DeMar De4zan
Point DeMar And Early Season Surprises
Last year, the San Antonio Spurs entered the NBA bubble without Trey Lyles and LaMarcus Aldridge, their starting four and five for most of the season, due to injuries. This gave the Spurs little choice but to go small and play DeMar DeRozan at the four. The Spurs went 5-3 in the seeding games and were a Shake Milton game winner away from getting half as much attention as the Phoenix Suns did during the restart. This year, the Spurs are leaning all the way in on small ball by playing DeRozan in the front court more than ever before.
The chart below shows the estimated percentage of time DeRozan has spent at each position since entering the league in 2010. After dipping his toes in the front court last season for 29 percent of his minutes, DeRozan is playing a whopping 70 percent of his minutes at the Power Forward position this year.
Sliding up the positional scale has made it, quite frankly, fun as hell to watch DeRozan this year. Without a traditional four on the floor, DeRozan’s has been given carte blanche to operate in spaces that used to be clogged by a non-shooter. This new found room to work with has supercharged DeRozan’s offensive game and has led to stuff like this on a nightly basis:
It’s notable that DeRozan is taking (and making) the occasional 3, but the real gains he’s made on offense are in the playmaking front where he’s averaging a career high 7.1 assists a game, good enough for ninth in the league. Equally impressive is that DeRozan is averaging the fewest turnovers since his rookie year when he barely had the ball. The chart below plots the progression of DeRozan’s assist and turnover rate since 2010.
Add in the fact that DeRozan’s 58 percent True Shooting is above league average and its easy to see why he’s on track to have his most well-rounded offensive season at the age of 31. Recently, FiveThirtyEight updated their RAPTOR ratings for the first time this year and DeRozan graded out as one the league’s most impactful offensive players. While the season is early and RAPTOR ratings take some time stabilize, none of what DeRozan is doing on offense seems unsustainable. If anything, I’d expect DeRozan to improve as the season goes on given his shooting percentage at the rim is about 20 percentage points below his average in San Antonio. A drop-off that severe either indicates his athleticism has nosedived (doubtful) or he’s due for some positive regression. I suspect it’s the latter.
If there’s a fly in the ointment, it’s that the Spurs are able to hide DeRozan on defense about as well as DeRozan is able to hide his fivehead — which is to say, not very well. With DeRozan in the game, the Spurs defense is hemorrhaging 114.5 points per 100 possessions, per pbpstats.com. That number drops to an unbelievable 99.8 points per 100 possessions when DeRozan sits. That’s the difference between a bottom five defense and the league’s best by a country mile — the Lakers, the number one rated defense, allow just 105 points per 100 possession.
I’d be inclined to chalk this up to early season small sample sizes or the strength of a competent Spurs bench led by Patty Mills and Jakob Poeltl, but this is the 6th consecutive year in which DeRozan’s team has given up more points with him on the court than with him off. At some point, you are who you are.
Last week, I looked at how hard Jerami Grant was having to work on defensive by examining the weighted average usage rate of the players he most frequently matches up with. I repeated this exercise, this time looking at non-bigs with at least 250 minutes played. It turns out that DeRozan has arguably the lightest defensive workload in the NBA, which makes sense given he’s most frequently guarded guys like PJ Tucker, OG Anunoby, and Nicolas Batum — basically dudes who stand in the corner on offense. Here’s the 5 non-bigs with the heaviest and lightest defensive workloads so far this season.
The cynical side of me wonders if DeRozan, who is in a contract year, assumes that the amount he’s going to get paid in free agency is largely dependent on well he plays on offense so he’s slouching on defense. Like Jabari Parker once said, players don’t get paid to play defense. Well, unless you’re Luguentz Dort
To be fair to DeRozan, his defense might not be as bad as his on/off numbers suggest. Opponents are shooting 41 percent on threes with DeRozan on the court, a number that DeRozan has little control over and will likely come down as the season goes on. And even if he is this bad on defense, it’s unclear how much it matters. The Spurs are 8-6 with a top ten defense and have quality wins over both L.A. teams.
Either way, I’d like to see Gregg Popovich take one more Spurs team on a deep playoff run before he retires. And if DeRozan can be the offensive catalyst for that run it would go a long way to helping re-write his narrative.
Surprise, Surprise
The table below shows every team’s preseason over/under win total and how close they are to hitting the over (Over %). I think it’s a useful starting point in identifying which teams are over- or underperforming relative to expectations coming into the season.
The top of the table mostly consists of teams that were expected to be bad and have been no less than competitive. If the season ended today, both the New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavilers would be in the playoffs. Even fans with the loftiest expectations for those teams have to be pleasantly surprised. Also, I think it’s fair to say that no one expected the Oklahoma City Thunder (O/U 22.5) to have just as many wins as the Dallas Mavericks (O/U 42.5) at this point.
Meanwhile, the bottom of the table consists of teams that are well on their way to hitting the panic button. I’m not yet ready to abandon my “Wizards are going to be good” take, but I’m getting strong 2004 Orlando Magic vibes from this team with Bradley Beal starring in the Tracy McGrady role. I think they’re probably better than their record suggests, but I don’t have much evidence to point to. The only thing they have going in their favor right now is that they’ve yet to lose a game by more than ten points and Beal is playing at an All-NBA level. Given how bunched up the standings are in the Eastern Conference, the Wizards can take solace in the fact that they’re only a short win streak away from being right back in the mix.