DeMar Breaks Through the 25,000 Points Milestone

[Madvillainy2004]

25,000 empty calories.

Honestly a shame he never really altered his game to be more "winning", or opted to be a bench gunner on a true contender. Just content to score 20-25 a night and not win. What a career

He's had a pretty successful career all things considered. I'm not gonna defend his like playstyle cause it clearly had its ceiling. But 25k points 6 time all star, all-nba, gold medal, made a ton of money and is still playing at a solid level even with most of his draft class arent in the league anymore. That's a career 99.8% of pro basketball players would love to have.

[Madvillainy2004]

I’ve maintained that he’s essentially a lock for the HOF, but it’s going to be controversial when it comes around.

Going into the HOF “as a Raptor” (I know that’s not a thing) will also give the jersey retirement talk a push over the finish line.

Hell of a career, and it’s going be fun to see just how high he can get on that all-time scoring list. It would also be cool to see his type of career recognized.

But what would Drake say.

Drake can miss that game like he does for 95% of our other games lmao

[Tacoma]

25,000 empty calories.

Honestly a shame he never really altered his game to be more "winning", or opted to be a bench gunner on a true contender. Just content to score 20-25 a night and not win. What a career

He's had a pretty successful career all things considered. I'm not gonna defend his like playstyle cause it clearly had its ceiling. But 25k points 6 time all star, all-nba, gold medal, made a ton of money and is still playing at a solid level even with most of his draft class arent in the league anymore. That's a career 99.8% of pro basketball players would love to have.

Agreed. I don't get the "empty calories" dig at DD. He was #1 option during Raptors best stretch of seasons in which he led us in scoring to three 50+ win seasons. We are wishing for those types of seasons now. His Achilles heel has been playoffs but he at least reached ECF. And he loved playing here, loves our city AND is a HOF candidate.

So if he's empty calories then what is Brandon Ingram? In his 9-year career, he's led his team to ZERO 50-win seasons. Playoffs? He has to reach it first but he's only made the playoffs twice in his career, never past 1st round. So if DD was "content to score 20-25 a night and not win," why did we trade for Ingram who's an even more empty calories guy, and often injured?

[tsherkin]

Agreed. I don't get the "empty calories" dig at DD. He was #1 option during Raptors best stretch of seasons in which he led us in scoring to three 50+ win seasons.

He filled possessions. Lowry was driving our offense more than DeRozan overall, though obviously his low turnover rate was helpful to us in terms of ORTG, as was his ability to get to the foul line. He was a decent player for us, to be sure.

So if he's empty calories then what is Brandon Ingram? In his 9-year career, he's led his team to ZERO 50-win seasons.

That's a team-level achievement, so it isn't really relevant. That said, Ingram isn't in a different tier than DeRozan. He's a better shooter, better ball-handler and playmaker, but he's similar in terms of overall value as a scorer. And his health is an issue. Similar in overall offensive impact. And Old DeRozan is aging better (at least for RS purposes) than Ingram has thus far, which is also a credit to Demar and his incremental improvement and work ethic, for sure.

Playoffs? He has to reach it first but he's only made the playoffs twice in his career, never past 1st round. So if DD was "content to score 20-25 a night and not win," why did we trade for Ingram who's an even more empty calories guy, and often injured?

I imagine because the team wants to start winning more games immediately so it looks like they're making forward progress and we can get back to the 8th-seed treadmill, then hope to improve from there. He's a step forward compared to what we had, and the deal offered was pretty decent.

I think "empty calories" is probably a little much with Demar. He wasn't a title-level #1, but he did some things pretty well. He certainly folded like a cheap suit in the playoffs due to his style of play and he was a terrible defender, but in terms of possession control, he did a good job. And he shouldered the primary scoring load for us at a decent level for a team at the level Toronto played at during that stretch.

[yellowknifer]

If he does follow through what he said about finishing his career with the Raptors, I wonder if we get his last year and he cracks top 10 scoring all time in a Raps jersey. That would be cool.

Also, lf he makes the hall-of-fame (high chance he does) i'm fairly positive he'll want to enter as a Raptor.

Good for Demar, not every player can lead teams to championships but it's an incredible feat to play at a high level for as long as he has, the counting stats don't lie.

Also went from a raw as hell athlete and turned himself into one of the best midrange scorers ever. Love Demar.

[tsherkin]

Also went from a raw as hell athlete and turned himself into one of the best midrange scorers ever.

