This article was written by me and originally appeared on the94.com. Check it out @ https://94feetreport.com/demar-derozan-is-going-to-drop-50-on-the-raptors-ebd740b25bef
When news broke that Kawhi Leonard wanted out of San Antonio, the NBA community went mad. How could the face of the franchise, the soft-spoken on-court assassin, want out of such a storied and successful team? As we came to find out, there were a lot of reasons, health not withstanding. Reasons aside, sports books from around the country jumped on setting odds surrounding his final destination.
Leonard was — at the time — eyeing the Lakers as his top destination spot. That input led to the Bovada Official Sportsbook putting The Lake Show at 5/7 odds for being The Team That Kawhi Will Play Game One Of Next Season With. Boston was second at 15/4 odds; the rest of the list is below.
76ers: 5/1
Spurs: 5/1
Cavaliers: 10/1
Clippers: 10/1
We were all wrong.
Instead, Kawhi is packing his bags, finding a winter coat, and heading north to become a Toronto Raptor. Will he be a rental or will he fall in love with The North? Will his relationship with Kyle Lowry flourish or flop? Only time will tell.
What people aren’t paying enough attention to though, is DeMar DeRozan’s new home: San Antonio. The polar opposite of The North. DeRozan recently appeared on ex-teammate Serge Ibaka’s YouTube show “How Hungry Are You?” and, during the back-and-forth, casually dropped the fact that he’ll go for 50 points in his game against the Raptors on January 3rd.
“I’ll probably go for 50 [points], I’m gonna foul you out. I’m gonna foul JV [Jonas Valanciunas] out, I’m telling you.”
While it was said in good humor, it is no secret that DeRozan felt disrespected by the franchise when they traded him away, especially given that they all but guaranteed that he was not on the table to be traded. All this sets up a beautiful and much-anticipated matchup between the two teams.
But the question is, can he do it? Sure he can. We’ve seen him get hot last season when he put up 42 points in Detroit, 42 points in Golden State, 52 in Milwaukee, and 45 against Philadelphia. These teams were no scrubs either, three of the four opposite his 40+ efforts were ranked in the top half of the league in terms of defensive ratings. Detroit was 11th in the league, Golden State was 9th, and Philadelphia was 3rd. Sure, the Raptors only won by two on a Fred VanFleet jumper against Detroit, lost to Golden State by two, played a 76ers squad sans Joel Embiid and JJ Redick, and it took overtime against a Milwaukee team that was ranked 17th in terms of defensive ratings to score 52. All valid points, but the conclusion remains the same; it can be done, especially given the size of the chip on his shoulder going into the game.
“I’ll Go For 50”
Last season, the Raptors finished 5th in terms of defensive ratings. They allowed an average of 103.8 points per 100 possessions. During the regular season — no need to bring up LeBron’s sweep of them in the Conference Finals — several players came close to eclipsing 40 points against them: Damian Lillard scored 36, Bradley Beal had 38, Harden had games of 38 and 40, Victor Oladipo had 36, and Wayne Ellington had 32. Throughout the entire season, Harden was the only player to score 40 against The North’s defense.
Now, take that defense and add in Kawhi Leonard, a 3-time NBA All-Defensive First Team selection and a two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, and Danny Green, a 2017 NBA All-Defensive Second Team selection. Toronto ranked 5th last season with a guard in DeRozan who has never made an NBA All-Defensive team or came close to a DPOY nomination, and now he is being replaced with a duo that has multiples of each, all while maintaining the same core of players they had last season? 50 points is sounding harder and harder as each sentence is written.
Let’s give DeRozan some credit though, he has consistently improved his game year after year and has come a long way from his catch-and-shoot days as a Trojan. In his 52-point game against Milwaukee, he displayed an unfamiliar dominance from the three-point line, going 5–9 from deep, and went 17–29 from the field. Add in a perfect 13–13 from the line and it’s clear that his game is certainly capable of explosive nights.
Full highlights from DeRozan’s 52-point performance
It’s no secret that DeRozan is a mid-range shooter by nature. Often described as the “least desirable shot in the NBA,” this is the home that DeRozan chooses to stay in. Last season saw him take the most three-point attempts per game, 3.6, in his entire career. To put that in perspective, there were no other guards who averaged 23 points per game or more (and their were seven of them) who shot less than four three-pointers per game. The next lowest was Russell Westbrook, who averaged 4.1 per game. The highest? James Harden, who averaged 10 three-point attempts per game.
DeRozan is listed as a shooting guard, and yet he seems to buck the trend of the three-heavy offense. Now maybe this was a result of Dwane Casey’s offensive preferences, or maybe, in the words of DeRozan himself, “You’ve got to go to bat with your strengths.” Last season, his average distance per shot was 12.9 feet. While most guards see their most frequent shots come within 3-feet, DeRozan once again goes against the grain, his most frequent shots came from between 10 and 16-feet at 24 percent. His second most frequent shots were from three-point range (20.3 percent), and his third-most came from within 3-feet (19.9 percent). That order seems incorrect, but it’s not. DeRozan loves the mid-range jumper and has only recently adapted the three-pointer to be part of his arsenal.
Final tally: 4 layups/points in the paint, 4 mid-range jumpers and 2 three-pointers
His offensive game plan is simple: mid-range jumpers and jumpers in the paint to draw contact, then make the opponent pay by burying them at the line. It’s worked so far, as he has continued to shoot above 80 percent from the line since 2010, while averaging 7 free-throw attempts per game last season.
So DeRozan has the tools to drop 50, but can he do it against the new look Raptors?
