Toronto Raptors FLW & GRW Project: A Case Study

On December.29th.2020 the Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers played a game and we decided to use the broadcast footage of that game in order to collect data that demonstrates some features of our work.

This document is meant to give some insight into the capacity of both projects by showing our data, our findings in each method, and what our hypothetical key action items would be. With one game, and only limited access, the validity and reliability of this analysis is low. However, we believe the replicability to be high based on our previous results in other groups.

The Data

-346 data points in total were collected an analyzed

-Data points focused solely on the on court athletes. No coach or bench data was included.

-The data was all collected using only the broadcast footage so there are limitations in the predictability portion of our analysis and actual validity due to the amount of the Raptors’ dynamics that we cannot evaluate.

-“Moments” are considered group opportunities that fit into Schaffer’s conditions of flow.

The Findings

FLW Project: Created to measure the strength of flow-state conditions in sport teams.

-On our “Flow Continuum”, the Raptors group characteristics of flow in their group trended toward creating flow state in just 38% of the moments that were analyzed.

-The Raptors trended negative over the game in maintaining an environment that is free of distractions based on the moments where controllable distractions were present.

-One of the most positive trending aspects found was that over 70% of the data supported people recognizing high perceived skill in their teammates (characterized by moments like Kyle Lowry’s verbal and physical support for Stanley Johnson).

-However, 62% of data showed a lack of clarity of what to do based on body language, question asking, etc.

GRW Project: Created to measure the growth orientation of group culture now and over time.

Means vs Goal Orientation

Group culture exhibited high scores in ownership of task but the culture is scoring as more means oriented than goal oriented which indicates less oriented toward risk and effort.

Internally vs Externally Driven

In the Raptors context this would likely indicate more focus on external factors such as not wanting to start with an 0-3 record or media pressures.

Open vs Closed System

The Raptors score high in openness in their culture, indicating that newcomers fit well, are accepted, and supported in the culture.

Based solely on the one game, and our own “Growth Orientation Predictability Model”, as they work to repair some of these challenges, it will take approximately 23 games for their culture to sustainably trend toward growth.

Primary Controllable Action Items

1) Focus on limiting distractions and attention to them. Things such as officials (including foul calls), media consumption on game day, etc.

2) Being more means oriented and having demonstrable lack of clarity indicates a need to focus more on controllable process based goals in games than any particular outcomes, especially on the part of key individuals (Pascal Siakam and Norm Powell).

3) This data showed a high level of traits that showed external drive and the Raptors have shown the ability to focus internally in the past. Returning to this internal focus by finding joy in their internal environment more.

4) Having an organization that does such a good job of recognizing high skill in teammates indicates an opportunity to leverage this by formalizing a process with which to have this recognition more public or more well known to each other in order to increase self efficacy.

-Boost Innovation Inc.


**This information is all proprietary and property of Boost Innovation Inc. It may not be replicated without explicit written permission from Boost Innovation or their representatives.

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