What did the Raptors learn from the Length and Strength Era?

In one of Aesop’s fabled fables, a thirsty crow stumbled upon a large pitcher with a small amount of water in it. His beak didn’t reach far enough to drink anything. The crow knew that if he knocked the pitcher over, the water would run into the ground, and he would get nothing. So he dropped a stone into the pitcher. Then another, and another. Until, eventually, the water level rose high enough for the crow to drink. 

It was from The Crow and the Pitcher that the phrase ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ was born. But human history has proved the phrase countless times since then. Mistakes, and even annoyances, so frequently spur innovation. Velcro was invented when a scientist thought burrs sticking to his dog’s coat might have a lesson to teach him. Archimedes accidentally discovered his pseudonymous principle when he sat in a bath. The concept of the modern airport was invented when the Soviet Union blockaded the roadways to Berlin, so the United States airlifted food to the city. 

And so too is necessity the mother of invention in the NBA. Particularly for the last era of the Toronto Raptors. We’re in the future now, but there are still countless lessons from the junkyard of the past. 

It began after Toronto’s valiant, but doomed, title defense season. Without Kawhi Leonard, the Raptors were an exceptional team, but they were far from a championship favourite. Still, using Basketball Reference’s Simple Rating System, the Raptors weren’t a whole lot worse in 2019-20. (They were actually better, for what it’s worth.) The real drop came the following year, when Toronto’s competitiveness fell off the map.

The team lost both its centers. This is what Michael Grange wrote at the time.

“Ibaka wanted to stay with the Raptors…but the Raptors’ first offer – about $12 million for the 2020-21 season – was below what he was expecting and while Toronto came up to $14 million, they were still trying to keep some powder dry to pursue Gasol. That didn’t go over well with Ibaka.”

As a result, Toronto went into the following season with Alex Len and Aron Baynes as its center tandem. Throw in the disaster of Tampa Bay, and the team kept plummeting and plummeting into the void. The benefit, of course, was being able to draft Scottie Barnes. That did give Toronto another forward on a team that already employed OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam. 

What do you do when three of your best four players play the same position? You have to lean hard into the bit. That’s what the Raptors did, inventing the Length and Strength era, or Vision 6’9, or whatever else you want to call it. Necessity forced Toronto into quite an invention. Of course, in hindsight, it didn’t work particularly well. But Toronto still learned a huge amount that matters for today.

One of Toronto’s most important lessons was that offense doesn’t have to be initiated the same way every time. The start of the Length and Strength era came just after the peak of the NBA’s dalliance with heliocentrism, when James Harden and the Houston Rockets were enhancing pick and rolls for isolations. The Raptors used that same formula of initiating offense differently from the rest of the league — using more isolations, more post-ups, and less ball movement — to create their own unique brand of offense.

This is what I wrote for FiveThirtyEight at the time: 

“The Raptors’ process for creating offensive advantages is unique. No team starts as many similarly sized wings and asks them to spend so much time in the post. It’s impossible to say whether the Raptors turn to the post because it’s such an effective weapon or because their other offensive tools are relatively ineffective. Either way, the post represents another pillar in Toronto’s specialized approach to team building.

The Raptors have found other unique advantages — they rank second in offensive rebounding percentage and second in transition frequency. But when they’re forced to play in the half court, post-ups have emerged as one of the best options.”

And that worked fairly well! Pascal Siakam’s post-ups were a key cog in the Indiana Pacers reaching the Eastern Conference Finals. OG Anunoby’s ability to bury other players under the rim in transition is a valuable skill. Barnes can unfurl his arms like a ballerina and loft hooks with either hand over even the biggest defenders. Perhaps the greatest success of Toronto’s Length and Strength era was the lesson that if you aren’t a great pick-and-roll team, finding advantages elsewhere is a good thing. But Toronto’s overreliance on offensive rebounds and fastbreak buckets was perhaps a less beneficial tactic. 

The lesson there is not to fall prey to Goodhart’s Law, which is that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Nick Nurse and the Raptors tried to rig the possession game, with their analytics department telling them that when a team had five extra possessions it won a fair majority of its games. But the issue is that such a rule only described teams that won those five extra possessions as a symptom of other components of the game, without sacrificing structural integrity in order to do so. When the five extra possessions became what Toronto sought above all else, sacrificing defensive integrity and conceding corner triples, for example, to force more steals: that’s when the analytic ceased being useful. 

Those lessons are particularly applicable to these Raptors, who have gone in just the other direction. Instead of slow, no-pass post-ups, these Raptors value ball movement and assists above all else. Darko Rajakovic’s side finished second in assist rate … yet 24th in offense. Rajakovic himself continually preached the team’s assist total in conversation with the media. It was frequently the first thing he mentioned when he came into the room. But the warning from Nurse’s squad is not to chase assists as an end in and of themselves, as Nurse did with possession totals. 

Rajakovic’s offense has also gone away from post-ups. A year after finishing in the top 10 for post-up frequency, the Raptors ranked exactly average in frequency last season. And yet! The team finished top 10 in points per chance for all such possessions initiated via post-up, good for 1.06 points per chance. Meanwhile Barnes himself was in the 81st percentile for post-up possession points per chance, averaging 1.17. Perhaps the Raptors could have squeezed more juice out of that particular lemon — one that they learned so much about during the last era. 

Toronto’s offensive principles last year were a good foundation for success. Nurse always preached shot quality, and bemoaned his teams’ shooting luck, but the truth of the matter is that Rajakovic’s iteration last year had better shot quality — in the form of expected points per possession — than any of Nurse’s teams from the Length and Strength era. Toronto’s motion and cutting and increased driving and reversals did result in more attempts at the rim and more from deep. But there is always room for more improvement, and added diversification via more post-ups could benefit Toronto now and then. 

Perhaps the most obvious lesson of Toronto’s previous epoch is that shooting matters. And in the previous two drafts, Toronto has taken some of the best shooters in college in Gradey Dick and Ja’Kobe Walter. If either pans out, let alone both, that would be enormous. Also! Centers and point guards matter. Toronto seems to have learned that lesson, with its enormous investment into Jakob Poeltl and Immanuel Quickley. (And that (over)reliance on Poeltl also gives Toronto easy access to a high draft pick this upcoming year, if it so desires to pull that particular plug.) Ideally, a team’s best players will complement one another in natural ways. Toronto’s Length and Strength trio did work together, and often very well, but the smoothness of the fit took extra work. BBQ is a fit that intertwines in more organic ways. 

And look: Plenty of teams around the NBA have borrowed from Toronto’s innovations since the Length and Strength era. The Milwaukee Bucks loved the idea of playing basketball while passing as little as possible. The Memphis Grizzlies tried to hack the possession differential to an even larger extent than the Raptors. Heck, the Orlando Magic tried to upgrade Vision 6’9 into Vision 6’10. 

It’s reality that those who make the biggest leaps in understanding rarely are the ones who benefit the most as a result. Just look at Nikola Tesla and pretty much his entire career; the invention of the radio being credited to Guglielmo Marconi, instead of him, is a worthwhile example. This is true in basketball, too. It’s likely that Toronto’s innovations will, and already have, benefited other teams more than the Raptors.

Still, the Raptors do need to ensure that they benefit at least somewhat from the failures, and successes, of the Length and Strength era. They can’t rescue the innovations from years ago. But they can redeem them, bringing those lessons into the future. They can’t fixate too much on any statistic, particularly assists. Sometimes passing less and just bashing into dudes is the way. Roster balance, and fit, and especially shooting, should make a team more than the sum of its parts. 

Vision 6’9 is dead. It’s time for Toronto to see how it can envision its future as a result. 

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