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  • DanH wrote: View Post
    I skipped over this before but this is a point I want to address. This is not directly a counter to you or your point, more using it as a springboard.

    I have a theory about NBA team success. You need two things - you need high production players - ultimately you need players who can score points in heavy doses, who can grab lots of rebounds, etc. Need to fill the stat sheet somehow, and the reality of the game is that every play run has a primary option, and a seconday, and so on, in terms of who scores and where and how. So naturally there will unavoidably be a need for players who can score as primary options on plays - if you don't have that, you can't force the defence to STOP those primary options and you can't generate secondary and tertiary scoring.

    Production is important. DD is a pretty effective volume producer (certainly this year he was). Valanciunas is an elite production guy. Lowry is OK, though we see he can't carry heavy volume (he completely fell apart last season when DD was hurt and he transitioned into a volume role he's not suited to).

    But production is only half the equation. The development of NBA stats tells the story here - we've always tracked production very well, and we have loads of advanced stats (WS, PER, WP, individual ORTG and DRTG) built off of production. But the new age of NBA stats is impact. In other words, regardless of the individual production, can players impact the game, impact how their teammates play, impact how hard it is for the opposition to score? This yielded the rise of on-off court splits, adjusted plus minus and other stats like RPM that attempt to capture that.

    It's a little more difficult to turn into a hard number, but it's crucial just the same. Lowry is insanely impactful, top 10 in the league by some measures. Patterson is a prime example. CoJo too. Guys that help you win, but don't produce enough (Lowry is borderline) to be enough on their own.

    True superstars do both. They produce huge portions of their teams' offences, and also bend the game as a whole to their will just by being on the floor. But those players are rare. Like, 5-10 in the league at once, max. Usually not even that many. And if you don't have one, the odds of making the finals, let alone winning a championship, are long as hell.

    Now, my point is, teams need both of these things. You need production and you need high impact guys. And when you have a superstar, it is really easy to fill in the blanks on those. You can get guys that balance mediocre contributions in both categories because you've got elite contribution from one guy in both already. And have a few specialist types that provide one or the other.

    But if you don't have one of those guys (and you usually don't), it's not so easy. You need to have some top level production guys just to manage enough scoring to be in games. And you obviously need those impact guys who don't necessarily provide that production if you hope to have any real success. So if you are stuck with no production-and-impact superstar (and as great as Lowry is, by this definition of superstar he falls short), you have to patch together guys who can fill those holes.

    You need high production guys, but the league is littered with high production, negative impact players. High volume shooting, low efficiency, me-first players. Not good. So you have to hunt out the rare (though not as rare as a superstar, not by a long shot) high production, neutral impact player. DeRozan is the poster boy for this - he'd fall well short last season but in this one he was pretty ideal in this sense. Scores with volume and decent efficiency, moves the ball to allow for secondary scoring, contributes with other boxscore production like rebounding, and doesn't completely tank your defence.

    Valanciunas is another example, actually. He provides tremendous efficiency scoring, great rebounding production, and his defensive improvements have made him a slightly positive impact player (almost exactly break-even in RPM this season, just like DeMar). This is a very valuable player - elite production is valuable even if impact stats suggest he's not a game changing player (yet, says the optimist in me - his impact stats were quite poor a couple years ago so he's trending in a very nice direction).

    Lowry can produce, but he's best suited to a role where he doesn't have to and can play off the rhythm of the game and pick his spots, and pour his energy into being the all-around impact player he can be. He's the closest thing the Raptors have to a superstar, because when he is going through a hot streak and is producing high efficiency high volume scoring on top of his usual impact shenanigans, the Raptors can look unbeatable. But he's never been able to provide that volume production with consistency. And that's fine, he's come far beyond what he was ever supposed to as an impact player, and to expect him to be a star scorer is simply not a realistic expectation long term.

    In any case, what I'm trying to say here is to support players like Lowry, who can't carry a primary offensive role, and players like Patterson and CoJo, who can't really even carry a secondary offensive role, but all of whom nonetheless provide immense value to a team via their ability to impact a game in ways other than raw production, you have to find that production from other sources. And those sources are not going to be high impact guys too - or else they would be a superstar, and you aren't worrying about this in the first place.

    Therein lies the path to success for any team that doesn't luck into a top 5 talent. Finding ways to get top level point production from parts of the roster, to allow for team impact guys to help you win from other parts of the roster, without one group completely tanking the other (Biyombo's an example of a positive impact guy who is almost bad enough production wise to cancel that out, if not for his rebounding keeping him afloat). And of course, having all of those pieces fit together, in roles they belong in, and playing in a system that emphasizes their strengths and hides their weaknesses.

