Why the Raptors have the potential to be more than a feel-good story

The Toronto Raptors have exceeded any and all expectations this season, from Vegas’ over/under line of 35.5 wins to Masai Ujiri’s comments about not being a “team of now” and “growing pains” to come. With 47 wins and counting, the Raptors are guaranteed to finish at least 10 games above .500 and make the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons, with the only exception coming in 2020-21 during their displaced season in Tampa Bay.

While the expectations were tame, the path to regular-season success was always there for the Raptors. After all, the team brought back three all-star calibre players in Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby, a head coach who has proven to be one of the very best in the league in Nick Nurse, and a culture that incentivizes hard and scrappy play, which can take you far in the regular season when some teams refuse to match your level of effort and physicality.

But just like there are 82- and 16-game players, there are also 82- and 16-game teams. And nobody, including the most optimistic among us, thought this Raptors team could make much noise in the playoffs.

“My goal, or our goal, always for me, was to make sure we got into a series,” Nurse said after the team beat the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night to clinch a playoff spot. “I just think it’s super important for our group to experience that: the intensity, the adjustments, the spotlight right on that thing for all those games is something you’ve got to go through.”

Nurse, like most of us heading into what was considered a retooling season, was only focused on getting to the playoffs in order for his young and inexperienced group to get those much-needed reps and build towards the future. The Raptors didn’t seem very concerned about what would happen when they did get there, hence VanVleet and Siakam leading the league in minutes and VanVleet playing on an injured knee down the stretch to secure a playoff spot. The Raptors weren’t expecting to be championship contenders, acknowledging that this group is young, inexperienced, lacking depth and flawed in ways that tend to matter in the playoffs when the game slows down (fewer transition opportunities) and teams can better game plan for you (fewer offensive rebounding opportunities, maybe).

But while it’s true the Raptors do have some disadvantages when it comes to playoff basketball — ones that we have known about for a long time and have been heavily scrutinized — it’s also true they have some unique advantages that aren’t being discussed.

The Raptors are in a very interesting position heading into the 2022 playoffs. Without a clearcut juggernaut in the Eastern Conference, with only 5.0 games separating them from the No. 1 seed, the parity is real. Plus, the Raptors are likely to have a real home court advantage in a potential first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers or Boston Celtics with regards to vaccination status, as Mathisse Thybulle was deemed “ineligible to play” in Toronto on Thursday and there are reports that several Celtics are unvaccinated. Plus, if the Brooklyn Nets were to win the play-in tournament and upset a higher seed in a first-round matchup, they would be without Kyrie Irving for four out of seven games against Toronto in a potential second-round matchup, giving Toronto a vaccine-aided path to the conference finals. Ridiculous, but true.

But lets forget vaccination status for a minute and focus on the Raptors themselves, because they have grown in significant ways this season, both individually and collectively, and should be much better prepared to handle the slower, more physical rigours of a playoff series than they were in the NBA bubble when they lost to the Celtics in 2020.

One advantage the Raptors should have in the playoffs is in regards to the whistle and, in turn, how they might be able to defend. The Raptors have one of the most physical defences in the league, compensating for a lack of a traditional centre by prioritizing keeping ball-handlers in front of them and out of the paint, switching most ball-screens and sending multiple bodies into the post to deal with skilled bigs. Physicality and aggression are key parts of their system and, when the refs let a little bit more go, it plays to their strengths.

“Yeah, a lot of guys on our team already played physically from the past. Coming into the season, early in the season the refs kinda let us play a little bit. It was physical, we didn’t know what to expect, but they let us play so that kinda fell into our favour,” Precious Achiuwa said. “We’re out there imposing our will on other teams from a physical standpoint.”

That style of play has gotten them into foul trouble at times this season, sending opponents to the free-throw line at the 11th highest rate in the league, per Cleaning the Glass, and putting their opponent into the penalty bonus the 11th most often as well. Fortunately for the Raptors, physicality picks up in the playoffs, sometimes dramatically so (just rewatch Game 7 between the Raptors and 76ers in 2019 for evidence), and the refs are less likely to call touch fouls or reward players for “grifting” fouls by way of baiting an opponent with a sweep-through move or unnatural shooting motion.

“I think we’re out there moving our feet, applying pressure, we’re doing a good job of once the action starts – which is really what they want to referee, the movement, when the guys are handling and heading towards the rim – I think we’re doing a pretty good job of either keeping our hands out of that and using our feet,” Nurse said about the balance between being aggressive and not sending opponents to the line.

