The Raptors have a Terrifying New Identity...

And definitely our goal has to be a higher number, a higher percentage this year, so you know, we should be playing new plays. That's what we need, we need to shoot more threes. It's always great to have, you know, coaches and teammates pushing you to shoot. Just trying to make more shots, you know, if I can, raise free throw percentage. I was telling him and all the guys, we got a green light, you guys got a green light, we have to shoot the three ball. Everyone in the Toronto Raptors organization is saying the same thing right now. Shoot more threes. But to understand why, you have to look beyond the current roster construction or gimmicky quotes about threes are worth more than two, so you have to shoot more of them. All we have to do is look back to Game 7 in Cleveland, when the Toronto Raptors lost 114-102. And there was an interesting stat in that game, because everyone points to how the Raptors went 8-for-28 from three that night, including 12 misses in a row from the second quarter right through halftime. I mean, we live reacted to that game, and it was ugly. But here's the part of it that no one talks about, and honestly, it doesn't really make much sense. Over that whole series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto actually shot a better percentage from three than the Cleveland Cavaliers, and they lost that series by a total of 12 points. However, from behind the three-point line, they ended up losing that series by a total of 57. Cleveland did not shoot the ball better. They just shot way more threes. In fact, 65 more threes than the Raptors and the strangest part is that no team in the NBA got more wide open looks from three than the Raptors did last season. So I'm about to break down why that's one of the more terrifying stats for this team and one of the core reasons as to why the Raptors have made it their mantra, has made it their philosophy entering this season to shoot more threes and more importantly take a look at whether this is the right move for this team or if the coaching staff is just leaning into a gimmick that gets rewarded by basketball nerds all the time. By the end of this video, you'll know exactly how this new approach, this new philosophy could really elevate the Toronto Raptors and make them a more scary team across the NBA, but also if not executed correctly, it could ruin this first season we have with Kawhi Leonard and this championship window we're hoping to open up over the next couple of seasons. But first, how did we get here? I mean, we've all heard at nauseam the talk of the three-point revolution, but now it's gotten to a point where the Toronto Raptors, who four of their top six best players, are more effective scoring around the basket than they are at knocking down threes. I mean, if there was ever a roster to buck the trend, the Toronto Raptors would be that team. But in the modern era, it would be a fireable offense to go in that direction, and there's a couple solid reasons as to why. Back when the three-point line showed up in 1979, teams took about three attempts per game. By the time Steph won his first NBA championship, that number was boosted to 22 a game. Then you had the Daryl Morey Rockets shoot 45 a night, and then the Celtics ended up breaking the record, shooting 48 attempts every single game. To give even more context, the team that shot the fewest threes last year, the Sacramento Kings, would have ranked second in the whole league just 10 years ago. That was the start. That was the beginning of the three-point revolution. So where did these shots come from? The long two, it basically died. It went from almost a quarter of all shots to under 5%. That's something a lot of people know. And a lot of people understood that even folks like Gregg Popovich, who hated the three-point revolution, came out and said, you better embrace it or you are going to lose. And the Toronto Raptors last season, despite being a playoff team, only ranked 26th in the NBA in threes. So were they exactly behind the times? Are we living in the past and we haven't jumped ahead right away? The answer is pretty clear in the numbers, but not for the reasons most people think. So why did every team cave? I mean, we've heard the quote a thousand times before, three is worth more than two. But what does that mean in an actual basketball sense? Obviously, the further away from the basket you are, the less likely you are to make that shot. But in terms of total points scored, you only have to hit one in three shots from deep in order to match the guy that makes half of his twos. So when you actually factor in how likely someone is to make their shots, the expected points per specific type of jump shot varies based off of where you are on the court. Given these odds, a mid-range jumper is worth about 0.8 points per shot, a three is worth about a point, and a corner three is a bit more because you're more likely to make those buckets and a layup or a dunk is the best of them all but obviously with the defenses they're the toughest to get it's easier to visualize so if you took 100 shots and 100 of them were mid-range twos you get about 84 points however if 100 of those shots were three-point attempts you'd score 105 points that's 21 free points you get by taking a step back and