    All of this to say that although DeMar does not really display much in way of value when you look at his impact on team performance (and neither, really, does JV just yet), that does not disqualify him from being a valuable player. Nor from being worth bringing back, even on a max (or max-ish) deal. Max deals have never been just for superstars, not for as long as they've existed. Heck, they only exist to force superstars to make less money than they otherwise would.

    So, yes, it would be nice if DeMar were a significantly positive impact guy. But if he were, he'd be a real superstar and we'd be one of the few lucky teams in the league to have a guy like that. As it is, we are one of the few teams in the league lucky enough to have a guy like Lowry (though obviously not as lucky as CLE, GSW, OKC or SAS, for example). And being able to surround him with high production guys while not having to take a big negative impact hit to do so is key to this team's success. And is really the only path to more success outside of lucking into one of those top guys somehow. Sure you look to add as many high-impact guys as possible with as much producing ability as possible (Millsap, for example, would be another Lowry-type addition who would really help the team) but you still need guys who can provide that primary offensive production.

    And hey, if JV ends up one of those insanely good production-and-impact guys, or we get one some other way, then sure, DD's high production skill set might become redundant. But the good news is, that means there are 25 or so teams that need to build with the patchwork method we are currently stuck with, who would find a guy like DeRozan quite valuable. That certainly requires DeRozan to keep up his improved production from this season, but there's no real reason to assume he won't - it was largely an effect of his improved decision making and better plays run for him compared to the prior couple of seasons, and he's just entering his prime, not leaving it.
    Insanely good post DanH. Thank you.

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    • Gambino wrote: View Post
      Ok between this and your comment that DeMar isn't worth even $1. I'm just going to assume you're a troll from this point forwards. The avatar doesn't help either.
      This made me facepalm

      I was showing the difference. One of those statements is correct correlation and the other incorrect causation

      Was attempting to prove a point about a post where someone was saying DD was the reason we made it to the ECF....which is an incorrect causation

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      • As for my avatar...if Casey and DD are back it will be the most relevent avatar on this message board.

        Wont be proven for 6-7 months tho and we're an impatient bunch

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        • Miekenstien wrote: View Post
          ridiculous
          Luis did star off the season very well and frankly just flopped so hard it was very hard to remember his strong start

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          • rightsideup wrote: View Post
            Luis did star off the season very well and frankly just flopped so hard it was very hard to remember his strong start
            yes. what is ridiculous is saying that scola was as important as demar because he was also a starter on a 56 win team. we were mostly just amazed that scola was able to hit 3s and somewhat stretch the floor. i am guessing if we look at defensive stats and overall impact he was probably not so hot early as well.

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            • Miekenstien wrote: View Post
              yes. what is ridiculous is saying that scola was as important as demar because he was also a starter on a 56 win team. we were mostly just amazed that scola was able to hit 3s and somewhat stretch the floor. i am guessing if we look at defensive stats and overall impact he was probably not so hot early as well.
              We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen.
              twitter.com/dhackett1565

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              • DanH wrote: View Post
                And I guess I missed over the point you started with - my thought on that was just that when you are patching together your production guys and your impact guys, it is always going to be harder to make everything fit than if you have a superstar to build around. So it is no surprise that since the Raptors managed to find a high volume producer that he would come with some limitations. Heck, JV certainly has limitations in much the same way - just look at how his usefulness was almost completely sabotaged by pairing him with Scola all year. Sure, Scola was bad, but much worse was his fit beside Jonas.
                Chose to quote this so it doesn't take up half a page, but also talking about the long post just before

                Thanks for outlining your thought process, it makes a lot of sense. I guess my question or concern with DeMar or any production player for that matter is how they play in the playoffs. This to me should determine how well they get paid in free agency, because there are a lot of players that can get a lot of points when given the opportunity, and be good enough to lead a team to the playoffs. Its seems that their limitations kind of determine how well they do in the playoffs, as opponents can gameplan better and make producing more difficult, especially for a unique player with obvious limitations such as DD. He largely hasn't produced at a decent efficiency for the last two playoffs, making it hard for me to see him as a high level production player. Great regular season production, not so much in the playoffs, to me at least. Please tell me how im wrong because i would love to be talked into signing DD for a near max.

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                • I think it comes down to the pistons model. If you don't have a top 5-10 player or multitude of, then you can get stuck in a development rut. Like the raptors have mostly been, draft, sign for first extension because player knows he can't leave and then lose said player, start again. Creating a circle of ineptitude. But if you are able to build your team around, even marginally productive/positive players at all positions then you give yourself a chance to compete. Need to get yourself to the show and then see what happens.