“We gave up 25 free throws [to the Sixers on Thursday] and we didn’t get our money’s worth on about eight of those calls. A bunch of them were really light and really clean so I’m encouraged by it because I think maybe that stuff will not get called [in the playoffs].”

As Nurse alludes to, the Raptors defence should only improve with increased physicality allowed. And for proof of this, just look back on the start of the regular season, when the refs were making a point to call far fewer fouls, letting teams play “prison ball,” as VanVleet called it. The Raptors thrived under those circumstances, going 6-3 with the 6th best defence over their first nine games. More evidence of how increased physicality benefits the Raptors comes in clutch time, when teams usually get away with more as refs are less likely to blow their whistles, when the Raptors have the 8th best defensive rating in the league this season and are sending opponents to the line at the lowest rate in the entire league, per NBA.com.

Of course, the devil’s advocate would argue that the lack of foul calls in the playoffs will go against the Raptors just as much as it benefits them. After all, the “playoff whistle” tends to affect both teams and send both to the free-throw line less often than they are used to. But the Raptors, unlike some of their potential Eastern Conference opponents, don’t rely on free-throws to fuel their offence. In fact, the Raptors get to the line at the sixth lowest rate in the league, per Cleaning the Glass, and are in the penalty bonus the sixth least often. Plus, none of their players average more than 5.5 free-throw attempts per game, making VanVleet and Siakam, in particular, less free-throw dependent than a lot of other stars players.

Compare that to their most likely first-round opponent, the 76ers, who have the highest free-throw rate in the league (the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat also rank in the top-10), with Joel Embiid (11.8) and James Harden (9.2) combining for 21 free throws per game. But in the playoffs, the free-throw attempts have historically dropped off for both of them, especially Harden.

Of course, playoff basketball is often slower and with fewer possessions to potentially get to the line, but when you look at how often each of them is fouled on a field-goal attempt in the regular season compared to the playoffs, that too goes down. Embiid has been fouled on an average of 2.3 fewer percent of his shots in the playoffs compared to the regular season, with the exception of 2019-20 when the Sixers got swept in the first round. And Harden is fouled on an average of 1.5 fewer percent of his shots in the playoffs than in the regular season, not including last season, where the data is fuzzy because he didn’t try in Houston and only played 44 games.

Overall, the two of them are each getting fouled on 23 percent of their shots this season, and that number is likely to go down in the playoffs, especially when it comes to the “non-basketball moves” they have become so good at executing. Siakam, meanwhile, is being fouled on just 13.6 percent of his shots this season. And for someone who doesn’t even think about free throws or get many easy calls, that isn't likely to change.

“My mentality is to not even think about it. I just try to play to be honest with you… I try to forget that part of the game,” Siakam says about free throws. “I think I get fouled every play… I’m not going to get free throws every time down the floor. I just try to forget it and just play.”

Of course, any drop-off in free-throw attempts could really hurt the Raptors, because those are important opportunities to stop the clock, keep the scoreboard moving in your favour, and get your opponents into foul trouble, and the Raptors already do it at a bottom-six rate.

But it’s not just free throws that we are talking about here: increased physicality means the Raptors can stay out of rotations more often than normal, enabling their great individual defenders to guard the ball-handler one-on-one with increased bodying, bumping, holding and hand-checking, and therefore not get blown by as easily. That way, the defence doesn’t have to collapse as often and there will be fewer opportunities for opponents to kick out to open three-point shooters. Remember at the start of the season when everyone was wondering why scoring was down across the board? That was why.

To be clear, a tighter whistle is only going to help the Raptors marginally and a lot more will have to go right if they are going to make noise in the playoffs. But playoff series are won on the margins and there are reasons to believe the team’s top players are significantly better prepared for the playoffs now than they were in 2020. I’ve written about all of the ways that Siakam has improved his game with the playoffs in mind, and VanVleet and Anunoby have also both improved at creating their own shot and scoring in the mid-range and out of the post, respectively.

But if the Raptors are going to succeed in the playoffs, it’s going to be because they have an elite defence. And the increased physicality makes that a real possibility. They’re already heading in a good direction, with the fifth-best defence (and record) in the league over their last 47 games and the ability to adjust defensive game plans on the fly.

“I think we've come a long way, a really long way. And that's the exciting part, when you think about the playoffs. This team has the potential to do it now,” VanVleet said. ”Fast forward to having a group that nobody thought was going to be any good, being here in this position is good. We did what we set out to do in the regular season which was have a good regular season and… get us a spot where we feel like we belong.”

“Now, it’s time to go see what we can do.”

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