The uphill battle of the Raptors summarized by one statistic

[Green-18]

It's no secret that the Toronto Raptors choked away the game last night.  The missed layups were painful to watch.   

Despite this I'm not sure many people are aware of the uphill battle the Raptors face against elite competition in the modern NBA.  The Cavs themselves aren't elite but the LeBron factor is too much to overcome during a 7 game series if your team has a fatal flaw.

I looked back at every season going back to the year 2000 and there are only a handful of teams that made the NBA Finals with their top scorer posting an EFG% under .500.  Most of these were in the early 2000's when the pace of play was extremely slow and there wasn't an emphasis on the 3 point shot.  The Raptors were perfectly suited for this era.  Here are those teams listed below:

2001 Sixers
2002 Nets 
2003 Nets
2004 Lakers
2004 Pistons
2005 Pistons
2006 Heat
2010 Lakers - Kobe managed to hit .500 EFG during the playoffs

So basically we just don't see any team make the Finals in the modern NBA without a leading scorer who is a consistent threat to hit the 3 point shot.  Derozan's 3pt% looks respectable during this postseason but he is a combined 2-11 in their losses and his overall scoring efficiency has dropped below regular season averages.  Here's where things get really ugly.  Derozan's highest 4th quarter EFG% in the last 4 postseasons is 41.2%.  As we know, games tighten up in the 4th and the pace of play tends to slow down in the final minutes of close games.  Derozan isn't capable of executing under these conditions.  It puts quite a bit of pressure on the role players to elevate their game. 

Toronto has done an excellent job of building a well balanced roster.  They are just missing the most important part.