12/29/09
by: Scott
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It's bloody freezing in Toronto today, but the cockles of Raptors fans' hearts are keeping warm from the glow of the Raptors' first four-game winning streak of the season. After allowing 100 or more points in 20 of their first 28 games, a team that was on pace to have the worst Defensive Rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) of any NBA team in the last 30 years has held its opponents to double-digit scoring in each of the last four games. Incredibly, the Raptors are winning games because of their defence rather than in spite of it.
Going into this season, most Raptors fans seemed to believe that this could be a 50-win squad if they could just be an average defensive team because their offence clearly had top-five potential. As we now know, we were right to be optimistic about the Raptors' offence (they're fourth in the NBA with 111.3 points scored per 100 possessions) but their defence proved to be weaker than even the most pessimistic of us could have imagined. Even after this four-game stretch, they are still dead-last in the league with 113.9 points allowed per 100 possessions — the Philadelphia 76ers are second-worst and their Defensive Rating is a full 2.8 points lower than Toronto's.
Throughout those first 28 games, Raptors fans debated whether Jose Calderon, Andrea Bargnani or Jay Triano was most to blame for the team's defensive ineptitude — which I still find to be a silly argument since you need to a team-wide failure to perform as badly as the Raptors have. However, the four-game winning streak has occurred while Jarrett Jack has been the starting point guard, Marcus Banks has been his backup, and Calderon has been wearing a suit. Understandably, the legion of Jose-haters see this confluence of events as proof that "The Matador" was at fault all along.
It's next to impossible to deny that Calderon is like a cocktail waitress in Vegas and everyone he's guarded this season has been Tiger Woods — they were scoring on him at will. And in the last four games, here are the scoring outputs by the opposing teams' starting point guards compared with their per-game averages: Devin Harris (8, 16.7), Chris Paul (10, 20.4), Chucky Atkins (2, 5.2) and Rodney Stuckey (14, 19.1). Pretty compelling numbers, no?
But here's where I have to quote Harvey Keitel from Pulp Fiction and say "Let's not start sucking each other's dicks quite yet." New Jersey is dead last in the NBA in Offensive Rating, New Orleans is 20th and Detroit is 23rd — which means all four of these wins have come against teams with well-below-average offences. It's also worth noting that while the Hornets are ninth in the league in three-point shooting percentage, the Pistons are 29th and the Nets are 30th. The Raptors certainly appear to be playing better defence, but they're doing it against teams that don't really score much on anybody.
Tomorrow, the Raptors host the Bobcats, who have the NBA's 27th-ranked offence. But the following three games are against teams with Top 10 offences: the Celtics, Spurs and Magic. These games will be the real test of Toronto's defensive mettle. Hopefully, their recent success will give them the confidence and motivation they need to keep up the good work. 
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