New Face of The North
Before the trade that sent DeRozan south, new Head Coach Nick Nurse called on him to step it up defensively. That problem solved itself thanks to Leonard. Leonard’s average defensive win shares of 3.5 currently outstrip DeRozan’s career high of 3.0. Not only is he more adept defensively than DeRozan, but he is more versatile too. In the past, DeRozan’s limited defensive impact brought the idea of constant rotations, ball-switches, and help defense to a crumbling end. He was one dimensional.
Leonard is not.
While statistically Leonard has spent 88 percent of his career at small forward, we know that he is moved around often on the defensive end. It’s hard to accurately break down post-injury Kawhi though, as he only played nine games last season. If we want to break down a healthy Kawhi’s game, we have to go to the 2016 season when he played 74 games (albeit on a very different looking Spurs team).
So let’s rewind the clock, while also assuming that New Kawhi will be as good as — or better than — Old Kawhi, and we will see a few things that might spell disaster for DeRozan’s goal of 50-points. The first major concern for DeRozan is Kawhi’s length. His size and wingspan are no secret, but their impact may be. In the 2016 season his sheer length led to 3.7 contested two-pointers per 36 minutes. We have discussed DeRozan’s keenness for the mid-range jumper, but he has added a more reliable three-point shot to his arsenal. Maybe he can step outside and knock down some long range shots, right? Wrong. Kawhi has got that covered, contesting 2.6 three-point shots per 36 minutes.
OK but what about catch-and shoots? DeRozan took 17 percent of his shots as catch-and-shoots, so maybe he can run Kawhi off of a screen and do damage that way. Nope. Kawhi averaged 3.4 deflections per 36 minutes in 2016, and while his steals per game were not eye-popping (1.8), it was his mere presence that made offenses think twice about passing in his direction. His quickness allows him to jump the passing lanes, and his speed allows for calculated risks as he can recover even if his man gets behind him.
So picks won’t help, catch-and-shoots won’t work, but what about simple pull up jumpers? DeRozan liked to resort to those (48.7 percent of his shots were pull ups), so what about the classic isolation, three-six dribble pull up? There might be some leverage there as 34 percent of his offensive moves came between three and six dribbles, resulting in a make 50 percent of the time. This looks like the best option so far. Even when defenders were plastered on him (between two and four feet of him), he shot 55 percent from two-point range. He averaged nearly seven field goal attempts when he was covered that tight and, perplexing enough, it went up slightly the tighter he was covered. When the defender was within two feet of him, DeRozan shot 56.8 percent from two-point range.
So we cracked the code, right? Not quite. DeRozan may have shot nearly 57 percent when his man was draped all over him, but he only put up 2.2 attempts per game when that happened, all of which coming inside the three-point line. His percentages were good, but the number of attempts was not. We can expect Kawhi to be assigned to DeRozan the majority of the game, and that spells trouble, as each tendency for DeRozan seems to all lead back to a Kawhi stop.
The North is Copying the West
In lieu of Golden State’s success, and the Death Lineup that followed, more and more teams are trying to copy the idea of small ball lineups. Toronto will be one of them. This not only spells disaster for DeRozan and the Spurs, but for the rest of the NBA as well.
Leonard — along with guys like OG Anunoby, Delon Wright, and Pascal Siakam — all have one phrase that describes them: Swiss-army-knife. They are movable, versatile and — just like Golden State — can switch ad nauseam on everything the offense may throw at them. If the Raptors want to channel the 2014 Warriors and keep a rim-protector in (like Andrew Bogut), then they can start a lineup of Lowry, Green, Leonard, OG/Siakim, and Valanciunas at center. Small ball? Simple. It is Lowry, Green, OG, Leonard, and Siakim/Ibaka at center.
Most teams aren’t built like the Warriors or Rockets as they lack the same length across their lineups. Toronto will not suffer that problem. They are similarly built to the Warriors lineup, and the starting five of Lowry, Green, Leonard, OG, and Siakam all recorded negative DIFF%’s (the difference between an opponent’s field-goal percentage when the player is defending them, and the opponent’s regular field-goal percentage) last season, as did Delon Wright and Jonas Valanciunas. The defensive improvements across Toronto’s lineups have landed them in the top five for Odds to Win the 2018–2019 NBA Championship at +1400. The other four are Golden State (-195), Boston (+500), Houston (+850), and the Lakers (+1000).
Grudges aren’t measurable; they have no stats or numbers associated with them. We have seen players simply will themselves to greatness and their teams to victory more often than not, and DeRozan’s Spurs may be no different. When we focus on Kawhi’s defensive excellence though, the idea of a 50-point game seems unlikely. When we zoom out and look at the Raptors as a whole, it seems nearly impossible. DeRozan may have the grudge of all grudges, but Leonard is just too good to drop 50 points on. Add in the lineup surrounding him, and San Antonio will be lucky just to pull out a W when it faces The North.
My bet? He will not drop 50. Nick Nurse may not be as defensive-minded as Dwane Casey was, but the talent he has is too sound to allow a performance like that. Add in the fact that since Leonard has been in the league (he was drafted in 2011), Leonard has only allowed one 50 point game (courtesy of Kyrie Irving’s 57 points in overtime, March 12th 2015). I can appreciate DeRozan’s ambition to stick it to his former team in a “this is what you traded away” type act but, in a DeRozan dropping 50 versus Leonard not allowing 50 battle, I will choose Leonard every time.
Odds courtesy of Bovada Official Sportsbook and stats courtesy of www.NBA.com