DeMar DeRozan named Eastern Conference Player of the Week – Raptors Republic
In addition to the boatload of scoring, DeRozan’s averaging career-highs of 4.8 rebounds and 1.4 steals while also dishing 3.2 assists. No, he’s not shooting threes, but he’s sixth in the league in free-throw attempts to help make up for it, putting his efficiency marks – a 59.4 true-shooting percentage, namely – well above-average. The Raptors have scored 5.6 points per-100 possessions more with DeRozan on the floor as a result, and any claims that his ridiculous 37.5-percent usage rate is too high can be met with the fact that the offense has needed him to shoulder this heavy a burden, and that the offense ranks fourth in the NBA thanks in large part to his hot start.
DeRozan’s mid-range shooting is likely to cool off at least a little, but the qualitative means in which he’s dominating – drives to the rim, free throws, magnificent footwork in the post, getting off tough shots late in the clock – aren’t exactly new. He’s just taken his game to the next level, and even the inevitability of regression should see him settle in as an even better version of himself, yet again.
DeMar DeRozan Becoming The Franchise Player Few Expected – RealGM Analysis
DeRozan is shooting 58.2 percent on jumpers with a defender between 2-4 feet away (aka “tight” coverage), and launching nearly nine per game! (Kevin Durant—a transcendent scorer—made 45.3 percent of these shots last season.) This makes up over 36 percent of his arsenal. It’s stigmatized Steph Curry-level craziness.
But not all DeRozan’s success is disorienting. No, we don’t know if the extremely-difficult-looking shots he’s draining today will fall in January, but the characteristics that make him effective won’t disappear overnight. DeRozan is huge (6’7) and has the interior footwork to bully almost every guard in the league down low.
He also possesses a devastating pump fake, which comes in handy against teams that size him up against larger swingmen. Leave your feet to contest DeRozan’s shot and risk sending him to the free-throw line. He finished third in free-throw attempts last season and only six players currently have more. All you can do is get a hand up and hope for the best.
Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan in a zone, ‘like Neo in The Matrix’ | Toronto Star
“It’s like Neo in The Matrix,” DeRozan said of the way the game looks to him. “I watch so much film, I study so much — every angle, every defensive coverage, every opponent. Even nights before games, understanding if there’s going to be a big guy or a smaller guy on me, just really getting mentally prepared that way just sets it all differently when I go out there and play.”
DeRozan’s confidence is, understandably, at an all-time high. He’s seeing multiple defensive looks every night — single coverage, passive double-teams, aggressive double-teams with big men and guards — and doesn’t seem to care.
“I really don’t pay no mind to it if it’s an open shot or there’s a guy in my face,” DeRozan said. “Norm actually asked me one day, how do I make so many tough shots and I tell him honestly, I don’t think about a hand in my face or somebody contesting me because I feel like that’s what a defender’s supposed to do. My job is to try to make the shot no matter what.”
Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan named Eastern Conference Player of the Week – Sportsnet.ca
In addition to putting the ball in the basket, DeRozan contributed averages of 4.7 and 4.3 assists as the Raptors defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder, Charlotte Hornets, and New York Knicks.
But really when it comes to DeRozan’s hot start, it all comes back to scoring, which he’s done at a higher clip than any other player thus far— and is off to the best start to a season of any player in thirty years. He leads the NBA this season at 34.0 ppg, while his eight (eight!) 30-point games (…out of the nine total games he’s played), makes him the first player since Michael Jordan in 1986-87 to drop at least 30 points in eight of his first nine games.
DeRozan has turned himself into a lean, mean, scoring machine | Toronto Sun
The U.S. team routine in Rio began with an 11 a.m. film session followed by practice.
DeRozan’s day began at 5:30 a.m. as he and both his basketball trainer and his weight trainer (Chris Farr and Jason Estrada) two guys he paid to have come over with him to Rio, hit the weight room or the pool or both in order to add muscle to his frame.
That, in essence, was the focus of his off-season training program. Stay lean but add muscle.
“I wanted to get stronger but I didn’t want to be that guy that comes back heavier or bulkier,” he said.
At one point in the summer he got a little carried away and he tipped the scales at 228.
“I was like, ‘Shit, this is too heavy. I don’t want to be this heavy.’ So I got it back down (to 220) by altering my diet.”
DeRozan’s comfort level coming through in the clutch – Article – TSN
The biggest factor in DeRozan’s continued growth is also the simplest: time. With seven full seasons of NBA experience under his belt, and the confidence that goes along with it, the 27-year-old is seeing the game at a different speed.
