dougthonus wrote:League Circles wrote:Demar wasn't the best in either of the two previous years either, so not sure what you're saying.
That's a pretty wild statement to make, so I'll just say the league disagrees with you, given he was all-NBA two years ago, and was our only all-star last year.Demar now shoots well under league average efficiency, and I think it's WAY below average eFG%, so when he's not getting bailed out by the refs he's killing us, especially considering his defense. I definitely think Coby would do better with more of his shots, and Caruso with more of his minutes. Not sure how this is debatable. It's not written in stone that the guys who take the most shots need to be bad at it. Demar is currently good at creating his own miss. He's 11th on the team in eFG%, behind everyone including even Vuc.
DeMar is about equal to league average efficiency. eFG% is a completely worthless stat, so who cares. There are lots of better ways to measure efficiency, and he's about average this year, while taking the hardest shots. The last two years, he was well above that, in the same scenario. So agree that this year is bad, but I think the sample size is small enough and the history is good enough that I'm not necessarily throwing it out.The problem isn't that he's pounding the ball, not passing, turning it over, etc. The problem is that he is missing shots, possibly because he's crossed a threshold of aging decline. This is what guys look like right before they fall off a cliff performance wise.
Definitely this year, that's a problem, but those other things are problems too. No one else is making shots on this team. DeRozan, Coby, and Zach have all been around the same range in TS%(a much better measure of efficiency than eFG%) all season. DeMar is currently 3rd in that group, but those are the only three guys who can create a shot against defensive pressure, and DeMar faces the most defensive pressure of those guys so has the hardest job and at other points in the season he was #1 there. They've still all jockeyed back and forth on who is best there this year.
I don't think the sample size is so large for me to hammer DeMar too hard on the efficiency thing, but it's definitely a poor year for him, and at his age, you're absolutely right that he may have fallen off the cliff already or teetering over it about to fall off tomorrow. I agree that I don't want him back for the future on a big contract (thrilled to have him on a small deal where he comes off the bench if that's an option though but doubt it is).
We were talking about on/off. You said he was our best the past 2 years. He wasn't, and is very poor this year. TS% league average is currently 581 and Demar is 561. Yes, Coby is only 582, but is a much better defender than Demar now.
eFG% isn't worthless, and is important especially when the refs swallow the whistle (increasingly frequently especially late in games). Unlike TS%, at least eFG is an actual stat instead of an estimate. Who knows how close the one size fits all approach of TS% matches Demar's ACTUAL TS% (if that could be tracked anywhere). Also a LOT of Demar's unearned FTs, which heavily impact his TS%, are simply because he's holding (hogging) the ball when the opponent is in the penalty IMO.
The point remains, other than FTs (which are important but not QUITE as important as TS% suggests), Demar is the least efficient guy at getting buckets out of every rotation player we have other than I think Carter. Even the last two years Demar was barely above league average TS%.