even though it's a more difficult shot it is more valuable to your team and that's why every shot chart today is layups three point shots and nothing in between Kirk Goldsberry calls it the resource allocation problem and basically you just have to stop wasting shots it's pretty simple everyone echoes that you hear it all over twitter you hear it all over reddit but really is it that simple especially when you have a roster with the makeup of the toronto raptors there's a catch that nobody shows you in the highlights and the tweets that you're reading on basketball analytics. A wide open shot is nobody within six feet. Teams hit about 38% of those wide open looks, but if someone is in your face, that number goes down to just 31%. You're shooting from the same line on the court, but it's a completely different shot. Then there's the factor whether or not it's a catch and shoot three, or if you were shooting it off the dribble, because there's about a 4% difference in accuracy there. But what about if the shot clock is about to go out and then threes go in about 29% of the time, worse than all the other looks that we've been talking about on this video. If you put it all together, you get a ladder, right? Open and corner threes are near the top, but a contested late clock three is worse than your average two. If your plan is to just vaguely broadly take more threes and you don't factor in all these different variables, then it's going to get ugly very fast. We all remember the Rockets missing 27 straight threes in Game 7 of the 2018 Conference Finals. 538 put the odds of that at being 1 in 72,000. The Boston Celtics jacked up 63 pointers in a playoff game and lost. This just sounds preposterous to the people that keep yelling, threes worth more than two. And here's really the stat that made me want to make this video. Last season, how many threes a team took basically had nothing to do with how many games that team won. Detroit won 60 games, taking the second fewest threes in the entire NBA. So this makes you really question whether it's the right approach for the Raptors to just continuously yell, we got to shoot more threes, we got to shoot more threes. And it looks even more concerning on the surface because when teams jump up in volume in terms of their three-point shooting, the ones who can actually shoot win about eight more games the next season. The ones who just blindly shoot more and don't do it efficiently, basically no change out there in their performance. So the real question was never, should you shoot more threes? The real question is whether or not your guys can make them. And that's where the Toronto Raptors have a problem that they need to solve with their new philosophy. Toronto won 46 games last year while being one of the lowest volume teams in the league from shooting three-point shots. They were 26th in the NBA. Anyone that watched the team knows they won their games by running, moving the ball, scoring in the paint, and playing elite defense. They were first in the NBA in fast break points, top five in defense. Their starting five took the fewest threes and still had an elite offense. And with Yak on the floor, they took fewer threes and scored the same amount of points. And if you remember that stat I mentioned earlier. The Toronto Raptors got the most wide open threes in the NBA last season. Over half of their shots, over half of their threes, half of their three point shots had nobody within six feet of them. Teams were not stopping the Toronto Raptors from shooting. They were begging them to. So who were they leaving open? Jamal Shedd, one of my favorite players, got the highest share of open looks in the league and hit just 34% of those shots. RJ Barrett, Scottie Barnes were near the bottom of the league at making the shots that they got and those were pretty good looks. And for our top guy Scottie Barnes this isn't just one bad year he's had five straight seasons near the bottom of the NBA. However on the other hand the Raptors have a new acquisition in Kawhi Leonard who has five straight seasons near the top. Kawhi is one of the most efficient three-point shooters in the entire NBA and he takes some of the hardest threes in the entire league. And last year we had the emergence of Jacoby Walter, who knocked down 42% of his three-point shots. We have Emmanuel Quickly, who hits 41%. And we also have one new name that I will get to, but a lot of people aren't talking about. But these numbers are not new to the Toronto Raptors. This isn't some uncovering of evidence that Darko Rajakovic hasn't seen. Scottie Barnes knows it. He came out and said, I find people wide open, but I got to make some shots myself as well. Darko has directly come said that there is a plan in place. When he was asked who's going to shoot now, he says everybody except for Yak, who sneakily has been teasing us with some corner threes out there in warm-ups, but I won't get in my head myself too much with it yet. But what's happening in preseason for this Raptors team? Well, in the first game, the team shot 41 threes, and their averages have remained significantly higher than last year. It raises a scary question. What if the wrong guys end up taking these shots, and the Raptors just end up underperforming for the talent that they have on this team. Now, there are some