This is a post I've made in a couple forums that I thought I'd share here as well, explaining my argument for re-signing DeMar DeRozan this summer in spite of the issues I have with his game.

The Two Pillars of Team Success

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 secondary, 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. DeMar DeRozan 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 DeRozan 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. Cory Joseph, 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, to look at one common measure). 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 Joseph, 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 then 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 Jonas 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 (Paul 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 Jonas Valanciunas ends up one of those insanely good production-and-impact guys, or we get one some other way, then sure, DeRozan'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.

Playoffs

Now, a lot of that production gets called into question with his disappearing act in these playoffs.

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 playoffs 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 completely useless and pretty 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 throughout this year's playoffs (he really was much better in the ECF) 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 Jonas 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 - you're kind of relying on coaching strategy changes. There's lots of verbage from Masai about how everyone agrees that Valanciunas 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).

Ultimately, I think that considering the alternatives (letting DeRozan walk, risking Lowry walking too next summer, hoping to plug holes with sub-max cap space or just rebuilding entirely), the risk is worth the reward, whether the reward comes in the form of DeRozan finding long term success here or in the form of moving DeRozan later.