The Raptors run one of the best plays in the league
“A lot has been made of the Raptors excellent offense to start the year. Basically every rotation player has average to elite scoring efficiency, they pass the ball a ton, they score from a lot of different places with a lot of different players. Brandon Ingram is the NBA’s best mid-range scorer. RJ Barrett is one of the best cutters in the league. Quickley is on a stretch of 45% shooting from downtown. Scottie Barnes is filling in wherever available and driving transition offense. Jakob is shooting 74% from the field. Things are going GREAT.
They’re a top 10 team on both sides of the floor. Cleaning the Glass has them at 5th in offense, 6th in defense, and 3rd in halfcourt offense. These are the stats of the outcomes. I have a couple more for you: The Raptors are top 5 scoring out of baseline out of bounds plays, and they are the BEST team in the league when it comes to scoring out of sideline out of bounds plays.
I want to highlight the play the Raptors are running most often. The play that makes them the best in the NBA. It’s built around rip screens, split action, and a pin-down. There’s a few built in counters. A lot of pieces of this play can change, but they run it pretty much exclusively with Immanuel Quickley, because his skillset is really what makes it work.
“Good teams have identities. Great teams have multiple. The Raptors may not necessarily be in that latter category (although … they may be?), but they are starting to show an adaptability that prior iterations of this group has lacked. Coming into this contest, Toronto had been a team that won by supercharged half-court offence. That wasn’t a strength in this one, at least not in the first half. So the Raptors had to find an advantage. It very early appeared that Toronto was going to win by strangling its opponent rather than with an uppercut to the chin. (Again: until it did land that uppercut and blast the Wizards into the stratosphere.)”
Have a blessed day.
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