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The Roar

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Outdated and brilliant: DeMar DeRozan defines Toronto's ceiling

DeMar DeRozan faces up against Otto Porter. (Image: Keith Allison CC BY-SA 2.0)
Expert
4th December, 2016
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Whether or not he’s the best Toronto Raptor, DeMar DeRozan is basketball’s finest dinosaur.

DeRozan, with his mid-range obsession and early 2000s isolation hero-ball routine, is the past. In James Harden’s league of rim runs and hellfire from deep, DeRozan is an anomaly. He is ‘wrong’, but he has a way of making wrong feel much more right than it should.

Through the first 12 games of the 2016-17 season, DeRozan broke the NBA matrix. Even as Harden, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook were making a history of numbers wilt like the frightened rims before them, DeRozan was arguably the most dominant scorer in the season’s opening stanza.

He dropped at least 30 points in 10 of those first 12 match-ups, and he did it old-school – playing big minutes, living at the line, and hitting contested mid-rangers. It was the best Kobe Bryant impersonation we’d seen since Bryant’s own impersonation of himself in his farewell game.

On one hand, DeRozan is a beautiful player. He’s all savvy, with superb timing and misdirection, and exquisite stop-start footwork. He’s unafraid of contact, using his Dunk Champion athleticism to power to the rim and glide to handsome finishes.

And for all the bad shots he takes, he’s not a selfish player. He’s a canny and willing passer, with his ability to run the pick and roll allowing Kyle Lowry to excel off-ball, a shift that has opened up Toronto’s annually elite offence.

DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors during a game against the Washington Wizards on November 2, 2016 at Verizon Center in Washington, DC.

But my God, the bad shots are bad. The fundamental problem with Toronto’s max contract star is that the enduring image of him will be rising up to shoot in the mid-range with a defender in his face – a shot that misses 60 per cent of the time.

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DeRozan’s greatest enemy is inevitability. He’ll have hot streaks, like the start to this season, where he can’t miss from the least efficient real estate on the court. But no one over the course of a year, not even Chris Paul or Dirk Nowitzki, brushes with 60 per cent from mid-range like DeRozan did through 12 games. The numbers come crashing down, reality catches up, and DeRozan reverts to his respectable but containable self.

For his career, DeRozan shoots 38 per cent in the nether region between 16 feet and the three-point line. There is real value – the Art of the Bad Shot – in an isolation perimeter scorer being able to do that, lending his team the confidence that he can always bail them out with a horrendous shot that isn’t actually that horrendous.

The problem with DeRozan is that horrendous shots aren’t a bailout option for him – they’re what he actively searches for. He’s a maddening player to watch, sometimes to the point of simply being unwatchable.

He achieved that state in last year’s playoffs, where Paul George shadowed him into nothingness. That first round series exposed DeRozan in a big way, showing that when he’s blanketed by an elite perimeter defender who’s his equal athletically, the illusion dies and his junk show gets tossed in the trash.

As a concept, unless you’re Russell Westbrook, a perimeter player who doesn’t shoot threes is an eminently solvable equation, especially in the playoffs. In a way, DeRozan’s reluctance to shoot threes is admirable – he’s not good at them, and unlike Westbrook, he realises this, exercising restraint and distributing his shots to places where he’s more capable. But on the other hand, if DeRozan is never able to shoot threes at a 35 per cent clip, the Raptors’ ceiling feels unfortunately defined.

Even if he were to become a competent marksman from deep, the Raptors would still likely find their heads smashed against the Cleveland ceiling. Offence has never been Toronto’s problem, with last year’s fourth-ranked unit second only to Golden State’s historical scoring this year.

Last season’s 11th-ranked defence has tumbled to 21st, though, and it’s unclear whether the Raptors have an avenue to becoming elite on that end.

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Lowry can be a tenacious defender at the point of attack, but his D suffers from the weight of his immense load on offence. DeMarre Carroll is the team’s nominal wing stopper, and while he’s looking the healthiest he’s been as a Raptor, even at his best he’s never had the strength to be anything more than a formality for LeBron. The team misses Bismack Biyombo’s rim protection, and will miss it even more in the playoffs.

DeRozan, for his part, offers little on the defensive end. His contribution is on offence, and even that, while sometimes undeniably brilliant, is defined by doubts and blunted faith.

Rumours of the East’s supposed rejuvenation this season have been largely exaggerated, and no clear threat to Cleveland has emerged. Once they round into health and shape, Boston may become that team, but for now the Raptors are still the best bet.

They’re really only the best bet by the two sweetest words in Homer Simpson’s language, though, and that’s largely because of DeMar DeRozan’s strengths, which become his weaknesses in the blink of an eye.

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