That isn't accurate. He's been prolific, but there is a fairly large library of superior mid-range scorers compared to Demar. He is pretty decent in the RS, but that isn't quite the same thing. Still, he's been healthy enough and worked hard enough that he's been given the chance to shoot a whole bunch, and now he's racked up counting stats. He's further along the career points list than Larry Bird, but no one sane would argue that he's better than Larry Legend, after all, yes? Same same Bernard King, Mark Aguirre, Mitch Richmond, Chris Mullin, he certainly wasn't a better scorer (let alone mid-range scorer specifically) than someone like Magic Johnson. I could go on. All of those guys never racked up the raw total points Demar has, but were considerably superior scorers.

He's a nice dude, he worked hard, said nice things about our city, but he really wasn't a startling scorer compared to his peers across NBA history. He did improve over time, though we saw more of that after he left us than while he was here, when his incremental development started to bear better fruit in the RS.

[TheGeneral99]

Also went from a raw as hell athlete and turned himself into one of the best midrange scorers ever.

That isn't accurate. He's been prolific, but there is a fairly large library of superior mid-range scorers compared to Demar. He is pretty decent in the RS, but that isn't quite the same thing. Still, he's been healthy enough and worked hard enough that he's been given the chance to shoot a whole bunch, and now he's racked up counting stats. He's further along the career points list than Larry Bird, but no one sane would argue that he's better than Larry Legend, after all, yes? Same same Bernard King, Mark Aguirre, Mitch Richmond, Chris Mullin, he certainly wasn't a better scorer (let alone mid-range scorer specifically) than someone like Magic Johnson. I could go on. All of those guys never racked up the raw total points Demar has, but were considerably superior scorers.

He's a nice dude, he worked hard, said nice things about our city, but he really wasn't a startling scorer compared to his peers across NBA history. He did improve over time, though we saw more of that after he left us than while he was here, when his incremental development started to bear better fruit in the RS.

I think the end is the key here.

I've been really surprised how much Demar has continued to improve since leaving Toronto and after the age of 30...he's become a very good facilitator and much more efficient. Dude routinely shoots over 50% from the field nearly every season since 2019 whereas he hovered as a 45-46%fg shooter with us.

It would have been interesting to see Demar circa 2022 on the Bulls (probably his best overall season) on our squads in 2016, 2017 and 2018, because he was a much more dynamic and efficient player.

[PushDaRock]

DeMar's playoff performance is pretty hard to overlook when we are gauging his impact on winning. He's a career 55.6 TS% in the regular season and 50.2 TS% in the playoffs. That's just a massive drop off.

Regular season he's about neutral slightly negative in terms of on court and on/off numbers but in the playoffs he's a career -8.4 in on court per 100 and -11.0 in on/off per 100. He's never had a playoff run where he was in the positive in either stat.

He's one of the worst playoff performers of all-time.

[tsherkin]

I think the end is the key here.

I've been really surprised how much Demar has continued to improve since leaving Toronto and after the age of 30...he's become a very good facilitator and much more efficient. Dude routinely shoots over 50% from the field nearly every season since 2019 whereas he hovered as a 45-46%fg shooter with us.

He's definitely been an atypical model, slowly (VERY slowly) making tiny improvements which have built up over the years. He had a little 3-year run, 2 with the Spurs and 1 with Chicago, where he made some strides in terms of his RS efficiency. He's backslid since. He was always pretty decent at the line, but he's made notable strides shooting FTs in the past half decade or so, which has worked very nicely with his continued ability to draw fouls.

Like, from an effort perspective, he's about the best you can expect from a player. He never stops working on his game. He's hit his ceiling, though, and he can't really keep up with the contemporary offensive environment. He was never a stunner at getting to the rim, but he's withered even compared to that, isn't a quality 3pt shooter and mid-range offense is only so useful without those things. We've always known that, which is why coaches forever have preached the mantra of getting to the basket and initiating contact, long before the past decade. And Demar's problem is that he doesn't get all the way. He's very good in those spaces, but he doesn't do enough of the efficient stuff to keep himself any kind of consistent, especially against higher-end defenses.

It would have been interesting to see Demar circa 2022 in Bulls on our squads in 2016, 2017 and 2018, because he was a much more dynamic and efficient player.

20-22 Demar was very interesting in the RS, yes. Still wasn't any good in the playoffs though, and for basically the same reasons. Wouldn't have made a lot of difference to our outcomes in those seasons.

[Mr_NC]

Ethical 25k

DeKobe!!!!!!! Footwork that would make Kobe proud

Happy for the guy, one day he’ll be back here with Big Booty Lowry and it’ll be great