Naija Boy wrote:With DeRozan there are certainties that benefit the team:
- He doesn't get injured
Bad timing on the heels of an injury-plagued season, though.
- He should have relatively good trade value
- He's about to entire his prime
Hmmm. To the first, I'm leery of assigning trade value to him at this point, especially right after the worst season he's had in recent memory, raw PPG average aside.
- He can put up 20ppg at close to league average efficiency, making him a volume scorer and not a chucker
Hmm. No, actually. As a below-average-efficiency volume shooter, he's definitely shooting way too much and this isn't really a selling point for him. He's actually blowing around 30% of our possessions with inefficient offense that only looks not as bad as it could because he's also quite good about not turning it over. DeRozan's typically below league average in both efficiency and ORTG, and very frequently a net negative on offense by OBPM as well.
His offense actually isn't a major selling point, leastwise not in most of his seasons. If he's able to return to 2014 form, then we have a reasonably different conversation though, I'll grant you that. That year, his playmaking was coupled with near-average efficiency to the point that he was a net positive for us on offense for reasons other than making Lowry not have to score 20 ppg.
- He plays well with Lowry, and makes the game easier for him
Yes, when both our healthy and clicking, our team looks quite a bit better than when one or the other (or both!) are banged up, for sure.
Now those things do not mean keep DeRozan at all costs. But it does mean keep DeRozan unless you're getting an upgrade. There's no point swapping him out for someone else just so the team can stay where it's at or potentially get worse.
Yeah, unless there's an upgrade on the horizon, the hope that he'll play like he did in the RS two years ago leaves it not a good move to just trade/release him for the sake of doing it.
we're (hopefully) not going to run iso after iso this year,
After that being all of what Casey has run for four years now, I'm not holding my breath. We're finally ZOMG talking about maybe trying to ICE pick and rolls and altering our overall defensive strategies, the notion of this attempt being revolutionary for Casey as we begin the year which marks his presence on our team for half a decade. This is not a man who changes much, nor quickly.
if DeRozan can get back to his 2013-14 form, it's likely he'll maintain high trade value even over the life of a 20M/annum deal. Meaning that if a trade becomes available for a superior talent he can be used as an enticing piece in a package, or if we tear it down we could secure several picks or prospects in exchange for him. I strongly suspect we'll see a lot of isos (as usual) and a lot of 1-4, 2-4 PnR.
Lacking Lou Williams, though, I suppose you could say we'll see a reduction in isos maybe (depending on where his shots go), but we'll likely also be poorer on offense for his absence in the regular season.
Going out and doing some 2 for 1 garbage bin nonsense with the 20M (like signing Courtney Lee and another role player) because we don't like DD would be idiotic.
Mmm. Courtney Lee would actually be a good addition. On his own, he wouldn't be sufficient to replace DeRozan, but don't forget you're talking about a 40% 3pt shooter on ~ 3PA/g. That has a lot of value to our type of offense. You find a second guy so you can split the offense between two players and that doesn't seem so unpalatable any longer. Had we kept Lou, it would have looked even better, IMO.
The thing about DeRozan is that we use him to take pressure from Lowry. Most people seem to believe he's our lead on offense, but he's very clearly just a guy soaking up possessions. Still, even with him generally doing a poor job of using those possessions, it allows us to leverage Lowry's wicked productivity on O at a reasonable usage rate, so we would need to find a way to totally replace DeRozan at an equivalent level in order to move him. Lee would be a start, but the second guy would have to be reasonably decent as well, and then we're still talking about maybe running in place or getting a little worse (because DD handled a lot of iso sets, and a spot-up shooter can be used only so often).
I wouldn't have minded if we replaced DeRozan with Lee and, say, Afflalo, and we committed to running a lot more half-court sets where we move our 2 guard around without the ball for catch-and-shoot while we see what's going on at the point, and I'd like us to let the dogs out and run a little more, too (just push and see, then pull it back if there's nothing instead of forcing it).
But yes, you're right: there's no need for a hasty move. The TYPES of players we could go after to replace DeRozan will be available all the way up until the deadline, so there's no rush to do that. And we still have to wonder if Casey would go out and use them properly or not.
