Offensive Rebounding, and consequently Overall Rebounding than season avg for 5 of those 7 lost games. Also, the pace was faster than season pace avg for 4 of those 7 lost games. Is it because those teams, which Toronto lost to, play at a fast pace in general? Let’s take a look.

Bulls on avg score 101.6 pts
Cavs on avg score 103.5 pts
Timberwolves on avg score 101.4 pts
Pistons on avg score 101.7
Rockets on avg score 105.8
Nuggets on avg score 101.7

They all scored way beyond their season avg, which implies that the losses have to do more with Raptor’s defense.

So which areas can Raptors improve on looking at these 7 games? I immediately noticed that Toronto was out-rebounded (especially big margin on the defensive end) in 6 of those 7 lost games. Also, opponents shot over 50% in 5 of those 7 games (51.2% by Bulls, 55.4% by Cavs, 54.2% by Nuggets, 51.6% by Bulls, 57.7% by Pistons), which is a big no-no. In order to provide more accurate assessment on these matters, I will have to take a look at game tapes as well as individual player statistics to thoroughly analyze why Toronto was out-shot and out-rebounded in each of those 7 games. However I won’t jump into those stats in this post to keep the view from team perspective and I will cover individual stats for Raptors in the near future post.

Toronto didn’t have much trouble with other categories such as turnovers, blocks, FTs, 3’s and so on , but if Raptors want to compete  for the championship, they really need to start installing a better habit to force tougher shots to bring down opponent FG% and boxing out harder against teams that are more aggressive on getting the boards.

I wanted to conclude this post with couple other interesting statistics:

% of Toronto losing when opponent score more than 110 = 10 / 11 = 91%
% of Toronto losing when opponent score more than 100 = 17 / 26 = 65%

Above stats are another reminder that Raptor’s chance of winning highly fluctuates depending on the points scored by opponents.

My thought:

I believe defense is not only an effort but also a habit. Defense doesn’t get whole a lot better overnight and Toronto must install a better defense to really force tough opponent shots and boxing out against bigger and more athletic bigs (for example, the recent teams that handed loss to Toronto had bigger and more athletic bigs like Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard, Andre Drummond, Kenneth Faried, Karl Anthony Towns). Winning records doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing everything right. A regular season is an opportunity to prepare for situations they will encounter during playoff. If Raptors starts installing a defensive system that improves on lowering opponents FG% and rebounds, Raptors will be ready to compete at the even higher level by the time playoff arrives.

Edit: Raptors beat Hawks last night and won by 104-96. The probability of Raptors winning when they hold their opponent to less than 100 increased yet again!

Source: nba.com/stats