6 reasons behind the Raptors' 6-game losing streak

For those who became best acquainted with the Toronto Raptors within the last 10 seasons, what the team is currently experiencing must feel quite foreign and extremely troubling.

For the diehards who were keeping close tabs on the club during the Jay Triano era of the club – and, let’s be honest, even before that – welcome back!

Sitting in 10th place in the Eastern Conference with a less than inspired 13-18 record and mired in a six-game losing streak – the second longest active spiral within the NBA right now and the team’s longest slide since the team finished its 2020-21 “Tampa Tank” campaign dropping seven straight – the Raptors look to be in a whole heap of trouble.

With the Feb. 9 trade deadline creeping up ever closer, there’s a real debate to be had whether or not Toronto should consider selling and try to get in on the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes – however late to the party they look like they might be.

With that said, there’s still time yet to try to fix what ails them before such a drastic decision would need to be made. As part of the troubleshooting process, however, identifying what the issues at hand first is most important.

Here’s a look at six reasons behind the Raptors’ six-game losing streak.

Raptors have seen some tough opponents

Over the course of their last six contests, the Raptors have faced some steep competition.

Yes, it began with back-to-back losses to the 11-21 Orlando Magic, but until their one-point defeat to the Atlanta Hawks on Monday, Orlando had won six straight, including their victories over Toronto and even a pair of back-to-back wins over the high-flying Boston Celtics.

Unfortunately for the Raptors, they rolled into the Magic Kingdom right as Orlando was beginning to find its footing.

As for their other defeats during this streak, the Sacramento Kings are one of the biggest surprises of the season, sitting in sixth place in the Western Conference, the Brooklyn Nets have reemerged as an Eastern Conference power with Kyrie Irving’s off-court drama apparently behind them and backed by Joel Embiid playing like an MVP again, the Philadelphia 76ers are among the hottest teams in the league at the moment.

The only real head-scratching loss you can point to was Sunday’s home defeat to the Golden State Warriors, who were playing without Steph Curry and Andrew Wiggins. In their absence, Jordan Poole decided to go nuclear, dropping a career-high 43 points as the Raptors were left helpless to stop him – or anyone else on the Warriors.

So, while a loss is still just a loss, it’s not like the Raptors have been falling to bad teams. Each team they’ve run into during this streak — except for the Dubs — have been playing well.

And unfortunately for the Raptors, this trend will continue when they visit Madison Square Garden to take on the New York Knicks — winners of eight straight — Wednesday evening.

They’ve been battling injury

Though it’s not much of an excuse, it’s a fact that the Raptors have dealt with, and continue to deal with, holes in their lineup because of injury.

Over the course of this streak, key players such as O.G. Anunoby and Gary Trent Jr. have missed time, adding onto the fact Precious Achiuwa and Otto Porter Jr. are still dealing with longer-term injuries.

This isn’t to say that having a full deck of cards would completely cure what ails the Raptors right now as there appears to be larger issues at hand (we’ll get to those below), but not having everything at your disposal will make trying to get out of a funk that much more difficult.

As just about every player and coach in the league will tell you, it’s a tough league to win in. Take away some key cogs to any squad and that task becomes downright gruelling.

The team simply doesn’t have enough shooting

If you’ve watched the Raptors at least semi-regularly this season, then this should be very apparent.

For the season, the Raptors are shooting just 32.4 percent from three-point range and are making just 30.9 percent of their long-range attempts during this six-game slide.

Put lightly, that’s horrendous.

Offence in the modern NBA almost entirely revolves around the threat of the three-point shot. It helps create avenues into the paint, it punishes defences for collapsing in on penetration and, in case you forgot, it’s worth three points instead of just two.

As the Raptors are right now, they can’t really run an effective offence because they don’t have enough outside shooting. It doesn’t help that Porter Jr. is hurt, but even if he wasn’t they’d probably only have five true outside threats in Fred VanVleet, Anunoby, Trent, Pascal Siakam and Porter Jr., with the inclusions of Trent and Siakam tentative as they’re more streaky scorers who can hit a three-point shot.

