Remembering DeMar DeRozan’s first rodeo

By the numbers: DeRozan’s hot start to 2018-19

In basketball, players call it “fresh legs,” where they just have that extra pep and step at the beginning of the season. Jump shots, or anything for that matter, don’t require as much effort. Analytically, it sure looked to be the case too, as teams were running off offensive dominance at historic levels.

Likely fueled by both early-season freshness and the motivation that comes with playing for a new team, DeMar DeRozan opened 2018-19 with a focus unlike any other.

Over the first 10 games of the season, the two-time All-NBA selection had the following numbers: 26.4 points, 6.8 assists and 6.4 rebounds per game on a scorching 50.2 percent from the field and 90.2 percent from the free throw line (on an elite 6.1 attempts per game).

It’s easy to become desensitized to seeing these all-world caliber numbers. But for context: you plug on those basic counting stats and what do you notice? Only eight players in NBA history have ever done so over a full season.

Throw in the 50.2 percent parameter and it’s cut into just the absolute crème de la crème of the NBA’s history — Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Larry Bird and Oscar Robertson — which somewhat makes next season so intriguing, since DeRozan didn’t finish far off from those lines.

The underlying purpose of that is to show just that. You sort of wonder if DeRozan can copy-and-paste a bit of that into this upcoming season, and have it stabilize a bit longer.

What feels unrealistic is to expect him to consistently shoot as accurately as he did over that brief stretch. By season’s end, DeRozan shot 40.5 percent on 7.2 midrange attempts per game; during the 10-game opening stretch to the season, he was hitting at exactly 50.0 percent on 8.0 attempts. In other words, DeMar DeRozan was prime Kevin Durant for a couple of weeks.

What does feel sustainable in 2019-20 is seeing DeRozan get back to creating for teammates at a top-of-the-league rate. As Micah Adams of NBA.com’s Canada website brought out:

• DeRozan was creating 10.7 shots off his creation, which when put on side of star playmakers like Draymond Green (11.5) and Nikola Jokic (11.2) smells pretty elite in this nose. Without a de facto point guard, take the impressiveness and double it.
• Much was made by season’s end of DeRozan’s net rating — for a seventh consecutive season, his teams had a negative rating with him on the floor versus off — but at the season’s start, he was the difference between a No. 6 offense (say, Denver) and a No. 29 offense (Chicago, yikes).

Counting stats like points per game and field goal percentage have become subject to dismissal in this analytics era. The fact is, DeRozan’s aforementioned stat line from above had historically always guaranteed either a first- or second-place finish on media ballots.

The “clutch gene” also helped; the veteran guard was clutch in his debut against Minnesota, helped put away the new-look LeBron-led Lakers, decided that wasn’t enough, did it again and ended the week with more fourth-quarter fireworks against Dallas.

And yes, it’s true, he’d eventually slide a bit. By January, he was struggling to crack 40 percent shooting and the team responded with just a 91 offensive rating when he was on the floor. In understanding if DeMar DeRozan can rekindle that flame in 2019-20, it’s worth wondering what what went wrong and such a major offensive slide.