Limiting turnovers key to DeRozan’s success as Raptors’ lead scorer

Note: This is a guest post from Thomas Anderson.

The measure of a man is found in his capacity to triumph over adversity, I’ve been told. Or, rather, I think I’ve been told. It certainly sounds like something I’ve heard before. It sounds like something that has been translated into Latin and carved into a plaque.

It’s likely not wise that I begin this way. But I wanted to grab your attention. And in lieu of substance, I reached for gravitas. Or what would have been gravitas had it been true.

Forget it. Let’s begin, again.

DeMar DeRozan is not a very efficient basketball player, I’ve been told. This is a less weighty statement than my definition for the moral capacity of the human race. But it at least fits vaguely within my actual range of knowledge. I know this because everyone says that it’s true.

As volume scorers go, he’s fine. He scores well in terms of field-goal percentage, sure, particularly at his position and when considered alongside the volume of his output. But it’s not enough. Field-goal percentage is to basketball as batting average is to baseball—which is as hot air ballooning is to trans-Atlantic travel. If field-goal percentage is the answer, then you are asking the wrong question.

Effective field-goal percentage is a better guide. It takes threes into account, you know. And, here, is where DeRozan takes a slide in the rankings. Of all players who shoot at least 15 times per-game (my rough and arbitrary guide for a lead scorer), DeRozan ranks 35^th of 37 players in eFG%. When free throws are introduced into the conversation, things become a touch rosier. DeRozan’s true-shooting percentage is 52.9%, good for 31^st in the same group. But it’s not enough to cleanse the palate of all the attempts. If you’re paid like a star you need to shoot like a star, someone is no doubt shouting in the forums.

And yet, as damaging as all of this should be, it doesn’t seem to be damaging at all. The Raptors can score. In fact, before DeRozan’s mid-winter absence and the clunky process of his reintegration, they were scoring at historic levels. Whether that figure was destined to come back to Earth or not doesn’t negate the point. The Raptors remain in elite company and have been a top-10 offence in each of the last four seasons.

All of which begs the question: how does an inefficient scorer who eats up a third of his team’s scoring chances not submarine one of the most efficient offences in the league?

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Efficiency, as we’ve come to understand, is a measure of the cost of production. To measure the efficiency of producing a given product, one must identify the necessary resources (both human and material) and their price. The common denominator to all this is money: wages, shipping, and materials all have a monetary value. Thus, to lower the price of any of these parts is to increase the efficiency of the whole.

To measure the cost of scoring in a basketball game, the work is much the same. First, we identify the denominator and then we calculate the cost. If the cost of twenty points is twenty shots, you’d better look for another supplier. If you can get those same twenty points at the expense of fewer shots, then the unused surplus can be used for more scoring chances and your team will score more. It’s simple.

The number of words written on this subject over the last decade are staggering and have improved our understanding of the game immensely (I’m speaking as a fan, here). But there is a problem when we jump too quickly. The problem is that the denominator is often misidentified. It’s not field-goal attempts we should be analyzing. Teams don’t spend their shots to try to score. They spend possessions.

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Since he arrived in Houston in the fall of 2012, James Harden has served as the unquestioned two-guard avatar of the modern era. He is an analytics darling. He plays for an organization and a coach who don’t just encourage his shot distribution, they have pushed this style to its limit. He gets to the rim, he gets to the free throw line and when he shoots from distance, he takes a step back and avoids the dreaded forest of the long-two, where Hansel and Gretel are said to have once wandered (this was pre-ABA merger).

When Harden is compared with DeRozan, things get ugly in a hurry.

Harden’s effective field-goal percentage is a full five points higher than DeRozan’s and his true-shooting is six points higher. The reasons for the difference are obvious: Harden takes six threes for every one that DeRozan takes. And DeRozan’s foul-drawing, while elite, pales in comparison with Harden’s. It doesn’t matter that Harden’s traditional percentages (44.0% FG and 35.3% 3P) appear no better than average. By only taking the kinds of shots that will allow him to keep his “Analytics Certified” sticker on his packaging, Harden shoots with both elite efficiency and elite volume.

If, however, what I said before was true—that possessions and not shots are what we should be considering—then things may be a bit different. A missed shot marks the failed end to a possession, but it’s not the only way that a possession can fail. And the other way is one in which DeRozan looks pretty okay in comparison with Harden.

As of the All-Star break, DeRozan was averaging just 2.3 turnovers per game. Harden averages 5.8. It’s easy to hand wave this kind of single data point away, but it matters. Turnovers are wasted opportunities just like missed shots. And Harden averages two and a half more of them every game. (DeRozan turns the ball over on just 8.6 percent of possessions compared to 19.7 percent for Harden, if you prefer percentages.)

If these 2.5 surplus turnovers were counted as missed shots, Harden’s shooting splits would be atrocious. For starters, his field goal percentage would drop from 44.0% to 38.8%. If we were to assume that these misses would fall in line with his normal shot distribution, his two-point shooting would drop from 52.0% to 46.0% and his threes would end up as an anemic 31.1%.

But what if we went a step further and re-calculated the true-shooting percentage of each player in my 15 shots per game list, assuming that every turnover should be counted as a missed shot? In this experiment, DeRozan rises to 25^th overall. This may not sound like much, but remember, this is a list of players whose teams trust them to carry the heavy burden of elite scorer. With this adjustment, DeMar sits ahead of names like Paul George, Blake Griffin, Russell Westbrook and, yes, James Harden who now sits at spot number thirty.

To double-down on this idea, turnovers represent a substantially worse end to a possession than a missed shot. When you miss a shot, there is roughly one-in-five chance that your team will get the ball back. Offensive rebounds are a killer; they lead to put-backs and open threes. With a turnover, there is no such chance of reanimation. The possession is dead. And often enough, a turnover from a guard is a live ball in the backcourt, creating an open runway for the opposition to take off and score an easy two.

By not considering turnovers, we miss an important component of NBA offense. We also miss a big part of what makes DeMar DeRozan so good.

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At the end of all of this, it is necessary to admit that what I’ve proposed is an overly simplistic correction. Shots and turnovers are not the same thing. Each one derives from a family tree too intricate to untangle in any one data table or metric.

It also ignores the other things that Harden does so well for Houston’s offence. Simply put: he passes a lot. Harden’s cavalier style certainly does cost his team in extra turnovers; however, the value of that aggression is found not only in his mammoth scoring, but in kick outs to Ryan Anderson or lobs to Clint Capela. James Harden will, in all likelihood, end the season on the All-NBA First Team, and deservedly so. DeMar DeRozan will not.

But if things work, it’s worth trying to understand why they work. The Raptors offence works. And it does so, at least in part, because DeMar DeRozan doesn’t spend his possessions without getting a shot at the bucket. He fits the criteria of efficiency, just not in the way that we have come to expect from a lead scorer. He’s efficient because he’s careful. And carefulness is the measure of a man, or so I’ve been told.