At the beginning of the season we took a look at DeMar DeRozan’s defense and how far it had to go to catch up to his offensive game. He’s never really been known for his defensive abilities and when you watched the Raptors play at the time it was pretty easy to see why. There’s never really been much else to say about DeRozan’s defense, it’s just been a fact of life and something that the Raptors have had to overcome to get where they are.
At the All-Star break expectations for the Raptors changed considerably. With Serge Ibaka and PJ Tucker coming on board it was expected that the team’s commitment to defense would improve and we would no longer see extended stretches of time where opponents got easy bucket after easy bucket. There would be no more taking plays off, no more getting caught sleeping and if you were caught doing either the guilty party would have to answer for it. A lot was made of Tucker speaking about DeRozan’s defense in a few post-game scrums, everyone no doubt thankful that someone was holding him accountable. This seemed to shift the conversation around DeRozan’s defense from how bad it was to how much better it seemed. The narrative put forth was that that he was playing with hard nosed veterans who won’t accept any excuses and his game had gotten better as a result. It certainly looked like he was trying harder, but defense is not just about effort so we needed time to see if there was an actual impact being made.
Unfortunately, it seems like it was mostly wishful thinking. We all want DeRozan to be a plus defender and it would be nice if it was just a matter of trying harder but his issues on the defensive end have more to do with bad technique and poor awareness than effort, and PJ Tucker in his ear is not suddenly going to fix that. Some of this perception of DeRozan as an improved defender is based in reality: the Raptors defense with him on the floor now is better than it was before the Tucker trade. Here are his defensive on/off splits before and after the trade:
While the Raptors defense with DeRozan on the floor is better it doesn’t seem to be the result of better defense on his part – the team is just playing better defense around him. Relative to the beginning of the season they’re simply less bad when he plays but when he sits their defense is elite.
Watch any recent Raptors game and you will probably see the familiar DeRozan mistakes: falling asleep or being out of position, overplaying to make up for it, taking too long to find his next rotation, etc. To his credit he does play hard when he is involved in the play but as soon as he’s off the ball he either doesn’t know what to do or he isn’t paying attention when it’s time to do it. I decided to look at a random first quarter to see how the defense looked, and it was just more of the same.
In this first clip he has the simple task of sticking with Terrence Ross, probably the player he should be most capable of shutting down. If Ross decides cut off the Vucevic screen toward Elfrid Payton we can see that Jakob Poeltl has already sniffed that out and communicated this to DeRozan. DeRozan still plays to take away the cut off the screen, allowing Ross to easily beat him back door for the dunk.(side note: Poeltl was in an awful situation here; if he hangs back to take away the lob Ross almost certainly has an open three. This is a predicament the Raptors put their big men in far too often)
This second clip is what you will see from DeRozan on most defensive plays. He’s not really out of position for most of it, just not really ready to make any kind of play either. To make up for not being ready to make a play he lunges hard at Mario Hezonja to chase him off the line, but it’s a bad angle and Hezonja knew it was coming so he gets into the middle of the defense far too easily. DeRozan just kind of trails Hezonja, not in a position to make a play on him but not putting himself in a position to make a play anywhere else either. This means that he has to close out hard on Aaron Gordon as well, and Gordon gets into the paint unmolested. It was a great play by Patrick Patterson to save the bucket, but it’s one that shouldn’t have been necessary. DeRozan should be capable of containing the likes of Hezonja and Gordon off the dribble.
This is just two plays but we all see this every game and none of it looks any different than what we saw earlier in the season. It shows why DeRozan still has yet to become a net positive player for the Raptors. He’s a net negative on the season and in the 21 games that Lowry was out the team was only +0.9 points per 100 possessions better when he was on the court. For all of his offensive heroics during that stretch he gave it all back on the defensive end. Despite the PJ Tucker soundbites this hasn’t changed.
This is still the main thing keeping DeRozan from being universally regarded as an elite player. Other offensive forces who play suspect defense like Carmelo Anthony and James Harden were still consistent net positive players. And on/off splits are not some kind of holy grail statistic that measure the totality of a players worth, but if a player wants to be considered among the league’s elite at some point he has to have something showing that he’s making a significant positive impact for his team. What we’re seeing in DeRozan’s on/off splits is not an issue for the players he would very much like to consider his peers. Maybe having someone like PJ Tucker around for motivation and guidance will help him turn things around on the defensive end, but for all the talk on the broadcasts and from the fanbase about his increased defensive prowess it simply hasn’t happened yet.
