How good is DeMar DeRozan?

bowiac

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Also, I'll never understand the hatred of DeMar DeRozan on this board. I get it's a saber metric community, but he's a top 20-30 player in the NBA. It doesn't really mean anything but the Raptors are 6-2 without Lowry, they are 3-4 without DeRozan. He's kinda like IT4 in that he has his warts and some advanced metrics don't like him very much. I'd take him on the Celtics in a heartbeat though.
The Raptors are consistently better with DeRozan off the court:



Raw plus/minus is super noisy (which is why we have adjusted plus/minus stats), but this has been true across many seasons now. You will not find this pattern with many top 20-30 players.

To compare, Thomas has never had a negative on/off.
 

Cesar Crespo

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The Raptors are consistently better with DeRozan off the court:



Raw plus/minus is super noisy (which is why we have adjusted plus/minus stats), but this has been true across many seasons now. You will not find this pattern with many top 20-30 players.
Aren't the Celtics better without IT4 and the Rockets better without Harden? Not on raw plus minus, but on the adjusted stats? I get it's what the numbers say, but it doesn't pass the sniff test.
 

bowiac

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Aren't the Celtics better without IT4 and the Rockets better without Harden? Not on raw plus minus, but on the adjusted stats?
Nope. Thomas has a +1.68 RPM, and here's his raw plus/minus:



Harden has a +5.46 RPM, and here's his raw plus/minus:



I get it's what the numbers say, but it doesn't pass the sniff test.
I would say it doesn't pass the sniff test that a guy whose team is consistently better without him (year after year) is a top player.

DeRozan is a volume shooter who plays bad/indifferent defense. Harden and Thomas are efficient volume shooters who play bad/indifferent defense. The efficiency is what makes them overcome their defensive shortcomings.
 
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Cesar Crespo

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DeRozan is very good but, speaking only for me, its tough to love high volume mid range shooters in today's NBA.
Yeah, and given this is SoSH and we tend to live and die by efficiency it makes sense. Bunts are statistically bad, so all bunting is bad. Mid range shooting is bad, so all mid range shooting is bad. It ignores DeRozan gets to the line 8 times a game and shoots at an 85% clip. Granted, with his skill set you'd think he could hit at least 30% of his 3s but no. I guess I get it, but DeRozan isn't exactly Rudy Gay even if he isn't Jimmy Butler.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Nope. Thomas has a +1.68 RPM, and here's his raw plus/minus:

I would say it doesn't pass the sniff test that a guy whose team is consistently better without him (year after year) is a top player.

DeRozan is a volume shooter who plays bad/indifferent defense. Harden and Thomas are efficient volume shooters who play bad/indifferent defense. The efficiency is what makes them overcome their defensive shortcomings.
Guess it depends on your definition of top player. Calling him an MVP candidate is comical but he's been the 1st or 2nd best player on a team that has won basically 50 games the last 4 seasons. I'd peg him in the 20-30 range. Granted if I actually look around the league and start naming players, he'd might slip down a bit but I'm not sure how much.
 

Kliq

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Well at least he isn't out because Pop didn't want to show his hand during the regular season.

DeRozan is really, really good. Fuck what the advanced metrics say; I watch the games.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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Well at least he isn't out because Pop didn't want to show his hand during the regular season.

DeRozan is really, really good. Fuck what the advanced metrics say; I watch the games.
I agree that DeRozan is very good even if his style isn't en vogue. There isn't a natural fit but the guy could help this current incarnation of the Celtics if he was willing to play in whatever rotation Stevens concocts for him.
 

bowiac

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DeRozan is really, really good. Fuck what the advanced metrics say; I watch the games.
His team is consistently better with him off the court. There's no advanced calculus here.

I'll take the guys whose teams do better when they're on the court. Your mileage may vary.
 

Kliq

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His team is consistently better with him off the court. There's no advanced calculus here.

I'll take the guys whose teams do better when they're on the court. Your mileage may vary.
Do you honestly think, if DeRozan were to blow out his ACL tonight; Toronto would be a better team?
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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His team is consistently better with him off the court. There's no advanced calculus here.

I'll take the guys whose teams do better when they're on the court. Your mileage may vary.
The thing I struggle with when it comes to APM or whatever version of plus minus you want to use is that we can see that DeMar DeRozan is a decent scorer in the NBA. The thing is that he is, generally, a poor defender. Simply put, his +/- being negative is not a surprise.

However what happens if you put him on a team with someone like a Smart, Leonard, Draymond Green and a real rim protector? As all of the caveats say about plus-minus, it tells you a players value with a current group but it doesn't tell you why they are good or bad or if another combination might accentuate or exacerbate a players flaws.

