The Raptors Are Beginning To Figure Out Who They Are

The Raptors have looked much better over the past seven games as they've begun to set their rotation and hit their shots

There's an old saying in sports that things are never as bad as they seem when you're struggling and never as good as they seem when you're playing well.

It was just a few weeks ago that the Toronto Raptors were 1-5 and chants to #FadeForCade Cunningham, the projected first overall pick in this year's draft, were heating up. Back then there was "tension" in the locker room, former centre Alex Len said. Now the Raptors have strung together seven straight relatively impressive games and are coming off their third straight victory, a 116-93 victory over the Dallas Mavericks. As things stand on Tuesday, there's a very different feeling about these Raptors.

"Your mood is gonna swing a little bit with what side of the win-loss column you go on," Raptors coach Nick Nurse said. "But I think the biggest thing is we understand is there's still a lot of basketball to be played. And you can't throw the records out the window, because that's what we're being judged on and how we're gonna play in the postseason or not, but I do think that you take the game in front of you continue to learn."

The Raptors have learned a lot about themselves over the past seven games. For one, they seem to have settled on a rotation with Aron Baynes starting at centre for a few minutes each night before being replaced by breakout star Chris Boucher off the bench. After him, Norman Powell is usually the seventh man with Stanley Johnson, Terence Davis, and occasionally Yuta Watanabe mixing in. It certainly wasn't what Nurse had anticipated coming into the season but after plenty of tinkering, this group seems to be working for Toronto.

Then there's the offence which has seen plenty of positive regression over the past few weeks. Through the first six games of the season, the Raptors ranked 28th in the NBA in Offensive Rating. Since then, they've jumped all the way up to second in the NBA with an Offensive Rating of 117.7, per NBA Stats.

A lot of that is simply much better luck. The Raptors are still taking over 40% of their shots from behind the arc this season, according to Cleaning the Glass, but instead of hitting just 33.5% of their 3s like they were in their first six games, they've shot 40.9% from deep over their last seven games. It's clear from their Location Effective FG% — a statistic that shows where a team's shots are coming from — that the Raptors are taking pretty much the same shots now as they were to start the season. The only difference is they're hitting them at a much, much better rate.

Through the first six games of the season, the Raptors' Location effective FG% was 54.7%. Since then it's been 55.0%. Basically, the Raptors are taking the same shots as they were before, they're just making them now. https://t.co/I7RCBemy4B

— 𝐀𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞 (@AaronBenRose) January 19, 2021

The truth is Toronto's offence isn't quite as bad as it looked to start the season nor quite as good as it looks right now. The results may have changed, but these are pretty much the same Raptors even with some rotational tweaks