“The game has slowed down,” said Dwane Casey, who has coached DeRozan since his third season. “He doesn’t get rattled. At that time of the game teams tend to get more physical and grab and hold and bump and he just brushes it off now. That’s the difference I see in DeMar now. He is mature. He’s a man now as opposed to a kid getting beat up in those situations and the officials respect him now, whereas three or four years ago they probably would let the veterans get away with a lot of stuff.”
DeRozan has made big plays in every close game the Raptors have been in so far this season. In Friday’s win over Charlotte, after coughing up a 16-point lead and falling behind by double digits, he scored 10 of his 34 points in the fourth quarter, including a turnaround 20-foot jumper to ice it with 30 seconds left.
The next night, his unconventional four-point play broke a late-game tie and it was his layup that put the Knicks away in the final minute.
In clutch situations this season (the score within five points or less in the final five minutes of the game), DeRozan has totalled 27 points in 29 minutes (0.93 points per), shooting 12-for-23 from the field (52 per cent), albeit in a small sample size. The Raptors are 5-2 in those games. Last year, he shot 39 per cent and scored 0.86 points per minute in those situations. Over his career, he’s scored 0.59 points per minute on 37 per cent shooting in crunch time.
Casey explains what has turned DeRozan into a scoring machine – Sportsnet.ca
Dwane Casey joins prime time sports to explain why DeMar DeRozan has turned into a scoring machine for the Toronto Raptors in the new season.
Why the Raptors win and how they can improve – The Defeated
An encouraging sign of late has been the defense, which has also played its part in Toronto’s brilliant crunch time performances. Save for a handful of minor blips (Friday’s 38-point third quarter against Charlotte stands out), the Raptors have been able to lock down on defense. Credit much of this to their bench — the combination of Patterson, Powell, and Cory Joseph have been monstrous.
Three factors have fuelled the defense: limiting 3-pointers, positional versatility, and creative tactics.
After allowing an inordinate amount of threes last season, the Raptors have done a better job of containing penetration at the point of attack which has curbed the amount of drive-and-kick opportunities for their opponents. Credit to them for also scrambling and for picking up their assignments when breakdowns occur. They rank 12th in fewest threes allowed.
Defensive versatility has also been a pleasant surprise as the Raptors have thus far proven capable of surviving different match-ups. The three-headed combination of Lowry, Joseph, and Powell can smother smaller guards (with the exception of unrivalled Raptor slayer Kemba Walker), Patterson is comfortable guarding 1–5, while the three centers in Bebe Nogueira, Jakob Poeltl and Valanciunas can each bring something to the table. Bebe fouls too much, sometime struggles on the glass and gets winded easily, but he has great mobility and length to contest shots. Poeltl is mobile and plays smart positional defense, while Valanciunas dominates the defensive glass.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMzafjZgtjC/
Believing in Bebe – Raptors Republic
Privately, though, key figures around the team, past and present, have maintained faith and Nogueira, and to hear him tell it, it’s made all the difference. Nogueira credits the upcoming birth of his first child, a daughter, for cleaning up his life (he hasn’t had a drink in eight months, by his estimation) and maturing him on and off the court. Nogueira is also intelligent enough to have read the team’s roster and cap situation and correctly predicted that his friend, and the man formerly ahead of him on the depth chart, Bismack Biyombo, would be leaving this summer, leaving the team without much means of replacing him.
That confluence of life and basketball factors finally drove home the message about what was in front of Nogueira the next few months.
“Amazing. Amazing,” he said of how he feels physically right now. “I changed a lot of bad habits during the summer because I knew my chance was gonna come, because the cap, it was gonna be hard to keep Biz. So I knew coaches, GMs, they gonna believe in me. So since the season’s over last year, June, I changed a couple of bad habits during the summer and I put in the work to be ready for the opportunity right now.”
Biyombo’s departure had another impact, too, one that borders on the supernatural. Needing more space for the baby, Nogueira moved into Biyombo’s old apartment, and he now says he’s going to buy it and “stay there forever” since it’s coincided with his success. Really, though, it sounds like the support and belief of a friend and outgoing teammate helped Nogueira maintain the confidence to keep pushing after two hard years more than any inexplicable sorcery.