encouraging numbers that might indicate the Toronto Raptors just had a cold year last season. Of the 60 worst open shooting teams in the NBA since 2013, 82% got better the next year. And there's also a lie detector when it comes to shooters, and that specifically is free throws. A guy's free throw percentage predicts his open three percentage next year almost as well as his three-point shots do. And a good sign specifically for Scottie Barnes is he was a career-best 81.5% from the free-throw line last season. And the roster ended up changing. Brandon Ingram and Mamou Kajvili are gone, but Kawhi Leonard is in. So hopefully some of those misses will start falling, but luck isn't what beat them against the Cleveland Cavaliers and knocked them out of the playoffs. Here's what Cleveland had that the Toronto Raptors didn't. They had guys that could make a three off the dribble. The Cavs knocked down about 14 pull-up threes a game during the postseason. And defensively, they even hid James Harden and his poor on-ball defense on Scottie Barnes for about 94 possessions. Scottie went 7-13 against him, but just 1-4 from behind the three-point line. While the Cavs knocked down 14 pull-up threes a game, the Toronto Raptors just knocked down 3.7. They were last in the league in the regular season on that stat as well. And the numbers are extra dramatic because Emmanuel quickly missed the entire series with his hamstring issue. So every night ended up being a coin flip for the Toronto Raptors. In game three, they went 14 of 23 and had a 22 point win. In game four, they went four for 30 from behind the three point line and somehow still won with their defense. But game seven, shooting eight of 28, the season ended up being over and they were missing one piece. So the Toronto Raptors went out there and they got it, trading Brandon Ingram, Grady Dick, and Picks to the Los Angeles Clippers in return for Kawhi Leonard. Last season, Kawhi took 232 pull-up threes by himself and hit almost 38% of them. The entire Toronto Raptors roster only made 413 at under 30% from that three-point stripe. to clarify one guy made more than half of the entire Toronto Raptors dribble pull-up threes last season and Kawhi didn't play a full 82 games everyone is calling this a terrific fit for the Raptors because he does the exact thing that this team couldn't last season now obviously Kawhi is 35 and he's dealt with a bunch of injuries over the course of his career but if he can stay healthy This is exactly what the Toronto Raptors need. So how does this go wrong? It's pretty straightforward. If this season, the philosophy of taking more threes leads to more Scottie Barnes and Jamal Murray above the break, dribble, pull up, three point shots. That's like sending your goalie out there to go execute a shootout for your hockey team. The right players need to be taking these shots. If Scottie Barnes took 100 catch and shoot threes and maintained the same percentages as last season, that's worth about 90 points. But if Jacoby Walter took those same shots, it's about 126. This season would go completely wrong if they stopped doing what won them a bunch of games last year. Toronto made about 68% of its shots at the rim. Don't trade a layup for a contested three just for the sake of appeasing the old analytics folks. But now how could this thing go right with the roster and the makeup that we have right now. I mean, we need to take those same open looks and get them into better three-point shooting hands. Jacoby Walter needs to live in the corner. He shot about 50% on those corner threes last season. And healthy Emmanuel Quickley, that's going to be a serious game changer for the Toronto Raptors going into next year. And obviously Kawhi Leonard pulling up late in the shot clock and taking that shot that this team just hasn't had since he left back in 2019. A quick three in transition before the defense is set, when the looks are the cleanest. These are all things the Toronto Raptors need to execute on. And the biggest swing really is just to move the five threes a game from your wrong guys and get them into the right guy's hands. And that's worth more than a single point a game. And over a season, that's going to translate into a few extra wins. So should the Toronto Raptors shoot more threes? The answer is yes. They got to get to at least league average at 36 or 37 three-point attempts per night, but they need to be careful about where those threes come from. Scottie Barnes, one of our top players, our best player outside of Kawhi, he does not need to be taking those top-of-the-key dribble pull-up threes where the defense is sagging off. We need guys like Jacoby Walter, guys like Emmanuel Quickley knocking down threes, and then we need Scottie Barnes and RJ Barrett to do what they do best, keep attacking the rim keep running the floor the three's a weapon on top of who this team is but it shouldn't be a replacement for the talent that is actually on this squad but let me know what you guys think about all this in the comment section down below because I know this is a contentious subject and people are back and forth on it but I have my stance let me know what you guys think and if you enjoyed this video more edited content let me know because I can start making more of it if you guys are enjoying the content