Over the last two weeks DeMar DeRozan has been a dominant force in (almost) every sense of the word. On the basketball court, he has used an insane amount of possessions and scored with what is, for him, ridiculous efficiency. Off the court, a lot of column inches and airtime has been dedicated to his scoring and attempting to put it into context, trying to figure out where it ranks in league history and determining whether or not it was sustainable – the answers to those ended up being “pretty high” and “obviously not,” respectively. But he had an amazing run and nothing can take that away from him, he is now clearly in the company of the rest of the great one on one scorers in the league; he sought to prove himself and in the eyes of many he has done so.
But nothing is ever that black and white and the unilateral praise that DeRozan clearly seeks still eludes him. Some say that it’s because of his style of play, and there is something to that. There are a lot of fans and analysts who think that scoring at the free throw line is a lesser form of offense, either because they believe it takes less skill or because somehow it’s less honourable. The game has been trying to leave the midrange game behind, with James Harden and the Houston Rockets taking that to an almost cynical level at some points, and DeRozan generates a large percentage of his offense in the midrange areas while never developing the outside shot that most want to see from him. This is probably a factor in DeRozan’s reputation, but the real reason that he never seems to gain that elite status is more performance-based: no matter how much he scores his team still performs better overall when he is not on the floor.
This is something that has followed him from year to year, no matter what he does to improve his game. Whether we are talking about the regular season, the postseason or even international play this ends up being the case. No matter how skeptical you are of statistics, at some point in time this has to matter to you because it’s not something you can say about any of the top players in the NBA, at least not on a continuing basis. Even offensive forces with questionable defensive games like Harden and Carmelo Anthony manage to be significant positives the majority of the time which is something that has eluded – and continues to elude – DeRozan despite his best efforts.
This year is no different. Despite DeRozan’s insane scoring the Raptors efficiency differential (oRTG – dRTG) is a very good +4.9 with him but an elite +8.6 without him, making him a net minus of -3.7 points per 100 possessions. This may be an issue with sample size that normalizes as the season progresses but he was a -4.6 during the 2016 season and a -7.2 in the 2016 playoffs, so DeRozan becoming a net positive player would be an outlier or a break from established trends.
Of course, raw on/off data is not some kind of basketball holy grail, where any net positive player is automatically better than any net negative player, but when a player is a net minus year after year, at some point any reasons you can come up with to explain it away cease to matter, especially when the player should be in his prime. It’s easy to see the problem with DeRozan’s impact on the teams play: he’s a positive impact offensive player (+9.3 pts/100 poss) but a horrendous defensive player (-13.1 pts/100 poss) Lest this be chalked up as some numbers that are somehow “not telling the whole story,” we’ll use both the eye test and his defensive statistics to evaluate his defense.
Eye Test
If you focus on DeRozan’s defense for a few games you’ll notice a few recurring themes. He positions himself poorly as a one on one defender, often neglecting to shade a player toward his help and giving up dribble penetration wherever the offensive player would like to go. He’s often inattentive, particularly in broken plays – if he loses his man it’s likely he doesn’t find him until it’s too late. Sometimes he makes the correct read but just fails to finish off the play – he’ll rotate the way he is supposed to but fail to contest a shot or a pass.
First, his man to man defense leaves a lot to be desired.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DErhRRWHmXI
He jumps out like he’s going for the steal but he hasn’t fully extended, which leaves him completely out of position. This allows Matt Barnes to beat him off the dribble and make a simple pass to the corner for an open three. If he fully commits to the steal he probably manages to get a hand on the pass, if he doesn’t half-gamble he’s in position against a weak offensive player but instead he gives up penetration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB85DzkKo70
Here DeRozan drops down for a rebound that he doesn’t end up contesting, then ends up out of place and unable to recover on noted speedster Arron Afflalo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvdoFosB6Ng
This is an all-too common situation for DeRozan: he’s got a stationary offensive player with the ball in his hands but no active dribble and gets beat after one not-very-convincing feint. Josh Richardson doesn’t end up scoring the ball but DeRozan concedes the middle of the defense too easily. There’s just no discipline there, just an overreaction to a small fake that leaves him out of position to make any kind of play on the ball. These aren’t situations where DeRozan has a tough matchup and is being lit up by a great player, each of these examples is someone that a capable NBA defender should be able to bottle up in a one on one scenario.