Again, I think DeRozan could be very good for a team that has a good or great defense up front and from at least another wing. On a team like the Raptors, who are a middle of the pack defensive team, not so much.
 

bowiac

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Do you honestly think, if DeRozan were to blow out his ACL tonight; Toronto would be a better team?
No, I didn't say that. Context is important, so DeRozan's -4.4 net rating this year doesn't mean he's a -4.4 true talent guy or anything. What I'm saying is that "really really good" players tend not to have consistently bad plus/minus ratings for multiple years, across multiple teammates. I don't know who your top ~30 players are, but I suspect none of the others will show the same pattern as DeRozan in that respect (I'd be interested if you could find one, using whatever definition you want of "really really good" you want).

I don't think he's a bad player, but it doesn't pass the smell test for me that he's "really really good" when his team has consistently been better when he's off the court.
 

bowiac

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The thing I struggle with when it comes to APM or whatever version of plus minus you want to use is that we can see that DeMar DeRozan is a decent scorer in the NBA. The thing is that he is, generally, a poor defender. Simply put, his +/- being negative is not a surprise.

However what happens if you put him on a team with someone like a Smart, Leonard, Draymond Green and a real rim protector? As all of the caveats say about plus-minus, it tells you a players value with a current group but it doesn't tell you why they are good or bad or if another combination might accentuate or exacerbate a players flaws.

Again, I think DeRozan could be very good for a team that has a good or great defense up front and from at least another wing. On a team like the Raptors, who are a middle of the pack defensive team, not so much.
I agree with all of this, but that's sort of my issue with heaping this praise on him. Guys who are "really really good" as I understand the term (top 20, top 30), should be very good in almost any context. What you're describing is a player who could be a big help in the right context. Which...sure, but that's true of like 100 guys in the NBA. Put them in a position to succeed, and lots of players will do just that.

I agree that DeRozan could be an important piece on a great defensive team that struggles with shot creation, but so could Lou Williams or Rudy Gay. That's fine, but the fact that you need to assemble such a strong defensive team around him is a handicap by itself. It's problematic if their defensive-minded teammates aren't on the court with them, and you need to expend resources to get those defenders in the first place. I don't generally think of Lou Williams or Rudy Gay as top 30 guys either.

Edit - To help make this more concrete, I put together a weighted average of RPM over 3 years. Zaza's ranking aside, there are no real laughers here that I see. The "good in any context" vs. "good in the right context" line seems to be around Andre Iguodala (#46) vs. Gorgui Dieng (#47). Again - people are free to disagree, but that's about where I draw the line on "really good".
 
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DannyDarwinism

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No, I didn't say that. Context is important, so DeRozan's -4.4 net rating this year doesn't mean he's a -4.4 true talent guy or anything. What I'm saying is that "really really good" players tend not to have consistently bad plus/minus ratings for multiple years, across multiple teammates. I don't know who your top ~30 players are, but I suspect none of the others will show the same pattern as DeRozan in that respect (I'd be interested if you could find one, using whatever definition you want of "really really good" you want).

I don't think he's a bad player, but it doesn't pass the smell test for me that he's "really really good" when his team has consistently been better when he's off the court.
Wow. I just took a look at the careers of guys who've been selected to an All-Star game in the past five years, and your suspicions are right, it's exceedingly rare. Melo, Noah, Rose, Deng, Drummond, Korver, David Lee, post-Big Three Rondo and Roy Hibbert, who apparently made an All Star team, are the only other guys who've had more than one non-rookie, non-over-the-hill season with a negative on/off. And most of those guys just had two or three in their careers. The vast majority of these guys have never had a negative season. Hibbert is the only other guy who even comes close to being negative for his career.

Interesting stuff. Derozan is a unicorn in at least this respect.

Also, looking through this stuff, this is another one of those stats where Lebron, Chris Paul and KG are just incredible outliers.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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Edit - To help make this more concrete, I put together a weighted average of RPM over 3 years. Zaza's ranking aside, there are no real laughers here that I see. The "good in any context" vs. "good in the right context" line seems to be around Andre Iguodala (#46) vs. Gorgui Dieng (#47). Again - people are free to disagree, but that's about where I draw the line on "really good".
Very interesting. Note that Robert Covington is +2.2 which ranks him ahead of LaMarcus Aldridge, Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton amongst others. It also puts him on par with Paul George, Klay Thompson, Kemba Walker and Jrue Holiday. I like Covington too but something doesn't look right to me. Also sad to see that Avery Bradley and one of my new favorite players, Jauncho Hernangomez (hoping due to small sample size), are negative.

Back to the topic at hand, your sheet has DeRozan at zero. Using this data, if DeMar DeRozan fell in an empty forest and no one was around, would anyone notice?
 

bowiac

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Back to the topic at hand, your sheet has DeRozan at zero. Using this data, if DeMar DeRozan fell in an empty forest and no one was around, would anyone notice?
Zero is average here (i.e., a team of all zeros would win 41 games), so that's not as bad as it looks.