                  Sent from my HUAWEI TAG-TL00 using Tapatalk

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                  • DogeLover1234 wrote: View Post
                    Chose to quote this so it doesn't take up half a page, but also talking about the long post just before

                    Thanks for outlining your thought process, it makes a lot of sense. I guess my question or concern with DeMar or any production player for that matter is how they play in the playoffs. This to me should determine how well they get paid in free agency, because there are a lot of players that can get a lot of points when given the opportunity, and be good enough to lead a team to the playoffs. Its seems that their limitations kind of determine how well they do in the playoffs, as opponents can gameplan better and make producing more difficult, especially for a unique player with obvious limitations such as DD. He largely hasn't produced at a decent efficiency for the last two playoffs, making it hard for me to see him as a high level production player. Great regular season production, not so much in the playoffs, to me at least. Please tell me how im wrong because i would love to be talked into signing DD for a near max.
                    I am of two minds when it comes to playoff performances.

                    First, the playoffs really are what matters, and they really are more difficult to succeed in. Scouting goes up, intensity goes way up, quality of competition goes up.

                    But, second, it's a crazy small sample size. Remember Bargnani's 13 games? DeRozan has 31 games total in the payoffs spread over 3 seasons, most of those (20) coming this season. These are not reliable segments of data. It's true he's performed poorly the past two seasons, but the entire team was garbage last season and this season was kind of a split between useless and decent (with more useless than decent but there was certainly a split). Meanwhile he played very well in the Nets series a few seasons ago, so I don't think it is a case of simply not being a playoff player.

                    Between his improvements thoughout this year's playoffs (he really was much better in the ECF's) and his general trend of improving his decision making over time (which was the main issue with his early round play), I'm not too concerned about him as a playoff player. A better and more balanced system with JV taking a larger role in the offence should allow DeRozan's usage to fluctuate depending on the quality of his matchup and the defensive strategy the opposition is using.

                    So here's the catch - kind of relying on coaching strategy changes. There's lots of verbage from Masai about how everyone agrees that JV is ready for a bigger role, but until next season we can't know if they'll be able to successfully balance the offensive system. I know that's not a strong pitch, relying on Casey to spread the offence around to allow the system to operate even when one guy is shut down by a tremendous defender like George or a switch-everything defence like Miami implemented. But it's all we've got. That and hoping that DeMar improves his decision making (which he can, as he proved for most of this year).
                    twitter.com/dhackett1565

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                    • Someone criticized me earlier for comparing DeMar to Tony Parker, but titles make people see things in a different light. DeMar wins a title at anywhere near the level of contributor he is now he probably makes the hall of fame. Ditto for Lowry and JV.

                      A ringless Tony Parker would not make the hall.

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                      • Gambino wrote: View Post
                        Someone criticized me earlier for comparing DeMar to Tony Parker, but titles make people see things in a different light. DeMar wins a title at anywhere near the level of contributor he is now he probably makes the hall of fame. Ditto for Lowry and JV.

                        A ringless Tony Parker would not make the hall.
                        I didn't see the post, but the only similarities I see is that they both struggle from range.

                        Even their drive and slash game is different. Parker is pure speed and finesse while derozan mostly relies on a quick first step and a knack for inducing contanct
                        9 time first team all-RR, First Ballot Hall of Forum

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                        • KeonClark wrote: View Post
                          I didn't see the post, but the only similarities I see is that they both struggle from range.

                          Even their drive and slash game is different. Parker is pure speed and finesse while derozan mostly relies on a quick first step and a knack for inducing contanct
                          Someone just was saying that you need to have all 4 perimeter players be good shooters and I was asking how the Spurs won with Parker, Heatles with Wade, Boston with Rondo, etc.

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                          • Gambino wrote: View Post
                            Someone just was saying that you need to have all 4 perimeter players be good shooters and I was asking how the Spurs won with Parker, Heatles with Wade, Boston with Rondo, etc.
                            OK gotcha
                            9 time first team all-RR, First Ballot Hall of Forum

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                            • Gambino wrote: View Post
                              Someone just was saying that you need to have all 4 perimeter players be good shooters and I was asking how the Spurs won with Parker, Heatles with Wade, Boston with Rondo, etc.
                              The thing is all 3 of those guys are elite at certain skills, Parker and Wade are elite at slashing and finishing at the rim, and Rondo is an elite playmaker. Derozan isn't elite at anything, he is very good at things.

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                              • A.I wrote: View Post
                                The thing is all 3 of those guys are elite at certain skills, Parker and Wade are elite at slashing and finishing at the rim, and Rondo is an elite playmaker. Derozan isn't elite at anything, he is very good at things.
                                No, DeRozan is elite at slashing. He led the entire league in drives per game this year and was highly efficient on those drives. If that's not elite at slashing, I don't know what is. He's also elite at drawing fouls and finishing (which is why he gets fouled a lot).

                                He's also elite in the pick and roll as the ball handler.
                                Last edited by Gambino; Thu Jun 2, 2016, 11:57 AM.

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