Are Raptors’ Q4 troubles going to continue?

Are the Raptors more or less prone than other teams to giving up healthy leads in the fourth quarter?

The Toronto Raptors won their eleventh straight game on Saturday night, but the Detroit Pistons didn’t go quietly. They staged an impressive comeback from a mid-quarter 20-point deficit to nearly force overtime. All of us remember the Jimmy Butler-led comeback by the Chicago Bulls in early January. Are the Raptors more prone to fourth-quarter fumbling than other teams?

To answer that question, I flipped over to my favourite site for esoteric NBA data: www.nbaminer.com . And there it was, in living colour…the top two teams in “winning” Q4 are the Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors. How weird is that? Detroit’s margin over its opponents in the game’s final 12 minutes is 2.48, and the Raptors are a mere .08 behind. The league’s worst are the Milwaukee Bucks at minus_2.24.

In cause you needed any further proof of the impact of Stephen Curry, I note with bemusement that the fourth is the only quarter the Golden State Warriors lose. That’s because of how much margin (plus_12.51) Curry and his mates have gained on the opponents by that point in games. The Warriors’ first-stringers are spectators for a lot of Q4s.

Back to our team: the Raptors’ worst quarter is the first, which they win by the wafer-thin margin of .23 points. They lose in OT by 3.5 points, which exemplifies the peril of tiny data samples. The Raptors have played only 2 OT games, and split them, so this result is meaningless. Our team does not fare well in close game wins/losses. We are 8 & 8, which compared to the Los Angeles Clippers (12 & 4) or the Warriors (7 & 1 – I’m surprised they have played as many close games as that) is a mediocre, or even poor, record. Dwane Casey’s name hasn’t been mentioned as a Coach of the Year candidate, and it won’t be if the Raptors continue bumping along at that pace in tight ones. Similarly, the Boston Celtics are 4 & 9 in close games, yet are 27-21 overall. Maybe Brad Stevens isn’t the top-drawer coach we thought he was.

There are different ways to consider close results. The Houston Rockets are 13 & 6 in close games, yet are 25-25 on the season. Are they just lucky so far to have pulled out a bunch of hard-fought victories, and due for the pendulum to swing back? If so, they may be outside the playoff picture by season’s end. They could be brushed aside by their Texas rivals, the Dallas Mavericks. They are 6 & 9, but 27-22.

The Raptors have only two losses in which they surrendered a lead greater than 10 points, and I’ll wager we can’t get either of them out of our heads (though we’d like to). The first was the Q1 meltdown against Indiana, and the second was the Chicago game I already mentioned. The Warriors have none of those. Quel surprise!

Next: Alternate 5-man units for Raptors

There are four teams which lose all four quarters and OT: the Nets, 76ers, Suns and Lakers. Hello basement.

I’ll be watching this data as the season wears on, and reporting any interesting anomalies I might find.