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Originally Posted by Regorium
The argument that he doesn't pass because Casey tells him not to is more of a chicken and egg. I've never seen him be able to consistently make good decisions with the ball, so it's possible that the coach told him to accept his limitations and just shoot the ball. Regardless of the reason, it's a pretty massive weakness.
He's also a liability on defence. Luckily we are in a weird era of SG's where there isn't a lot of great ones out there so it doesn't get exposed as hard.
What players could Toronto get to replace the SG position? That's a much tougher question. It really depends on the premise and where the Raps want to go as a team.
Without Derozan, you open up 20+ posessions a game for your other players based on usage. I think JV is criminally underutilized, and with 10 extra possessions a game, I think he can efficiently replace a lot of that scoring. Depending on what your team looks like you can get a shooter, and then your offence revolves around either JV or Lowry starting the play and kicking it out for a pretty serious 3 pt threat.
You could also look for a more defensive lockdown type of SG that chips in a few points and can cut hard to the hoop for points and offensive rebounds. Someone like Matt Barnes or Trevor Ariza used to be.
Who these players are that the Raptors can get? I'm not sure - Admittedly I haven't really followed the free agent class and such for basketball so maybe you're right and Derozan is still the best choice. But his skillset, while above average, is not a championship level skillset in the NBA. I think that if the Raps continue to leverage Derozan, rather than Lowry/JV (who I do believe have championship level skillsets), then they are going to flame out early every year - I mean you could point to this year, but two game 7's against VASTLY inferior teams doesn't give a lot of hope.
Frankly, my main beef are people that do believe that Derozan is a max player and are huge fans. I liken Derozan to Taylor Hall. Perfect complimentary player, but you never want a guy like that to be "the man", but you'll never hear their fans say that.
And to be fair, he played a very efficient game yesterday (first of this series), so maybe he can keep it up. But having it be the second or third good game out of 17 playoff games is just not good enough.
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Good post.
I won't deny that his passing/decision making when passing the ball isn't great but I do truly feel that the offense they run puts him in a difficult position which puts him in a really tough spot when everyone bails out and he goes 1on1. How many times have we seen him drive the ball, get cutoff, and have no one even close to him which results in a forced pass that gets turned over or thrown out of bounds. To say "he doesn't pass" (as taken from another earlier post) is overstating it IMO, I think he generally does an acceptable job when he is passing within the flow of a standard offensive possession. Again, just my opinion, I completely understand where others differ.
You are 100% correct about it being a dead era for the shooting guard position. After Vince, Iverson, Kobe, T-Mac dominated the early 2000s, there has been a massive fall off in the current era at the position. That is part of the reason why I find the assertion that Demar is so easily replaceable to be completely wrong. Good shooting guards are few and far between. If you can hit a home run and sign KD in the offseason than obviously you do it, that's a no brainer. But I don't think that moving on from Demar with the roster constructed the way it is now does them any favours. Are you willing to gut the team after they finally made a playoff run to reassemble the roster? that's a whole other story.
I 100% agree with you that Jonas needs more touches going forward. He's blossomed before our very eyes in the playoffs and should be a dominant force going forward. If the offense can move a handful of touches/game from Demar to JV, I think they have another major gear they can hit going forward. People need to remember that Demar is only 26, Jonas just turned 24 and Lowry just hit 30. That is a young core who now has an ECF birth under their belt and knows what it takes to reach that next level. Throw in a top 10 pick to help potentially upgrade the 4 in time (Sabonis, Chriss) and that is a pretty nasty roster.
It's a fun debate no matter which way you look at it. I think we can all agree that no one would complain about being right or wrong if Demar plays would of his mind for the rest of the series and led the team to a miracle finals birth. Fingers crossed
