The Toronto Raptors’ 122-121 loss in their Dec. 16 contest against the Chicago Bulls was defined by little more than Veni, Vidi … Veni. Julius Caesar came and saw and conquered. The Raptors and Bulls came and saw and left. Barring a few minutes of fun basketball to end the game, not much else was noteworthy.
The game was sloppy, featuring two bad teams missing their best players who played like it. Darko Rajakovic had to call multiple timeouts through the first three quarters to implore his players to try a little harder. Eventually, spurred by a run from three rookies (Jamal Shead, Ja’Kobe Walter, and Jonathan Mogbo), Gradey Dick, and RJ Barrett, the Raptors made a fourth-quarter run before falling short. But until midway through the fourth, it was bad basketball. Really, it was bad everything. The crowd filtered in late and never filled the arena, making so little noise that I could hear other members of media row without anyone having to raise their voices. The jumbotron didn’t start working correctly until midway through the second quarter, with the player stats sections blank for both teams. Streams of fans left after the third quarter, not bothering to return for an admittedly excellent fourth quarter.
But perhaps the most important thing missing from the game was a specific tactical element. One that has become commonplace in today’s NBA.
There were, by my count, three pull-up triples attempted between the two teams. Two came midway through the third quarter, both from the Bulls. The last came on a meaningless Shead shot (Toronto was already down four) to end the game. So few pull-up triples is uncommon. So far this year, teams range from just over six attempts per game (the Raptors) to almost 20 (the Boston Celtics).
While the Chicago Bulls are ostensibly a middling pull-up 3-point shooting team, they are in fact carried by one man. Zach LaVine’s 42.4-percent mark on such shots is one of the best in the league. But there is no one else on the team who takes nearly as many pull-ups on Chicago, or boasts remotely such accuracy. Take away LaVine’s 42 makes and 99 attempts, and Chicago’s pull-up resume looks suspiciously like Toronto’s on the year. And the Bulls were without LaVine in this one.
The Raptors currently rank last in made pull-up 3s per game. And it’s by an enormous margin. Toronto’s 1.7 made triples (they are last in attempts and also shoot 26.9 percent on such looks) off the bounce ranks 0.7 behind second-last, which is also the gap between second-last and 11th in the league.
This is a huge disadvantage. I wrote more than three years ago (whew, time, oh boy) that pull-up shooting success doesn’t correlate with winning playoff basketball games. It may not cause winning, but it sure does seem to be required for it. Everyone seems to do way, way more pull-up shooting when the games start to matter more in the playoffs.
It’s tough to win in today’s NBA if you don’t have at least one high-quality pull-up shooter. And right now, there are 17 players making more pull-up triples per game than the Raptors are as a team. The three best teams in the league, the three with 20 or more wins, all feature a player on that list of 17.
And Toronto is lagging way behind. Before Toronto’s game against Chicago, Billy Donovan spoke at length about how shooting off the dribble without sacrificing accuracy is rare — but a huge component of the dominance of the Celtics.
“I think it helps to open up the court, the spacing is different, the pick-up point for the defence will be different when you have that type of threat on the team,” explained Rajakovic.
Right now, Toronto’s not doing much to draw the defence out of its shell. The Raptors can score in transition, and they can rebound the hell out of the ball, but in the clammy confines of the half-court, offence becomes a struggle. Entering the game, Toronto averaged 92.7 points per 100 half-court plays, ranking 24th in the league, identical to its mark from 2023-24. Pull-up shooting, as a threat to open other shots and a finishing move to actually score points, would boost that ranking.
Right now, pick-up points are deep inside the paint (which is what smart teams do to derail Jakob Poeltl’s brilliant delay offence), and teams can top-lock Gradey Dick and other cutters without having to open wider driving lanes — because the on-ball defender doesn’t have to stay high to deter a pull-up jumper. Thus it’s not just the point-of-attack defence that is hindered by a lack of on-ball shooting, it’s also the secondary defence, the ability to respond to Toronto’s offensive sets without making sacrifices elsewhere. The Raptors’ ability to punish those choices is limited.
Chicago was able to defend Toronto’s patented motion by sagging into the lane, showing hands, and jumping skip passes. Lonzo Ball almost looked like his old self at points tipping away cross-court passes. When the Oklahoma City Thunder swallowed the Raptors’ offence like a snake earlier in the month, it looked like it took a whole lot of effort. Chicago’s defensive performance took very little. Eventually, the Raptors managed to throw some points on the scoreboard with running and driving and rebounding. That reflected more on Chicago’s poor defence than Toronto’s offensive brilliance.
The Raptors are trying to cobble together some pull-up shooting. Ochai Agbaji hit a pair of midrange pull-up jumpers in the first half. Gradey Dick hit some in the third as he finally started to put some points on the board. (He eventually finished with a strong 27 as he got hot late.) But Toronto’s 9.4 pull-up 2-pointers per game is far from an outlier in the league, and not even in last place. And to be fair, Scottie Barnes attempts the 13th most pull-up triples among forwards, at 2.3 per game. (He’s making 25 percent of them.) Of course, he was missing against the Bulls with his ankle injury.
“Definitely I would like to use it, when I have it,” said Rajakovic of pull-up shooting.
He’s about to have it, at least to some extent. More of it.
“One player that’s very, very good on our team, Immanuel Quickley, is not playing at this moment,” said Rajakovic.
Quickley will go some distance to addressing Toronto’s pull-up shooting weakness, but not all the way. Last season, from Dec. 30 onwards (the Raptors traded for Quickley on Dec. 30) the Raptors ranked … second-last in made pull-up triples per game, at 2.2. So slightly more than this season, but still with a miserable accuracy of 28.9 percent (last in the league over that stretch). Quickley did his part, attempting almost four a game and at reasonable efficiency, but there wasn’t a single other real threat on the roster.
This is a necessary condition for success in today’s NBA. The Raptors will need not only Quickley, but also Walter firing on all cylinders as pull-up shooters in order to compete with other teams in this area. Walter looks to have a real future as a scorer, and the Raptors have to hope he’ll grow in this area specifically. It’s just not enough right now, with Toronto several tiers below what has become the norm in this new NBA.
Because without pull-up shooting, games can look a whole lot more like kids throwing rocks at trains than NBA basketball games. Sure, both teams scored plenty of points, but it was mostly because the defence was so disinterested for the first 40 minutes. The points were largely reflective of other issues, such as limited effort. But ultimately, it ended up a highway race between a minivan and a hearse. Sure, one team won the race, but until the very end, was anyone really watching with interest? Without pull-up triples, there was limited firepower in both engines.
Injuries have hurt the Raptors, and, judging by Toronto’s effort for most of the game against Chicago, they will continue to sap the team in a variety of ways. But they are also revealing the areas in which Toronto desperately needs to grow. And simply getting healthy won’t solve Toronto’s pull-up shooting deficit.
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