I'm a Covington believer personally - I think he's basically as good as RPM thinks, but I'll acknowledge that the Sixers the last few years have been so wonky it wouldn't shock me if he fell off a lot if he went to another team.
 

Cellar-Door

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DeRozan is a far better defender and much worse three point shooter.
It was more a comp of medicore efficiency gunners who don't really make their team as much better as the BUT POINTS PER GAME!!! crowd thinks. Though in Rudy's defense, the former was not true through the same point in their careers. Rudy was a pretty mediocre defender, and DeRozan isn't a good defender at all. He's had a few okay years, but on the whole he's a defensive negative most of his career.

Rudy is an interesting comp, they went about it different ways (Rudy made more 3s, DeRozan gets to the line far more) but they put up TS% of about .530 over their first 8 seasons, with mediocre or below average D, on high usage. Overall Rudy was probably the better player through 8 years.
 

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Derozan was born 20 years too late. Had he come around in the 80s he would have stayed in college until jr year and been Bernard King light. He is very good player at getting midrange shots, but his skill set plays poorly today. He reminds of Bill James take on Lou Brock, he is the type of player the numbers hate, but he is the best of that type. The Raps PbP guys have hyped him as an all-star fro years so I have some antipathy towards him, but he is very good. He can convert like crazy on the break and seems agood teammate.

Where I give him respect is that he was thrown to the wolves as the face of the franchise way before he was ready and got his ass handed to him by Pierce, Lebron, etc night after night. A lesser man would never have been the player LDR is today.
 

HomeRunBaker

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I agree with all of this, but that's sort of my issue with heaping this praise on him. Guys who are "really really good" as I understand the term (top 20, top 30), should be very good in almost any context. What you're describing is a player who could be a big help in the right context. Which...sure, but that's true of like 100 guys in the NBA. Put them in a position to succeed, and lots of players will do just that.

I agree that DeRozan could be an important piece on a great defensive team that struggles with shot creation, but so could Lou Williams or Rudy Gay. That's fine, but the fact that you need to assemble such a strong defensive team around him is a handicap by itself. It's problematic if their defensive-minded teammates aren't on the court with them, and you need to expend resources to get those defenders in the first place. I don't generally think of Lou Williams or Rudy Gay as top 30 guys either.

Edit - To help make this more concrete, I put together a weighted average of RPM over 3 years. Zaza's ranking aside, there are no real laughers here that I see. The "good in any context" vs. "good in the right context" line seems to be around Andre Iguodala (#46) vs. Gorgui Dieng (#47). Again - people are free to disagree, but that's about where I draw the line on "really good".
I don't know what you consider a laugher but how about Jared Dudley ranking ahead of Karl-Anthony Towns? Lucas Nogueira even with Bradley Beal? DeRozan, Whiteside, and Batum behind dozens of marginal NBA rotation guys? I was a huge fan of us acquiring DeWayne Dedmon after he was released prior to the Spurs snatching him up.......but he has the same ranking as Kyrie Irving for petes sake. Jae Crowder over Paul George? How about the trio tied at 3.0? Blake Griffin, Giannis......and Amir Johnson!

I agree that the top 20-30 are going to rank high in any model however like PER, poorly grades bigs on limited minutes such as Zaza, Amir.......Chuck Hayes was the poster boy for this flaw years ago. Something isn't right when a ranking has so many second unit players ahead of higher usage players who are true difference makers in the actual games.
 

bowiac

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I'll take these point by point:

1) Dudley vs. Towns. This is a function of Towns not being in the league for all three years. I gave him (and other guys without 3 years of data) a zero for missing years. Just looking at this year, Towns is far ahead of Dudley.

2) Nogueira vs. Beal. This is a per possession ranking, not a measure of overall value. I don't see an issue with having them about on par per possession - Beal just plays a lot more minutes, so he has a lot more value. Nogueira has been pretty good while on the court as a high-energy defender however. Beal gets a bit screwed here by using a 3-year average, since he gets dragged down by the last two years.

3) DeRozan. The whole point here is that I don't think DeRozan is especially good, and that the Raptors have consistently been better when he's off the court. I think DeRozan's ranking as an average player is about right.

4) Whiteside. I don't see a big issue with Whiteside's ranking either. There's more to defense than spectacular blocks. He's a problem on offense meanwhile too, as he never passes, provides little spacing, and is a poor free throw shooter. He's a fun fantasy player, but his real life impact is much more questionable.

5) Batum. How good do you think Batum is exactly? A 0.8 RPM means he's about the quality of an average player on a 45-48 win team. That seems...fine?

6) Dedmon vs. Kyrie. This is sort of the Nogueira vs. Beal situation again. It's a per possession rating, not a value/MVP type ranking. Also, I know a lot of people ignore point guard defense, but I don't think that's correct. Kyrie is a bad defender, and has been his while career. If you don't think defense matters, your mileage may vary.

