VanVleet has been shooting less this year — which is great for the Raptors

During many of the past several seasons for the Toronto Raptors, they’ve turned to point guard Fred VanVleet whenever they’ve needed a big three-pointer.

Second on the team’s all-time three-point list with 805 makes, there’s barely been a Toronto player better at shooting from distance.

But on Monday night in Miami with the shot clock ticking down, the game on the line and the Raptors up 93-90 over the Heat, VanVleet opted not to shoot, but rather work the ball into the corner for teammate Gary Trent Jr. after a pump fake.

Trent Jr. caught the ball, made a shimmy around Miami’s Duncan Robinson, and iced the game in the closing stages of the fourth quarter.

Gary Trent Jr. ices the game for the Raptors with a CLUTCH 3! 😤

Toronto wins it after going on a 25-9 run to end Q4.#KiaTipOff22 pic.twitter.com/v983hKRRbm

— NBA (@NBA) October 25, 2022

“I’ve gotta make sure I keep rewarding him when he gets down there,” VanVleet said of Trent’s dagger shot in the corner. “And there’s a lot of free money down there for him. So we need him to keep being a threat there.”

Basketball, of course, is a game of limited possessions.

And for every shot VanVleet passes up, it usually results in a solid chance for one of his teammates.

Last season, VanVleet took a career-high 16.9 field goal attempts per game, second to only Pascal Siakam at 17.8 per game.

And sure, it’s only four games this year, but the Raptors’ offence looks completely revamped from a season ago.

VanVleet himself has seen a pretty drastic dropoff, taking just 11.3 shots per game this year, while O.G. Anunoby is in a similar boat, falling off from 14.5 attempts per night to 9.8.

Scottie Barnes is relatively on the same pace as a year ago (12.6 to 12.3), but all of Siakam (up to 20.5 shots a game), Trent Jr. (up to 16.3) and Precious Achiuwa (up to 9.5) have seen a rise in their offensive workload.

Field goal attempts per game, Raptors, past two seasons:

“As a point guard, that’s my job to try to manage that. I certainly have no issue taking a step back if it’s going to make our team better,” VanVleet said this past summer in an interview with Daily Hive about figuring out the team’s shot distributions. “We’ll see a lot of those younger guys take another step up and that should increase our team value in the way we play.”

There’s an added bonus, though, if VanVleet’s finding open looks for his teammates: it takes a bit of wear and tear off of him over the course of an 82-game season.

Last year, VanVleet was limited to 65 games while dealing with a myriad of injuries that kept him out of Toronto’s final two-and-a-half playoff games. VanVleet was dealing with both knee and hip injuries, which surely aren’t aided by, well, putting your whole body into a jump shot 15 times a night.

For every 10 or 20 jump shots he doesn’t have to go up for, it’ll likely help preserve his overall health in the long run.

Toronto’s not a team that’s constructed around above-average shooting talent. In fact, their field goal percentage this year of .431 ranks 26th in the league, while it ranked 25th last season at .445%.

But Toronto’s identity is one of a defensively smothering team, and one that manages to consistently manage more cracks at the basket than their opponents as a way to overcome their shooting deficiencies.

So far, their opponents have taken an average of just 79.0 attempts per game thus far when playing the Raptors, ranking last in the league.

“First and foremost, the talent level is pretty high [on our team],” VanVleet added last night. “So most nights, we’ve got a chance to compete, we have a chance to win. And so you would like to see some growth in terms of executing and, you know, just closing out games down the stretch and we saw that over the last couple of years.”

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