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How DeMar DeRozan became the Raptors' all-time leading scorer
The Raptors fell to the Warriors 121-111 on Wednesday night, but with 29 points, DeMar DeRozan passed Chris Bosh and became the franchise’s all-time leader in points. Milestones are a perfect time to reflect on a player’s career trajectory, and DeRozan’s place both in the franchise’s history and where he stands among the superstars of the league has always been the centre of many basketball debates.
This offseason, DeRozan signed a five-year, $139 million contract. Even after helping lead Toronto to its first Eastern Conference Finals appearance, DeRozan still received skepticism and a healthy dose of disrespect when he was ranked the 46th best player in the league by Sports Illustrated, behind players like Andre Iguodala, Serge Ibaka, Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard.
DeRozan responded to the player ranking on Twitter, but his play this season has spoken volumes about where he has ascended to in his eighth season with the Raptors. He started the year by scoring 30-plus points in 10 of the first 12 games, including two 40-point performances, and is on his way to a third career All-Star appearance. DeRozan is now one of the premier scorers in the league, and there are several reasons why he is now an all-time franchise leader.
Year-to-year offensive improvement
The hard-working, gym rat narrative can often feel tired, especially when it does not result in tangible results on a year-to-year basis. But in DeRozan’s case, his work ethic has translated to improvement on a yearly basis. In his rookie season, DeRozan averaged 8.6 points in 21.6 minutes. In his second year, those numbers shot up to 17.2 points in 34.8 minutes per game. DeRozan has continued to improve throughout his eight seasons in Toronto and has averaged over 20 points per game over the past four seasons including this year. When you go from a first-round pick with athletic skills but question marks about your overall offensive game to one of the most reliable individual scorers in the league, it’s hard to argue against the approach and even more difficult to diminish the hard work DeRozan has put in.
One of the best examples of this was detailed in a 2014 profile by Holly MacKenzie for NBA.com. DeRozan has always spent his offseason on conditioning, as well as enhancing elements of his game to help amplify his strengths and add new wrinkles to complete his offensive arsenal. In 2014, DeRozan worked with Hakeem Olajuwon on his low-post moves. To improve his ball-handling, he decided to focus on improving his dribble with the left hand, and went the extra mile by writing, eating and doing regular day-to-day tasks with his off hand, along with hiring a ball-handling specialist.
That’s just one example. You can imagine over the course of his NBA career that DeRozan has put in plenty of other hours during the offseason to take those incremental steps to improve his game.
Taking strengths to an elite level
The advanced statistics community has always pointed out that DeRozan’s reliance on the mid-range game was a detriment to the team and not a sustainable way toward success over a long period of time. DeRozan has done everything he can to fight back against that argument.
Asked earlier this month about the team’s league-leading offence and DeRozan’s contributions to that, Dwane Casey had the appropriate response. “I’ve always said that, there’s a million different ways to skin a cat,” Casey said. “It is a good example of sometimes analytics don’t tell the whole story. It gives you a hint but it doesn’t tell you the whole story. If you can explain to me how we can shoot the ball and score as well as Golden State, that would be a good essay for you.”
DeRozan grew up in Compton, California and admired Kobe Bryant from afar. “I’d watched him growing up. I watched Kobe do everything. His shot. His footwork. How he works in the post. Everything growing up was Kobe,” DeRozan told ESPN’s Brian Windhorst earlier this year. For his career, DeRozan is a 28.2 percent three-pointer shooter. He’s attempted over two threes a game in just one season. But where DeRozan is unable to stretch the floor with his perimeter shooting, he has compensated by turning the mid-range game into his own specialty.
This season, DeRozan is shooting 47.5 percent from the field, his higher field goal percentage since his rookie season. He’s getting to the line a career-high 8.6 times per game, and has hit on 83.7 percent of those attempts. DeRozan has made over 80 percent of his free throw attempts in every year since his rookie season. Where DeRozan’s game has been criticized for his efficiency, he has muted those arguments by being an efficient shooter from the field in spots he is comfortable in, while being one of the best at getting to the line.
“That’s my mindset,” DeRozan said in January of this year. “I know I could shoot threes whenever I want at will, or come down and shoot six, seven, eight, nine threes. But, for me, I feel like that’s a bailout. I feel like I’m settling or taking the easy way out instead of knowing I can get to the basket.”
Consistency & commitment to the franchise
When DeRozan was drafted by the Raptors ninth overall in 2009, Toronto was a team in transition, nearing the end of the Chris Bosh era before the superstar forward left to sign with Miami the following summer. In the years following, Toronto toiled in the bottom of the standings, rotating through roster players and coaches, while unsure if a core group of DeRozan, Andrea Bargnani and young players including Amir Johnson and Sonny Weems would round out a roster that could return to the playoffs.
As the team’s roster started to improve after general manager Masai Ujiri took over, DeRozan also matured into an All-Star player. While loyalty is often a card that is used to explain the actual concept of a player choosing to stay in a winning situation and one that benefits him the most financially, DeRozan has always embraced the Raptors and the city he plays in as his own, and through the down years, has come to appreciate what it means to be one of the top players on a perennial contender in Toronto.
“I am Toronto,” DeRozan famously stated at his press conference this summer after re-signing with the team. “Outside of where I’m from, I represent this city harder than anybody. I’ve got so many goals I want to accomplish still, I just can’t wait to put that jersey back on and keep going.”
The goal, of course, is to deliver a championship to Toronto. With LeBron James and the Cavaliers dominating the East, that might not be realistic at the moment, but at the age of 27, DeRozan has done everything else to keep his promise of representing the Raptors and the city of Toronto, and now, he also has the title of the franchise’s all-time points leader.
