With all the talk of super-teams and superman LeBron James, a roster up north has quietly become one of the most dominant teams in the league: the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors, boasting a similar record as the reigning champion Golden State Warriors, are on their way to clinching the number one spot in the Eastern Conference and have already surpassed their previous season win total of 51.
But how did the Raptors, who added no major pieces, improve this much? As the leading scorer, credit may first go to DeMar DeRozan, but the improvement has mostly occurred when DeRozan and the starters have been off the court.
Many people have already noted that among the most heavily used lineups this season, the most effective one is Toronto’s bench mob. When C.J. Miles, Jakob Poeltl, Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet and Delon Wright have been on the court they’ve been outscoring opponents by 24.3 points per 100 possessions. Toronto’s bench prowess doesn’t appear to be a total anomaly either: they’re great defenders. VanVleet is currently 21st in ESPN’s Real Plus Minus, a metric which estimates a player’s on-court impact after taking into account a player’s teammates and opponents. He chases defenders through every screen and gives them no space from their favorite shooting spots.
If you look at the average box plus minus, or BPM, of Toronto’s bench players — an estimate of the points per 100 possessions a player contributes above a league-average player, translated to an average team — weighted by minutes and games not started, Toronto’s bench is the NBA’s 14th best reserve unit since 1982, the first year data is available.
The Raptors have had a strong bench for a while — their 2015 team actually had a higher bench BPM than their starters, which is unprecedented for a good team. It’s also one of the causes of their disappointing playoff results.
Starters usually play more minutes in the playoffs, and in key playoff series or deciding games you’ll see players like LeBron James play 40 or more minutes with regularity. If you ranked the 2018 teams by starters’ BPM, Toronto would fall to fourth this season behind the Houston Rockets, Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers and only a little bit ahead of the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks. Obviously, you’ll still need bench players in the playoffs, but as the games become more important or you go further into the fourth quarter, the top players are used more, and that’s where Toronto looks mortal.
With a playoff minutes distribution where starters play more often, Toronto could actually become worse. Last season, for example, if you calculated their projected net rating based on playoff minutes and their corresponding BPM scores from the regular season, they were actually one point worse than the regular season. With a similar spread in minutes this postseason, you’d see roughly the same result. That’s uncommon. You can see other teams in the graph below. It typically only happens when injuries or trades occur, like the Spurs or Blazers. When rotations get shorter, you usually get better. But that’s not the case with the Raptors.
It won’t destroy the Raptors, but it’s something to keep in mind as the postseason begins.
