Derozan showing glimmers
Raptors hope swingman can sustain late spurt
More than anything else, third-year guard Demar Derozan’s season this year has been stunningly unoriginal.
Last year, the Raptors shooting guard started off slowly, making you wonder if he had any future with the team. He turned his season around with a post-all-star break push, hoping that his third season in the NBA would be the one in which he blossomed.
This year, the same has happened — except replace the word “third” with “fourth.” Before Tuesday night’s 92-87 win over the league-worst Charlotte Bobcats, Derozan had significantly inflated his scoring average and free-throw rate (the two are related) in the second half. He finished the game with 20 points, doing little else, a too-common occurrence with Derozan. He did assist on a late-game basket from Andrea Bargnani, who had a team-high
30 points. Bargnani scored the Raptors’ last three baskets.
For Derozan, a disappointing start has given way to more hope that the athletic swingman can eventually become a key player for a good team in Toronto.
Yo u have to wonder, though: Is he a better player now than he was at this time last year?
“Last year, he was doing a lot of things, but he was giving a lot of it back on the defensive end,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said, supporting his player. “I think he’s giving us a lot more on the defensive end than he did last year, which in turn took him a while to get used to doing both.”
The numbers back that up. Opposing shooting guards and small forwards are producing at a below-average pace when he covers them, based on player efficiency rating. A big, old mitigating factor: Derozan is producing at a lower rate than the people he covers. His Player Efficiency Rating this season is lower (slightly so, but still) than it was in his rookie season.
And yet, the Raptors maintain hope. A lot of that has to do with his age, 22. Some of that is based on his output — Derozan has averaged 6.2 free-throw attempts per game in the second half of the season, an asset the team is devoid of elsewhere. But part of it is just pure, unsubstantiated hope.
“He has to get stronger, bigger because every night he’s giving up 10 or 15 pounds, sometimes 20 pounds to the guy
that’s guarding him,” Casey said. “Once he does that, his game will elevate to the next level.”
You can see how that might affect him on the glass. He is too slender to battle in the paint for a loose ball. He averages just 3.5 rebounds per game, and his rebounding rate is 46th in the league among shooting guards. That should not be, given his athletic acumen.
Beyond that it is difficult to see where Derozan has made a leap, and how added bulk will help. His weaknesses heading into the season — creating offence for teammates, ball handling and long-range shooting — remain his weaknesses at the end of the season. Casey said added physical strength might help the latter point, but the others relate almost exclusively to skill and quickness. To that end, he will have some guidance from the coaching staff this summer, something that surely hurt him over the course of the lockout.
Casey still thinks Derozan can be one of the team’s dynamic crunch-time scorers in years to come: “That’s who we want it to be. That’s who we want to be that guy.”
And for Derozan’s part, he wants to be in Toronto.
“Things will definitely be fun because it’s a chance to give the city something that they want and something that I want — that’s making the playoffs,” Derozan said when asked about the possibility of being part of an exciting, young team. “We’re definitely going to make a run next year.”
Despite the possible presence of two intriguing young shooting guards in the draft — Florida’s Brad Beal and Connecticut’s Jeremy Lamb — Derozan figures to be a part of that team, one that tries to turn promise into substance.
But usually by your third or fourth year, you are who you are as an NBA player. The Raptors will have to hope that Derozan’s spurt indicates an incline this time around, instead of a plateau.