DeMar DeRozan
Sacramento Kings

Player Facts

Height: 6'6"
Weight: 220lbs.

Wingspan: 6'9"

Date of Birth: Aug. 7, 1989
College Experience: USC (1 year)

Selections

All Star: 6
All-NBA: 3
All-Defensive: 0

Player Grades

Speed/Explosiveness: 8
Physical Strength: 8
Positional Size: 9
Positional Wingspan: 8
Paint Scoring: 9
Midrange Scoring: 10
Three-Point Scoring: 4
Dribbling: 8
Passing: 7
Perimeter Defense: 4
Interior Defense: 3
Rebounding: 5

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JUMP TO SECTION

> Intro

> Taking it to the Tin

> High-Percentage Finishing + Transition Play

> Free Throw Abundance

> Throwback Midrange Game

> Scoring & Passing in the Pick-and-Roll

> Defensive Dilemmas

> Unwillingness from Range

> Beacon Bacon

>Link to Player Contract & Salary Info

*All short clips courtesy of Smart Highlights, Z. Highlights & MaxaMillion711 (YouTube)

*All statistical data courtesy of NBA Advanced Stats

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STRENGTHS

Intro

The gifted scorer DeMar DeRozan has an old-school offensive game. DeMar sources his points predominantly from the midrange, the free-throw line, and at the rim. He is a powerful and explosive wing at 6'6", 220 lbs.

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Taking it to the Tin

DeRozan is an incredibly efficient and acrobatic finisher. He slices through the interior defense with silky smooth Eurosteps. DeMar has a liking for high overhead gathers along his rack attacks.

His finishing package is profound yet quite nuanced. On one hand, DeRozan can finish with a vicious one-handed stuff over the help. He houses an explosive last step which gives him enough juice to finish through or over people.

DeMar offers plenty of finesse-based layups as well. It is awe-inspiring to recognize how ambidextrous he is on the inside. DeRozan has a move to score in the paint against players of all sizes. He decelerates to lock in his layup timing and evade defenders.

High-Percentage Finishing + Transition Play

He ended up with a 64.2% restricted area clip in 2021-2022. That upper stratosphere of volume/accuracy blend that DeMar resides in is populated primarily with big men. Most notably, he outpaced the efficiencies here of Franz Wagner, Jusuf Nurkic, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander that season.

DeRozan manages to finish through contact with the best of them. His big shoulders, good balance, core strength, and lengthy hangtime all aid him as he wards off the big. DeMar loves to drive baseline, initiate side-body contact with the rim protector, and finish strong with the reverse.

He is a similarly majestic open court scorer. DeMar thrives in transition as the skillful and athletic wing he is. He stacked up more fast break points than guys like Dennis Schroder, Anthony Davis, and Spencer Dinwiddie in 2019-2020.

Free Throw Abundance

His athletic tools are far from the only reason he draws and finishes through contact. DeMar is crafty, sticking the ball out on his drives to lure slaps and hacks from defenders. He simply plays with an attack-first mindset.

DeMar led the NBA with 1329 total drives in 2019-2020. The next year, he was once again within the top-five. In both years, his field goal percentages on these takes was north of 52%.

A fruit of DeRozan's labor as a sly slasher are recurrent trips to the free-throw line. He averaged 7.0 free throw attempts per 36 minutes in 2019-2020 on 84.5% shooting. Free throw makes comprised just over a quarter of DeMar's total scoring output that year. Zooming out, he was in the top-15 for made free throws each year from 2011-2012 to 2019-2020.

Throwback Midrange Game

When DeMar isolates, he can showcase his midrange mastery. He frequently goes one-on-one inside the arc and scores on the league's most talented defenders. He is highly cognizant of his man's hips and feet as they check him. He seeks to capitalize on any false movement with his tight handle and burst.

He smoothly transitions the ball from dribble to his shot pocket here. DeRozan accompanies this with a high set point to shoot over all sorts of big wings. All sorts of foot placements are within his comfort zone as he lines up the jumper.

He closed the door on 2019-2020 with 1.13 points per possession in isolation. This put him in the 92nd percentile league-wide. James Harden, Damian Lillard, and Jayson Tatum all fell short of DeMar's 1.13 points per possession here. He just had an efficient year all-around with a 54% two-point field goal percentage.

Most of his isolation sequences start around the elbow and finish with the midrange jumper. Similar to Kawhi Leonard, DeMar uses hard pound dribbles to repeatedly shift the defender's weight. Derozan's near-perfect footwork before putting up floaters and jumpers must also be mentioned.

He posts up quite a bit for a modern-NBA shooting guard. From here, his midrange brilliance continues. DeRozan puts on a clinic with turnarounds, pump fakes, spins, pivots, and step-throughs to get to his spots. The half-spin shimmy into a quick fading jumper is one of DeRozan's signature moves.

All in all, DeMar's annual statistics confirm that he is prolific from the midrange. 2019-2020 saw him beat out the entire league with 170 midrange baskets, doing so on a solid 45.9% mark. DeRozan managed to just edge out LaMarcus Aldridge, Chris Paul, and Khris Middleton with his bucket-getting here. 2020-2021 saw him up that midranger clip to 47.1%.

Scoring & Passing in the Pick-and-Roll

He is also a productive scorer as the screen-and-roll initiator. A non-threat from deep, DeMar compensates by ferociously attacking dropped bigs or snaking it into the middle of the floor.

He likes a hard plant to suspend the big followed by a large sidestep before rising up. DeRozan was in the 90th percentile scoring as the pick-and-roll ball-handler in 2019-2020. 2020-2021 had him in the 84th percentile.

DeMar's playmaking has grown leaps and bounds since entering the league. He has developed into a player that can capably use the pick-and-roll both as a vehicle of scoring and playmaking. He facilitated a sizable 15.1 and 15.2 assist points created per game in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 respectively.

WEAKNESSES

Defensive Dilemmas

DeRozan has his share of struggles on the defensive side. The physical tools are present, but he fails to maximize them in the way that dependable two-way wings do. He can be late on rotations, get caught ball-watching, stray too far away from shooters, and lazily hop out on closeouts rather than chopping his feet.

He can have trouble navigating high screens to stay connected with ball-handlers. A lot of these poor defensive possessions unfortunately boil down to low energy. He was in only the 30th percentile defending pick-and-roll ball-handlers in 2018-2019.

Three-point shooters shot 3.5% above their normal mark when DeRozan was there in 2019-2020. This worrisome stat alludes to DeMar's half-hearted efforts here as he reserves energy for the offensive end.

As an off-ball defender, DeMar still fails to be a real difference-maker. His faulty defensive body positioning and shoddy court awareness zap any chance of using his size and athleticism to make a defensive impact. There are simply too many blown rotations.

Unwillingness from Range

DeMar is a well-documented non-shooter from deep. He has only had one NBA season averaging more than 1 three-point make a game. His percentages are miserable when he does shoot them, at 26.5% from thee in 2019-2020.

The reluctance to even take threes makes him an inept floor-spacer as a wing. Also, he settles for tough midrange shots as he stubbornly hunts down twos. DeRozan is seemingly opposed to taking the nice catch-and-shoot threes that most scorers relish.

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DeMar, alongside then-teammate Kyle Lowry, won a gold medal with the US Men's Basketball Team during the 2016 Olympic Games