7) Jae Crowder vs. Paul George. Jae Crowder is a better player than Paul George. George isn't the same guy you remember who took LeBron to the wire in the conference finals.

8) Amir Johnson. Amir the anti-DeRozan. Teams are consistently better with him on the court, over a long career, across many different teams, teammates, roles, and team qualities. He's a very underrated player, although again, in low minutes. Giannis has a Beal issue in that the 3-year average is dragging down his breakout season. Blake's problems are well-documented meanwhile.

The overall theme here I see is that RPM puts more value on defense than you seem to, that these rankings are per possession, rather than overall value, and that it doesn't credit breakouts from young players enough (Towns, Beal, Giannis). I'm sympathetic to the last point - this was a quick and dirty average I threw together. The rest seems fine to me to be honest.

Insofar as we're evaluating DeRozan here, he's obviously more valuable than 132nd, since he plays a lot of minutes, but I don't see an issue with the per possession ranking really. He's a bad defender, and not as efficient as other high-usage poor defensive guys like Thomas.
 

bowiac

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Do you honestly believe Jae Crowder is better than Paul George?
I do, yes. There are some contexts where I'd rather have George (if my team had nobody who could create their own shot), but overall, I prefer Crowder these days. As I said, this is mostly a function of the fact that I don't think George has been the same guy since coming back from injury. I had a strong preference for Butler over George at the trade deadline for the same reason. I just don't think George is that kind of impact guy anymore.
 

mauf

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Saying he isn't as good as Crowder is too much, imo, but I'm glad someone else thinks George is a shadow of his former self. I feel as though we've been robbed; George could've been a transcendent player.
 

bowiac

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Saying he isn't as good as Crowder is too much, imo, but I'm glad someone else thinks George is a shadow of his former self. I feel as though we've been robbed; George could've been a transcendent player.
Agreed. Those conference finals in 2013, and 2014 were some of the most enjoyable basketball I can remember watching. Paul George wasn't LeBron, but he was the next best thing. It sucks that we lost that, but I don't see the same guy anymore.

I'm a big Crowder fan too, but my point was really about George these days.
 

HomeRunBaker

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And he's -25 right now ;)
That's awesome LOL!

The thing about Toronto is that their second units have dramatically outplayed opponents second units the past two seasons in large part due to Lowry playing many of those second unit minutes as Casey has staggered the substitution patterns to keep one of Lowry and DeRozan on the floor to maintain at least one shot creator. RPM is penalizing DeRozan and Valenciunas for the Raptors having a very effective 2nd unit while crediting Patterson, Nogueira, and Ross for production against other 2nd units while having Lowry out there with them. Simply looking at +/- numbers to judge production isn't digging deep to see what is actually occurring in these games. DeRozan may be second only to LeBron in players we don't want to face in the 4th quarter of a game......to say he's average while using an incomplete metric isn't an accurate depiction of his performance or impact.
 

bowiac

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The thing about Toronto is that their second units have dramatically outplayed opponents second units the past two seasons in large part due to Lowry playing many of those second unit minutes as Casey has staggered the substitution patterns to keep one of Lowry and DeRozan on the floor to maintain at least one shot creator. RPM is penalizing DeRozan and Valenciunas for the Raptors having a very effective 2nd unit while crediting Patterson, Nogueira, and Ross for production against other 2nd units while having Lowry out there with them.
And what happens when Casey plays DeRozan, but not Lowry? The Raptors get outscored by 3.3 points/100 possessions. What about the reverse, when Lowry is on the court with the second unit, but DeRozan is sitting? The Raptors outscore their opponents by 10.4 points/100 possessions. The impact is dramatic. Further, the Lowry/DeRozan combo (+5.5 per 100) is worse than just Lowry by himself (+10.4).

Further, both Lowry and DeRozan play those second unit minutes. The reason RPM is penalizing DeRozan is because the team does better when he's on the bench. RPM also adjusts for the quality of the opposing second units, so it's not like DeRozan is just getting bad draws there. I agree simple +/- isn't ideal, but that's not what RPM is. Further, as I noted, even with simple +/-, this isn't a single year thing. It's been going on his whole career. That's both with and without Lowry on the team, across a bunch of different teammates, a bunch of different team qualities, and a bunch of different roles. The one consistent pattern is how little positive impact DeRozan has on the Raptors on-court results.

Casey's usage pattern is pretty common (staggering guys somewhat). There's nothing especially unusual in what you've described here. What other top players have the same pattern with respect to their plus/minus? Is DeRozan just the unluckiest guy in the NBA?

The eye test isn't very convincing for me here either. I see a bad defender who takes a bunch of bad shots for no reason, interspersed with going to the rim a bunch. This isn't a case when RPM and the eye test are at odds for me.