The Raptors are prioritizing defence this year
The Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Roman Empire, lasted for almost 1000 years after Rome fell. At its territorial peak, it occupied much of the same territory as the Roman Empire, including the entire Mediterranean basin. But very shortly after it expanded to that great height, it shrank down and down until the empire was no more than the capital city of Constantinople. For most empires, such a defeat spells the end. But the Byzantines would flourish for another several centuries, later expanding and expanding back into both Europe and Asia.
The Toronto Raptors are trying to undergo the same accordioning process, to rebound after several years of shrinking back to their roots. Once upon a time, the empire of the Raptors was built on defence. The 2019 champions were a solid offence, sure, but on the defensive end they were terrors. And while last year’s team under rookie head coach Darko Rajakovic instituted solid offensive principles, it is on the defensive end that the Raptors remain rudderless.
Last year Rajakovic came into media day with new defensive ideas. He wanted to limit opposing corner triples and attempts at the rim, keeping the ball in less threatening areas and forcing attempts further and further away. And that all happened. Compared to the season prior, Toronto leaped from 29th to 19th in corner 3-point frequency allowed while also jumping from 23rd to 16th in rim frequency allowed.
Yet that resulted in little. They were the 14th-ranked defence the year prior, allowing all those corner triples and layups, and they were the 27th-ranked defence under Rajakovic, limiting those attempts. Perhaps there was more he had to institute.
“We’re going to start to build our foundation starting now,” said Rajakovic when I asked him about his team’s defensive principles on media day. “We had a chance during the summer to talk to our players, to set some goals for them and we can all agree that great defence starts with how you play on the ball, how you start your defence from there. We want to apply more ball pressure, we want to be aggressive, we want to have active hands and everything starts there. There is one term around the league when you have a player around the rim who is protecting everybody, every player, is called MIG: Most Important Guy.
But I changed that with our team this year. For us, MIG, the most important guy, is going to be the guy who is guarding the ball. Everything starts there.”
There will be cascading effects if the ball defender is Toronto’s most important lodestone on that end. There will be far more activity and pressure, leading to more turnovers, more negative dribbles, more wasted clock, and more blown sets. All that is good — if it works well. But at the same time, even if it all goes perfectly, there will certainly be more blow-bys, more straight-line drives, more halfcourt two-on-ones because of a missed rotation, and more offensive advantages that require no creation. All of that is bad and scary and why so many teams play conservative defence.
Rajakovic wants to institute more and better team defensive schemes to ameliorate those risks, to allow the remainder of the team to find ways to cut off the ball when the point-of-attack aggression backfires. And that can work to some extent.
Toronto can try more directionally oriented pick-and-roll schemes to try to at least make rotations easier. That would include weaking, icing, or other such approaches. Can Immanuel Quickley be trusted to deny an entire side of the floor to the opposing ball-handler? Can RJ Barrett? It will take improvement both in terms of individual effort — which both players mentioned on media day — and schematics.
But what does it mean to reorient your defence to the point of attack? Rajakovic gave some specifics:
“There is a pickup point of defence, which usually is transition,” he said. “You know, in transition, you need to have a really good pickup point two steps above the 3-point line, to shrink the floor, to slow down their transition, and to make them play deeper in the clock. And line of defence is something different. Line of defence is you can be in the half court, but we want to be able to extend catches. We want to be able to be more aggressive, to get more into the ball. And in order to do that, you cannot have players to be back and sit back. So I’m gonna coach and teach our guys and allow them to be much more aggressive in a half court, but at the same time, that means that everybody else has to provide good protection spots and to be able to make multiple efforts from there.”
If all that works, Toronto is forcing more negative dribbles, added turnovers, further drives, and later-clock situations. The team likely won’t judge its own performance by opposing corner 3-point and rim rates — which weren’t enough to dictate quality of defence on their own last season — but more by more nuanced indicators. How many drives curve versus go straight. How many negative dribbles guards are forced to take when initiating pick and roll. How far opposing catches are from the hoop on the perimeter. Rajakovic didn’t give a specific ‘target number’ on the defense end — such as the golden 25 assists goal on the offensive end last year — but I’m sure they have internal numerical goals.
Teams can cobble together passable defences with few elite individual defenders. Last year’s Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks managed to do so. A huge component of both teams’ guard and wing stables (Tyler Herro, Jaime Jacquez jr., Duncan Robinson, Niokla Jovic for Miami, Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, Tim Hardaway jr., Josh Green, Jaden Hardy for Dallas) aren’t particularly mobile, long, rangy defenders. But both teams were decent (or better in the playoffs) behind the elite performances of individuals (Bam Adebayo, Derrick Jones jr., etc.) as well as complete commitment to sound team principles.
Toronto could feasibly do something similar. Jakob Poeltl is a very strong defensive big who can hold things together. And the team had a slightly better-than–average defence when Poeltl was on the floor last year. Scottie Barnes emerged as a fantastic back-line sweeper, gathering bounties of steals and blocks while protecting more space than anyone else on the team. There’s a foundation there, a core of success. If someone in the backcourt emerges as a capable ball defender, Toronto might be able to cobble together truly solid defensive lineups.
Rajakovic’s concept of MIG likely gives Davion Mitchell the first kick at the can there for Toronto. (In terms of role, but not necessarily in the starting lineup.) He can provably weak and ice the pick and roll, force negative dribbles, and extend catches a few feet back. He is provably aggressive.
But having one player capable of implementing Toronto’s on-the-ball goals isn’t enough. Especially one who tops out as an offensive neutral. For Toronto to fulfill its goals on both ends, its best offensive guards also have to be able to stay within scheme on the defensive side of the floor. Quickley and Barrett especially have to be able to ramp up aggression on the ball. Gradey Dick, too. His rotations were on point in Summer League, but his on-ball defence didn’t scream aggression. Whether some of Toronto’s most passive defenders can step into highly aggressive schemes is far from guaranteed. It’s a good goal in theory. But theory certainly doesn’t always translate to reality.
The other change that allowed the Byzantine Empire to flourish after its former decay was its embrace of the future. For a long time, it had tried to be the continuation of the Roman Empire, using Latin and territorial prefectures and other systems that didn’t work for the Byzantines. Once it shrunk down to its core, it expanded based on those new core principles — using Greek, centralizing power under the Emperor, etc.
The Raptors need to embrace the future, too. Building a defence that would have worked in 2019 will no longer work in 2025. And perhaps that’s where Rajakovic, Quickley, and company have the toughest struggle ahead of them. They can institute solid defensive principles. But they won’t be a great defence until they have a recognizable identity, perhaps even an innovative one. That’s hard. Maybe calling the MIG the ball defender is one step in the right direction there, or maybe it’s window dressing for media members. We’ll find out when games start. But the Raptors will never be a good team, or even ready to start trying to become one, until they know — and most importantly opposing teams know — who they are on the defensive end.
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