“Biz, the reason I changed a lot of my habits is ‘cause of him,” Nogueira says. “I don’t know if it’s the magic, but now I have a great moment in my life and live in his apartment. I think this is the reason I’m playing well – I sleep in the same bed as Bismack. When he’s gone, during the summer, he told me, ‘Lucas, your time to shine, go get it.’ I’ve known Biz since I’m 15, playing in Spain against each other, so we have a mutual respect for each other. It’s special. When he’s gone, he told me, ‘It’s your time, go get it.’ And I took it serious, and now things are going well for me.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMzjwBYBnc7/
Raptors this week: New, unexpected closing lineup also the team’s best – Sportsnet.ca
Over the past three games the combination of DeRozan, Lowry, Patrick Patterson, Norman Powell and Lucas Nogueira has wreaked havoc, posting a team-best plus 28 rating over a 19-minute span. That’s obviously a small sample size, but when put into context that this lineup has played 13 of those 19 minutes in the fourth quarter, putting up a plus-23 advantage of opponents in that timeframe, you begin to see some real legitimacy in this kind of closer lineup sticking.
It isn’t like it’s too farfetched a unit, either. Every closing or crunch-time lineup will feature Lowry and DeRozan, they’re the two best players on the team without question and in the case of DeRozan, the Raptors have a guy who over the span of nine games has arguably looked like the best player in the entire league. For Patterson, that’s nothing new as he’s come off the bench and closed games for the Raptors for the last three years. The additions of Powell and Nogueira, however, are very interesting.
Between Valanciunas and Nogueira, it’s obvious who the more talented player is. Valanciunas offers far more offensive skill than Nogueira does, but he isn’t anywhere close to the kind of shot-blocker and rim-runner Nogueira is. As seen with Bismack Biyombo last season, Casey values both skills down the stretch of games. This is likely because with Valanciunas on the floor the Raptors do need to go through him in the post for him to be effective, taking away from their preferred options in Lowry and DeRozan. A guy like Nogueira doesn’t require any plays to be run for him. Instead, he’ll just crash the boards, catch lobs, and on defence, provide some much needed rim protection – as his five blocks Saturday against the New York Knicks proves.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMzlyuLAFcy/
Jumping into the all-time best Raptor conversation | Toronto Star
Team success?
No question that DeRozan and Lowry have taken the Raptors to unprecedented heights but how much should that factor into it?
Are the others to blame because of the failings of their teammates and the men who put the rosters together? That’s the tricky one; does the fact Vince and Bosh got to the playoffs with rosters they had count as much as the fact DeMar and Kyle won with each other as teammates? I think it does.
How’s it rank?
Gotta go DeMar, Kyle, Vince, Bosh, right?
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMz1vADlZhm/
Toronto Raptors: The Biggest Threat To LeBron, Cavs? – Sir Charles in Charge
The first step in successfully stopping the Cleveland Cavaliers, you must have an answer for LeBron James. That’s where DeMarre Carroll steps in. Carroll has proven in the past that he can, at the very least, help slow down LeBron.
Outside of Carroll, the Raptors have another solid defender in Patrick Patterson. His size and quickness allows him to be effective when switched onto smaller players. Expect to see a mixture of Patrick Patterson and DeMarre Carroll guarding LeBron this season – and in the playoffs.
In addition to slowing down LeBron, the Toronto Raptors also have the firepower to keep pace with the Cavs on the offensive end.
Toronto’s backcourt of Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan is one of the best duo’s in the NBA. They each can lead the team and put up great numbers. DeRozan has been on a scoring rampage this season; he’s averaging 34.0 points per game through nine games. Not only that, but DeRozan has scored at least 30 points in 8 of the 9 games this season.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMzSrIklZYc/
Raptors’ back-to-back games to pit LeBron, Curry against DeRozan – The Globe and Mail
“The computer that spit out the schedule, I’m going to find it and break it,” said Toronto coach Dwane Casey, only half-joking.
The first game will be played Tuesday night in Cleveland, a rematch against the LeBron James-led Cavaliers: In Toronto’s second game of the season, back on Oct. 28 at Air Canada Centre, the Cavaliers earned a hard-fought 94-91 victory.
Following Tuesday’s game, the Raptors will fly home for a Wednesday-night game against the run-and-gun Warriors, featuring two-time (and counting) NBA most-valuable-player Stephen Curry.
As back-to-backs go, it is a brutal scenario for the Raptors. But it is too early in the season, Casey said, to suggest that these games have any added meaning.
“It’s good for us, it’s not a measuring stick,” Casey said. “I think we’re still trying to get our rotations down as far as what we want to do in certain situations, who we want to guard, who can do what in certain situations. [We are] still trying to figure those things out a little bit.
“It’s that part of the year, I’d rather go ahead and get these [games against] two of the best teams in the league in now and go from there.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMzy9FIg3Kb/
Raptors at Cavaliers: Tuesday game preview | Toronto Star
Key matchup: Carroll vs. James
It is always thus, the well-rested Raptors defensive specialist gets to lock horns with the most physically dominant player in the league. The Cavs put James all over the floor and in all sorts of different roles.