That’s not a ton of options, particularly when you consider the fact Siakam is Toronto’s main offence initiator, getting into the paint and creating opportunities, removing himself as an outside threat.

If Toronto had a few more shotmakers it could turn to then, perhaps, the team wouldn’t be in the midst of a six-game losing streak.

They need to compete harder on defence

The Raptors lead the league in creating turnovers, causing opponents to cough up the ball 17 times per game. This is the key contributing factor behind the respectable 112.1 points per 100 possessions they’re only giving up this season.

During their slide, however, Toronto’s been giving up 118.7 points per 100 possessions as an ugly reality of their season has come to light: If the Raptors can’t turn you over, they can’t actually stop you.

Toronto is still creating 16.8 turnovers per game during this skid, but if it can’t force its opponent to give the ball up, then odds are the opponent is going to score.

In their last six games, the Raptors are surrendering an effective field-goal percentage (a stat that more greatly weighs the value of a three-pointer over a two-point basket) of 59.7 percent. Put into greater context, the league average for teams this season is around 53.9 percent.

For the season, the Raptors are allowing teams to shoot an effective field-goal percentage of 56.1, so the streak has been more of an exacerbation of what has been a season-long problem.

You can point to things like the defensive scheme being the reason behind this, but the Raptors allowed teams to shoot an effective field-goal percentage of 53.5 last season using the same defensive strategy. So what’s changed?

It could come down to the fact the team just might not be competing hard enough on defence.

Toronto’s scheme is a demanding one and tasks its players to be flying all over the place, hounding the ball handler and recovering back in time. It’s exhausting just watching it. As such, it’s understandable that some guys might get tired and could be slow on recoveries and closeouts, leading to easy looks for opponents.

That can’t happen in this kind of scheme. In order for it to work players have to go all out all the time, something they were doing more of last season.

An inability to close

With the exception of Siakam’s last buzzer-beating attempt to send the game into double overtime, the Raptors got exceptional looks from three-point range in their 104-101 overtime defeat to the Sixers Monday.

Every single one of them rimmed out.

In fact, despite playing well for most of the game, the Raptors were awful in those extra five minutes, in general, going 1-for-9, never getting to the free-throw line and scoring only two points.

An appropriate microcosm of the fact Toronto’s lacked much in the way of closing ability during this six-game losing streak.

There have been plenty of opportunities for the Raptors to win games down the stretch, but they’ve consistently been missing those all-important finishing touches and, unfair though it may seem, this falls on Siakam’s shoulders.

Siakam’s been brilliant this season, putting together what could go down as one of the greatest seasons statistically in Raptors franchise history. However, he’s had opportunities during this losing streak to end it, such as that shot he missed at the end of overtime Monday against the Sixers, and when he passed out with time winding down to VanVleet at the end of Toronto’s first game with Orlando that began this misery.

Is Siakam the only guy who can hit a shot on the Raptors? No. But considering the season he’s putting together and his stature on the team, he’s Toronto’s default closer.

The Raptors could use some help closing games.

Maybe, in general, Vision 6-9 just isn’t all it was cracked up to be

Lastly, looking more broadly, it might be time to reevaluate the effectiveness of the Raptors’ “Vision 6-9” roster construction.

Sure, having lots of versatility and switch-ability is nice and all, but what has it led to so far?

This losing streak has exposed some deep holes in the Raptors roster. As mentioned before, there’s a decided dearth of shooting and, as has been evident with bad injury luck, just because a player meets what looks to be the measurement requirement to play for Toronto, doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be all that impactful.

Specialists are what their name suggests, however, wouldn’t it be nice if the Raptors actually had a shooter or two they could turn to off the bench now and again? Or even a big bruising body to take up space?

This losing streak feels like it’s the direct result of what looks like a flawed roster.

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