It is possible to be a weak on-ball defender and still be a solid contributor, but DeRozan may actually be worse as a help defender.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A92yft02JvQ
This one is at least partially Poeltl’s fault, DeRozan has to be the primary help defender on that pick and roll because Poeltl has no hope of slowing down the ball handler. Both give chase, which leaves DeRozan’s man open; not really his fault so that’s okay. But when he initial shot goes up, DeRozan is in the paint, where he remains even after Poeltl recovers to Whiteside despite there being two open shooters outside the arc. At the very least DeRozan should be identifying where his man is, but he has no idea. Lingering in the paint for no reason is a regular problem for DeRozan on the defensive end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWIWvl4zLNA
DeRozan is lingering again. He gets crossed up by Goran Dragic, which is something that happens to everyone at some point, but as Jonas Valanciunas deters Dragic’s layup attempt and Siakam drops down to help DeRozan is just stuck behind Whiteside. He can’t make a play on any pass to the Miami center and is too far away to try to contest Luke Babbitt’s three pointer. DeRozan just stays where he is unable to make any kind of play on the ball no matter who Dragic ends up passing to and never catches up to Dragic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARVybtAuxqU
DeRozan just casually stands in the paint for a 3 second call. Good on him for being eager to double team DeMarcus Cousins but he has to know that you can’t just stand under the rim like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aujmcSBz1Bw
This is probably the worst play that I saw in the three games that I watched for this. When Ross goes for the double team DeRozan is the closest defender as Ross’ man drifts down to the corner, a play so common DeRozan has to know it’s coming. Barnes is holding him up a bit but you can see that DeRozan isn’t heading in the right direction even after he breaks free. Lowry sees this happening and even though he’s further away than DeRozan he beats him to the shooter to contest. After this DeRozan just lingers in the paint, never actually figuring out who he is supposed to be guarding, with his only contribution for the rest of the possession being a futile swipe at the ball as Rudy Gay drives past him. It took 4 seconds for the ball to find its way to Gay after DeRozan’s man grabbed the offensive rebound and in that time DeRozan does absolutely nothing.
A lot of this is just effort and attention to detail. Everyone is going to get beat sometimes but you have to at least try to figure out where you need to be next, far too often you see DeRozan lingering in no man’s land. These aren’t complicated things, like tracking a shooter through a double screen or falling for a backscreen after some misdirection, these are the basics of defense: close out under control, stay in front of your man, know where you’re rotating and count how many seconds you’re in the paint. These are all things that DeRozan should be doing as a matter of habit by this point in his career.
Statistics
The on/off data has already been mentioned a few times so we’ll leave that alone, but there are some very damning numbers in the hustle stats made available by NBA.com. I have deflections and shots contested as the two most important categories, with deflections favouring active defensive guards and contested shots favouring big men. The Raptors numbers look more or less how you’d expect, with Valanciunas, Poeltl, Siakam and Bebe leading the contested shots and Lowry, Ross and Carroll leading the way in deflections with Patterson and Lowry actually faring well in both categories. And at the bottom of both is DeMar DeRozan. Things don’t look much better when you look at the league as a whole: among the 20 players who play 35+ mpg DeRozan is 16th in deflections and 17th in contested shots. He’s simply not making plays on the ball enough to have an impact on the defensive end.
Going into this season I didn’t care much about what DeRozan added to his offensive game. I wanted to see him become a passable defender because it’s necessary for the Raptors to take that next step and it’s the only way he ever has a prayer of being worth that giant contract he signed. Obviously it’s still early but plays like this and his defensive statistics indicate that nothing has really changed from last season, when he had nice scoring numbers but gave it all back on the other end.
It doesn’t seem like it’s a coaching issue because players like Patrick Patterson and Terrence Ross have actually made significant improvements on the defensive end during their time in Toronto, the latter being particularly impressive this season after being something of a space cadet on defense for his first couple of years in the league. This needs to become a point of emphasis for DeRozan, especially if he’s going to bristle at perception of his value and wants to prove his critics wrong because if this is how he is going to defend throughout the year the preseason rankings that he felt undervalued him may actually prove to have been a little too generous.
The offensive game seems to be at the level he has been striving for all of these years, it’s time to put that work ethic that everyone raves about to work on the other end of the floor.
