Derozan sticks to his strengths
Shooting guard rides midrange shot to stardom
Toronto Raptors All-Star DeMar DeRozan is not your modern NBA shooting guard. He makes his money inside the three-point line with an oldfashioned midrange game.
DeRozan makes no apologies for his game, which doesn’t fit into the conventional notion of what a shooting guard should do.
“My mind-set every time I go out there is, ‘You have to stop me from doing this first. You’ve got to make me do something you think I can’t do,’ ” DeRozan said. “Until then, I’m going continue to do what I know I’m comfort- able doing.”
He is comfortable scoring from the midrange distance and closer, and this season DeRozan is off to the best start of his career.
DeRozan is averaging 30.9 points, has scored at least 30 points in 10 of 14 games and became the fourth player in the last 50 years to score 30+ points in
eight of his team’s first nine games.
“Just putting everything together at this point in my career,” he said. “Being eight years in, I’m just really engulfing myself in being the best player I can be.”
DeRozan attributes his start to confidence and familiarity. He’s comfortable in Toronto and with the Raptors, and he made that clear by reaching a five-year, $139 million deal early in free agency and leaving money on the table.
“It just all comes together now, because at this point there’s not much you haven’t seen. There’s not much you don’t know from play-calling to terminology to schemes,” DeRozan said. “There’s only so many schemes a team can you throw at you. ... They throw everything at you — best defenders, blitzes, double teams, every single thing.
“Once you leave with that mind-set of every single night I’m prepared for that type of coverage, it comes easier. The game comes a lot slower. You understand what you can do and how you can do it better.”
He also has a genuine appreci- ation of the game.
“You want to take full advantage of it, because I feel like yesterday I was a rookie and now I’m in my eighth year. I want to at least leave everything I’ve got out there for the game of basketball,” he said.
The Raptors have designed an offense that allows DeRozan to use his skill set. Get the ball to him and let him break down the defender inside the three-point line. (Improved three-point shooting would help him and the rest of the offense.)
From 19 feet and closer, DeRozan is shooting 51.3% from the field, including 57.6% on shots from 10 to 14 feet, according to Stats.nba.com.
His midrange game is one of the best and most prolific in the league. No guard takes more shots from 15 to 19 feet (6.8 attempts per game), 10 to 14 feet (4.7 attempts per game) and 5 to 9 feet (2.6 attempts per game) than DeRozan. Just 25.2% of his makes are assisted, compared with 85.5% for Klay Thompson. Even 36.5% of Dwyane Wade’s makes are assisted.
DeRozan said other shooting guards have approached him and told him, “You’re the hope for us 2 guards with this mid- range. They say, ‘I want my midrange game to be like yours.’ ”
He’s happy to be flourishing in his style. “For me, it’s just always being resilient and never letting anybody sway my thought process or try to discredit something I may do because I don’t do something everybody else does,” DeRozan said.
It’s not conventional today, but it works for DeRozan and the Raptors, as it did for those before him such as Alex English and Adrian Dantley.
“I watch a lot of the oldschool guys. You hear about them scoring 40 a night before there was a three-point line, and they didn’t have that athleticism and speed we have today and still found a way to get it done,” DeRozan said.
He worked on his game and prospered from the Rio Olympic experience, where he won gold. Adding muscle has allowed him to increase his free throw attempts from 7.2 per game in 2014-15 to 9.6 this season.
“That bulk has helped him take hits and still complete plays,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said.